Saving Stripes

Congratulations to Hussein and his new wife, Mariam! Hussein is Siva’s field assistant here at the Mpala Research Centre — an important part of the project and the community at Mpala!

The wedding was held on a neighboring ranch, Ol Jogi, where Hussein’s parents live. About half the guests had come from Mpala. The bride and groom made a beautiful couple!

The wedding reception was an interesting mix of cultures. Hussein and his wife are Burgi, one of the Muslim tribes from northeastern Kenya. But many of the people who live in this area are Maasai (from this region) or Turkana (from northwestern Kenya). The wedding party — the ladies beautiful with their henna-ed hands — were surrounded by dancing Maasai and Turkana.

It was a lovely day, and we wish Hussein and Mariam a long and happy life together!

-Corinna

Another week has slipped past here in dusty Laikipia. Still no sign of rain – the clouds gather in the afternoon but veer off to the west. Elsewhere in Kenya it is raining, but here it remains a “blue hole”! Sadly, the famine worsens for the rural poor.

Our internet has improved marginally – word is that the earthquake in Italy affected the service base there. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I have had very little internet connection until today!

Yesterday I was supposed to go track down a zebra on Siva’s behalf. I got a call last week from a neighboring rancher that he had seen a zebra with a collar on it. Siva has one collared zebra left, and he hasn’t seen her in a very long time. I had planned to go take a look to see if the zebra that had turned up was wearing one of Siva’s collars or not. But late Tuesday night the rancher called again to say that nobody had seen the zebra in some days and it would probably be a waste of time to come looking. Is she the missing zebra, or is she a zebra somebody else put a collar on? (some researchers working further north have a handful of collared zebras). The mystery remains, for now…

More from me soon, now that the internet seems to be working again.

-Corinna

Friday leading into the long Easter weekend here… Internet still having problems, and it’s still dry as a bone. On Monday morning it looked really promising – dark clouds and even a little rain shower. But by midday the sun was shining and any signs of rain had evaporated.

At least we have water in the rivers! Compare this to last week:

I’m working at home these few days and puppy-sitting for Pedro, our friend Alayne and Josep’s four month-old ridgeback. Pedro is all legs and ears!

Arcas is thrilled to have a little buddy to play with. And nap with…

These days I only ever see the squirrels early in the morning or in the evening, when they come to eat the food I put out. Sometimes they bring along their new friends. Here’s one of the babies with an adult male ocher bush squirrel – you can see that the babies are almost fully grown now!

Also, the way their tails are bushing out is quite interesting – they’re thickening with adult fur from the base and moving up the tail. And just in time; their baby tails are starting to look pretty ratty!

Wishing you all a good weekend,

Corinna

Hi everybody,

Apologies for the silence – our internet has been down pretty much the whole week because it’s been snowing in Italy. Yep. When the weather is foul in Turin, something goes wrong with the satellite connection, and we here in rural Kenya lose contact with the outer world!

I’ve had a post ready to put up all week – which I’ll post soon – but meantime, some good news: the river started flowing! This is the Nanyuki River, the one that passes by our house. Earlier in the week it rained on Mount Kenya, the source of the Nanyuki River. Since Wednesday we’ve been hearing rumors that it’s flowing upstream; by Thursday it had reached the adjacent ranch; and by yesterday afternoon a healthy stream of clear, cold water was burbling past the house. Ah, the wonderful sound of rushing water!

Now, we are just waiting for rain. Dark clouds on many afternoons, but still no rain. We wait. It’s something you learn to be good at, here.

-Corinna

While we work on replying to your comments, here’s a quick update on our various projects.

Collaring: Unfortunately, I’ve had to postpone plans for collaring zebras. The vets from Kenya Wildlife Service who were going to help catch the zebras aren’t available to do the collaring right now. I’m headed to the US in ten days, so I’ve postponed the collaring until June. In some ways it might be for the best, since there will be more zebras around in June, after the rains (right now it is really dry here, but it should rain a lot in April and May). A bit disappointing as I was hoping to get some collars on now – we really don’t know where the zebras disappear to in the dry season and this would have been a great chance to figure that out!

Dung collection: On Monday I was in the field again collecting poop down on Ol Pejeta – a wildlife conservancy about an hour south of here. We had a really successful day (after a slow start). Ol Pejeta mostly has plains zebras, with just a few Grevy’s. We wanted to get dung from plains zebra mothers and their foals, so we can compare their genetics and parasites. We also got dung from a few Grevy’s, and maybe even one Grevy’s-plains hybrid (yes, they exist! I will write more about them sometime soon). Maybe you are wondering – why do I care about plains zebras, which are common and not endangered at all? Well, the answer to “why are Grevy’s so rare” is probably closely linked to the answer to “why are plains zebras so common” – since both species are generally similar.

Here are a couple of pictures from our day at Ol Pejeta:

Rangeland management project: We have been busy in the field the rest of this week setting up experimental plots for our rangeland management experiment. Corinna is going to post more about this – check back soon!

Squirrels: The squirrels are getting big (70 grams now) and we think it’s about time to release them. We moved their cage outside and the last few days we’ve let them out for a bit in the late afternoon. At first the little girl squirrel freaked out, clinging, frozen, to the wall of the house (while the little boy happily climbed into a tree and started eating leaves and ants). But now they are both more relaxed and bounce around on our veranda and in the surrounding trees. We’re planning to let them out for a little while every day before finally leaving the cage open all the time. Some of you have asked how we keep the dog from eating the squirrels – and the answer (for now at least) is by keeping him indoors when they’re loose!

Here’s a picture from back when the squirrels were tiny:

That’s the latest for now… more soon!

-Siva & Corinna

Over the weekend we were visiting Paula, who runs WildlifeDirect. In talking to Paula we realized something: none of the comments she or anybody else was posting were coming through to us!

The friendly folks over at WildlifeDirect have now fixed this technological glitch and lo and behold, we can see that many people have commented with their thoughts, questions, and observations.

So, first of all, thank you all for your comments! Secondly, we will now start replying. Stay tuned – more soon.

-Corinna & Siva