Training Day

The collection has finally begun! Staff training has commenced and cheetah poop here we come, full force!


Nelson (student from University of Nairobi) and I had a staff training day where we taught the cheetah scouts what we were looking for and how to collect different types of samples. 


It started off slow, it's hard to train people on how to collect cheetah fecals when you can't find any... But then FINALLY... POOP! And man did we hit the dried, hairy cheetah poop jackpot. FIVE POOPS on ONE ROCK! Unfortunately, for my project I can only use fresh scats but for Nelson's project, these were PERFECTION. And with that, scouts... prepare to be trained! 

Training the cheetah scouts (Thanks to Reinier for the photo)!

Cheetah scouts collecting their first samples... YAY!

Jimmy (left) and Nelson (right) going over the fecal forms.

We spent the day out in the bush, continuing to search for poops, only found one more but at least it was a good start! It was great to meet all the cheetah scouts. Each one is assigned to a certain ranch area. They look for poop and field calls from herders on recent cheetah sightings or fecal findings. They collect the poop and then eventually it gets back to Nelson and I. This way we have a little more man power than just the two of us covering thousands of acres!

Poops! and some bone shards... mmm.

We saw a ton of wildlife on our poop search (even a jackal and hyena, tho they were too quick to get a photo of sorry). Lots of zebra, ostrich, and various ungulates. My favorite had to be the herd of giraffes we scared. They took off running up the hillside. SO MANY GIRAFFES. insanity. And for those wanting to see animal pics, I was planning on doing a blog entry specifically about wildlife AND BUGS I've seen, so BE PATIENT DAMMIT. But in the mean time... here's a giraffe from that day :)

Oh yeah, and then Cosmas took home a puppy :) 

Jet and I :) He's so freaking adorable.