Kuku, Siafu and Punda Milia (tena)

Chicken, Ants, and Zebra (again)

The chickens are now month old and much heartier to withstand Anderson’s play style (and he can no longer fit all 13 chicks into their food bin).  We are trying to let the chickens/chicks out every day, so the dogs learn not to chase them.  Today the dogs didn’t even care that they were out, so we’ve come a long way from the day we picked up the dogs when they grabbed a chicken and dragged it into the bushes. 

Chicks are one month old

This type of biting ant seem to be out a lot right now.  Anytime we are out for a walk we have to really watch not to step right into these ant highways.  It really is fascinating to watch.  They totally clear the path to create these roads.  They can very quickly crawl up your legs and bite – pretty painful.  We’ve had to pick them out of Tierney’s hair (thankfully not today) – ouch. 

Siafu

Fini and Paul invited us over again to go for a hike from their house.  Since I wasn’t the only one with a husband out of town, I invited Kiyah and Rebecca along (they each have a one year old girl). We hiked to the top of a hill and could see all of Arusha (while avoiding the biting ants).  When we got back to their house the cattle (and therefore the zebras) were back from grazing, and we came prepared with our own bread for the zebras.  It was the hottest day we’ve had in a long time, so it was nice to have tangerines from Fini and Paul’s tree and have lemonade made from their own lemons (and we all got to come home with lettuce from their garden!). The kids and the zebras seem to be much more comfortable with each other than the first time they ‘met’ each other. 

(Couldn’t load the longer video I wanted, so I’ll have to settle for these two shorter ones)

Ash feeding the zebra

Tierney feeding the zebra

Somehow I think we’ll survive until Matt gets home on Wednesday.

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For those interested here’s a link to a blog by Sanjayan (TNC’s lead scientist).  This was a trip that Matt was on – he has some great video of these lions as well as others from these night cameras.  http://blog.nature.org/2010/06/the-prowling-hour-encounters-with-lions-in-kenya/