by Mary Wykstra

Yesterday I had a frantic call from a man who was walking with his goats and came across two cheetahs eating a goat. The dead goat did not belong to the man, but he did chase the cheetahs away and wanted to find who the goat belonged to. Being the Holiday season, our staff in Salama are taking turns being on call and of coarse the person on call is the one furtherest away from the incident. I was able to reach Pius, who was closer and asked him to visit the site.

Why does it seem that the Holiday season is always filled with cheetah conflicts? I have two theories:
1 - in this season we have had rains and the grass is a bit longer and the bush a bit thicker... it is easy for the cheetah to hide and for the goats to get out of sight of the herder
2 - many herders go home to their own families and the kids who come home from school are assigned to watch the livestock. They are not typically as attentive as the herder. In some cases when the herder is given leave the owner will just let the livestock out without any herder at all.

What are the solutions?
Our education activities need to center around the problem times - to make the livestock owner aware that they cant let their guard down just because it is the Holiday season... this is goint to be a hard issue to resolve.

On a good note, it is raining in many parts of Kenya. I am in Nairobi now, working on year end reports, budget and schedules for 2010. I wanted to get a photo of my dogs to send home. Less than a half hour after the photo the skies dropped an amazing amount of rain. My yard went from dry to a lake in less than 10 minutes.

Happy Christmas to all who receive the rain, but remember that when the grass is tall and the bush is thick you never know what may be hiding!!!