Sanctuary – our animal sanctuary near the restaurant / shop area houses numerous animals. Snapshots of their lives appear below.
8 July 2012: We have 4 new editions to the park – 2 baby Barn Owls and 2 Spotted Eagle Owls! Male Barn Owl Godfrey is now 7 weeks old, while the female Gertrude is 9 weeks. Both have mastered the art of flying and spend the day outside basking in the sun and stretching their wings, at night time they come back in and enjoy being hand fed by the volunteers. The Spotted Eagle Owls are 1 year of age now, with Alwyn the female attracting some male attention with wild owls coming to visit and call to her while Oui Oui the male sleeps next to her. All enjoy chicken necks for dinner and can be heard “hooting” throughout the night.
8 July 2012 – Caracals and Olive: Caracals Kerry and Nitro have been relocated to another park just outside of the Addo area. Although we miss them, we are happy to hear they are doing great exploring their new big home with exciting smells and sights. Along with them left Olive, the African Wild Cat, who is also enjoying a nice spacious home while waiting for a male to arrive and keep her company.
8 July 2012 – Nyala rescue: A few days ago a call came through for our help about a young male Nyala. A dog had caught and injured him on a farm close by and we were rung to help as quickly as we could. We brought the Nyala back to the park, and treated it with the necessary care required for all its wounds. Once finished, the buck was released into one of the most calm and suitable areas of the park, and was well enough to go bounding through the grass into the sheltered trees to recover. He was then spotted the next day doing great and healing up nicely thanks to the quick attention we gave!
8 July 2012: Mube: When the volunteers were busy fixing the Hyena’s enclosure recently, we happened to notice that Mube was not inside his home. After a short look, we found him sun baking just outside where the volunteers were fixing up and looked extremely comfortable watching us work. After half an hour we decided to walk him back to his home, and he followed happily with some nice grass left inside for him to carry on eating with.
8 July 2012: Servals: Caracals and Olive: Caracals Kerry and Nitro have been relocated to another park just outside of the Addo area. Although we miss them, we are happy to hear they are doing great exploring their new big home with exciting smells and sights. Along with them left Olive, the African Wild Cat, who is also enjoying a nice spacious home while waiting for a male to arrive and keep her company.
Leopards: Louis and Ella (They arrived at the Park in January 2010 when they were 18-weeks-old. They are not siblings. Check out more photos in the Gallery.)
Above, Louis is an impressive male. Below, Ella loves her food! (Photo: April 2011)
8 July 2012: Ella and Louis are showing much more interest in each other, and are very often seen spending lots of time together. They are eating a leg each every Wednesday, and volunteers enjoy hiding their food in the trees, trying to make that feed more difficult to find. Louis puts on quite a show, jumping around and being very persistent, while Ella calculates each step and usually has her meat quicker. Ella has become extra friendly as of late, and makes us hope their coming close to the stage where we can expect babies!
27 February 2012: The leopards are now back to two feeds a week. They are still fed every Monday afternoon and the extra feed comes along on a day we have something extra special to give them. Last week they got to enjoy a heart and a liver on their extra feed and finished it off in no time. Last Tuesday they had some extra fun with a big red Boomer Ball that was donated to them. Princess Ella was too busy being grumpy to play along, but goofy Louis loved it, until it got stuck underneath the tree and he couldn’t be bothered getting it out.
1 November 2011: The leopards are doing extremely well and are as beautiful as ever. Louis is really big now and weighs in easily above 80kg. Ella on the other hand weighs about 35kg. Last week we hid small pieces of meat and skin in the trees in their camp. When we released the two out of the enclosures, Louis instantly went into search mode looking for the hidden food. He found it easily, Ella was not as successful, finding only one piece on one of the rocks.
25 April 2011: Ella and Louis are just beautiful, and have learnt the system of eating at separate ends. Ella always eats up to top side closest to Mube, while Louis runs down the bottom and follows the person with his dinner. Ella always eats up on top of the shelter, and apart from eating they are very friendly with each other and pay and sleep close to each other. They are around their full size, perhaps Louis may grow some more. They still come over for pets through the fence, but Louis becomes paranoid and hisses at us – maybe he is wondering why we sitting watching him?!
Servals: Galia and MacCormick (This breeding pair arrived at Seaview in October 2010. They were 6-weeks-old.)
8 July 2012: Servals: Galia and Mac are doing great and are mature, elegant looking cats. We receive lots of comments on how graceful and sweet they are, and often the pair sleep together in the sun with their paws wrapped around each other and groom each other’s ears and faces. They absolutely love the brightly coloured squeaky toys we give them, and they play so much that the squeaky sound disappears and the Servals become disappointed in the lack of sound and we have to replace them! The toys also smell like vanilla which intrigues them as well. Both are very vocal come feeding time, and like to climb up above the inside gate and watch the sun go down each night.
23 March 2011: MacCormick and Galia are very sweet and affectionate, and love to purr to us when we play with them. Both are very fast with their paws and can hit down really hard onto our hands! They also love to stalk baby goat when she walks past. They also sleep up on top of their sleeping box every now and then and underneath as well – guess they like the top and bottom more than actually getting inside it! They are nearly 6 months of age and are still growing strong.
27 February 2012: They seem very much in love and spend lots of time together. What Galia doesn’t know, is that Mac has another girlfriend who is keeping him busy these days: Raisin the cat. At first we thought Raisin was spending all that time next to the gate because she wanted to go out and interact with the volunteers, but what she really wants is some alone time with her serval boyfriend. Usually in the morning you can find the two kissing through the fence and later on during the day you see Mac and Galia all cuddled up – so we’re guessing the poor boy is exhausted keeping his two girls happy!
(Below, the servals in their new enclosure – February 2011)
21 December 2011: Mac and Galia are very much in love these days and spend most of their day cuddling together in different spots in the enclosure. They developed a weird feeding routine where they’ll refuse to eat for two days in a row and then on the third day they will be extra hungry and excited to see the food brought up to them. They still get a mixture of red meat and chicken twice a day, and have started “meowing” whenever it gets close to feeding time and they are hungry.
29 Oct 2010: The servals weighed: 1.685KG (boy) and 1.635KG (girl). We fed them chicken three times a day and also a bottle. The boy is very sweet, affectionate and playful, the girl a little bit more feisty – but they are so cute! Both are extremely confident and not shy at all, and they are having fun exploring the restaurant in the early mornings and nights. (Below, Janice Gibb with MacCormick)
