40 kilometers east of Vinhok, the capital of Namibia, we
find a place where humans care for wild animal orphans,
Nusa. Heading up the sanctuary is Marlise
Vaneen. Animals are her life and she has a rare
connection with them, from the biggest to the smallest, the most
endangered to the most abundant. Her
husband Rudy is a medical doctor and shares his wife's love of
wild animals, which can come in handy if a vet isn't available,
but all he really wants to do is fly his Cessna 182.
Zahio is going to follow in his parents' footsteps and has the
fantastic opportunity to spend his formative years growing up in the
great outdoors, where he has lots of animal as well as
Bushmen friends. The ancient art
of tracking still survives with a handful of Bushmen trackers.
Kiwit is Nangusa's expert in reading the signs in the vet.
And then of course, there are the really wild inhabitants of
this amazing sanctuary.
I In this episode,
3 of the male baby baboons need to be castrated to prevent aggression in the
group. Catching them proves to be a little more difficult than
anticipated. Two young cheetahs need to be rescued
after their owner was injured and cannot take care of them anymore.
And Malice checks up on the baby baboons and how they're recovering after
their operation.
The meerkats have another lazy day ahead of them, but today is
a big day for the 3 young male baboons. All right,
so, um, we're gonna go in and, um, the big
ones are out now, so we should be OK. And when they're on you, I'll inject them. We'll
do all three. Gus, Marlon, Clyde.
And uh then we take them out to to do the operation. Well we wait
for them to fall asleep and then take them out. Yeah, we wait for them till they fall asleep and then we
go. But the three boys seem to suspect something
as they're nowhere to be seen. The initial idea was to just pick them
up as they go for their daily walk. It looks like that's not going to
work. Otherwise, let's take the babies on a walk. Go out
there with the babies because the big ones just all climb back in now
so they don't want to go to just stop and the big ones.
Jeffrey finds this all rather entertaining.
You Hey.
Rudy engages in some chit chat with the bigger boys that have been through this
operation last year. Marlise and the volunteers devise a
new plan to try and catch the three boys without alarming them.
Let's see what works. If you see the babies come, try and sneak them out,
OK, Paige, there she comes, OK it's just to get
them. The little ones don't come
to us sneak.
Marli spots young Gus outside. Maybe the plan is gonna work
after all.
They play and engage with the rest of the troupe as per usual so as to
make everything seem as normal as possible.
Nearly some success, but no, this is not turning out as
planned. And the one thing that Rudy has learnt over the years is that
you never use the phrase I told you so to Marli.
So he leaves them to first try it their way.
What do you wanna do? I, I want to do it my way. It's very
simple. You go dart gun. Think when you pick them up. That's very simple. You're gonna dart through them. I mean we, we use a small needle,
but then you're gonna run after them. Try try your way first.
But I mean, we can't stand here the whole day.
Maurice and the volunteers try one last time to
take the group out of the enclosure for a walk. If the young ones come out
and jump onto them and hitch a ride as they normally do, they'll be able to
inject the three males. But the
baboons are way too clever and immediately sense that
something is wrong and react accordingly.
Marli realizes that her plan is not going to work and she'll have to
concede. Maybe Rudy was right all along.
Rudy. Go get the gun. Obviously
the Bunyaga way failed, so we'll do it the scientific way now.
Right.
They head back to the enclosure, and now all the pressure is on
Rudy to show that the scientific way indeed gets better
results.
Mm.
Everybody gets out. We stand on the outside, one
after the other. Put them to sleep.
Not so. OK,
how do you want? Can we do it inside? Yeah, cause we have to make sure we
get close, close, and you've got the right one, so
let's see. But now we need Bloy to go over there with
the food, because now the babies are there. They're swapping around. All right,
take her. By
sin.
Rudy darts the first boy with a very accurate shot.
The surprise and disbelief is what causes the screaming, rather than the
sting of the dart.
And the second one, seems like the scientific way is getting better
results and quicker. Where's the last
one? Is it
Marlon? Oh, OK.
Bunny Aga style. Fails 9 out of 10
times. Don't say it too
loud.
Oh, OK.
Right
Marlin is the last one to be darted. It all went very
smoothly and quickly. As the
drug starts to take effect, the 3 boys begin to fall
asleep.
Mice offers Marlin some comfort.
Also, let's say the scientific way went quicker.
Well, I'll get my turn to win something with the bunny hug
aside. Let's take a look.
Yeah.
Yeah The first one on the operation
table is young Marlon.
OK, so what we usually do. As we examine them and
feel if we can feel a test this. There is a testers there, but it's
very small. If you like.
And Marlise is an expert at holding the testers. So, um
He's gonna She's gonna hold them
for us. She's been trained.
The reason for them to neuter the boys at an early age is to prevent
aggression in the group in the confined space. These baboons
were rescued and they want to give them a good home, but do not want them
to breed.
Yeah.
Rudy carefully puts in the stitches. It helps to have a
medical doctor at hand with these kinds of operations.
So we're almost done here with Marlon and then we still have to do
Clyde and Gussie.
With the last one done, Marlise carefully puts them in a
safe place where they'll wake up.
Oh The boys has just been done.
Um, so we, they all look good. All gone good. We
didn't have any bleeding and, you know, got a little bit of
vomiting, but, uh, they're doing good. So we will keep them here,
wait till they're totally awake, and that will be only tomorrow and then put them
back into the camp and make sure that they don't get bitten.
Mar Marlon is waking up already.
Marlon was the first to have the operation, and now he's also the
first to wake up. One cannot help but to feel sorry for them.
The next morning, Marlise gets an early morning rescue call.
I got a call from a woman in the northeastern part of
Namibia close to Omaru, round about 2.5 hours'
drive from, and um she's got
some tame cheetahs that she's raised now for 11 months.
So we're gonna go and pick them up because she got a bad injury. She got
kicked by a cow and broke her leg very badly, so she can't
physically take care of them anymore, so we have to go and get them.
For every phone call I get and I get to go out and
pick up animals, it's always a surprise what
to expect on the other side, because people say it's a leopard, then it's a cheetah or
it's a cheetah, and then it's a leopard, and I never know what animals,
what condition they are in, so it's, it's always a surprise
and So and I also think what am I gonna do
with that animal? Where is it going to fit in in the sea because I run out
of space sometimes, so it's, yeah,
a lot a lot goes through my mind when I get a phone call. It's not just going
and picking up that animal and know exactly what I'm gonna do with it.
It's always a, it's a risk and it's always a wandering game
for me.
Their rescue missions take them to some of the most remote corners of this
vast country.
After a 2.5 hour drive, Mali and Kat, one of the
volunteers, arrive on the farm and are greeted by Mariki,
the owner.
Mm. Nicky
She has had them since they were babies and has looked after them for almost a
year. Now, after her accident, she just cannot look
after them as she used to.
It's.
Is it
Maurice needs to devise a plan on how they can get the cheetah running free in the
enclosure into the transport cage.
Yeah Don't get a toilet.
OK, so we've made a, like a funnel for her. So we'll put it
in the funnel and then work it towards the the transport
box. After that, we will break down this whole thing and move the
capture cage there so we can move the other one in there. Um, that's
our first choice. Second choice is to physically catch,
catch this cat, and just grab it by the tail and walk it in. OK. So let's
see. Hopefully, it's gonna go easy.
The young cheetah is calm, but very suspicious of all the people.
Mali is confident that she'll not hurt herself, and if they're
patient, she may just go into the cage by herself.
It's not a law on yet? Yeah
I don't Oh
And she goes in. No.
Quick. No way.
That was easy enough. Now just maneuvering the cage with the
other cat in such a way that she can also be loaded into the transport
cage, and they're ready to go. The
other cat is very calm and goes in without incident. Because
they were hand-reared, they're relatively relaxed and this reduces the chances
of them hurting themselves.
Yes
We.
OK, now we can look for my tail. 123. OK.
Mariki looks on as Marlise and her team load the two cheetahs.
She's obviously sad to see them go, as she has invested a lot of time and
effort into racing.
So this is the.
Marli knows how it feels to see wild animal orphans that you've cared for
for so long. Go. She assures her that
she'll look after them well, and when they get released back into the wild, she'll let
her know and keep her up to date on progress.
Um, this is really wonderful to pick up cats this age,
um, and in such good condition. Normally when we get phone calls
like this, we get up, we get there and cats are really in poor condition
and Um, you know, malnourished and
skinny, but these cats are healthy. They, they are fit. They're not
overweight, they're not underweight. They've really been looked after very
well, so Ricky's done a wonderful job to rescue them and
also to take care of them as well. So it's, it's really
for me and privilege and honor to pick up cats that looks like this. So it's,
it's good. It's, I'm happy. I'm really happy today.
Well done. That that may be.
You can see it's been done out of love, so it's wonderful.
Last goodbyes and Motley starts the long drive back
to Noncase as evening sets in.
Yeah.
The next morning she checks up on the young baboons.
It's going well with the young boys, Gus, Marlon, and
Clyde. It's been castrated and they, they
first walk now and they all is happy, all is going good. They look healthy,
so very happy.
All three of them look fit and in no pain. They're already
exploring and playing as if nothing has happened. They seem to have
recovered fully from the operation and Maurice is very happy with
their progress.
They play with Marlise and all seems to be forgiven.
But there is always something that requires attention with these youngsters.
Blomy has seen the meerkats and is now very
inquisitive and looking for trouble.
I.
Well
Not a problem.
Um Um
So Yeah.
No.
The entire troop soon comes to see what Blomy and meerkats are up
to.
The meerkats decide to play it safe and rather hide in a bush.
That's
The rivalry between the baboons and the meerkats here would have been a total
different story if the baboons were a smaller group
and the meerkats were a bigger group. Um, but now in
this situation, the meerkats are not enough to stand up against the
baboons, but um, yeah, so the meerkats don't have
a A chance against them, so they go hiding in this
bush and the baboons, you know, they will throw them around,
grab them by the tails, and they can injure them. They can break their legs if they're
really aggressive. And so it's a good
choice for them to make, to go and hide. You can hear the
politics going in there, but they know, don't come out, stay in there. So it's really
clever from them. Stay in here, it's, you know, you don't want to take these
baboons on. So all is well
that ends well. The meerkats are safe and the boys seem to have
fully recovered from their operation. will have
to come out on the right hand side. In the
next episode, a very difficult decision when one of the cheetahs develops
a tooth abscess and Marlise needs to decide if they can
operate and clean it or whether they'll have to put it down.