Long time no see

I am very sorry for neglecting my blog over the last two months.
I really don't like computer work and always look for any excuse not to do mine, so when my wife suggested a bit of renovation work in the house i grabbed it.
Well about a week after the baby's were born on the 16th of January a family of yellow tailed mongoose moved into one of the secondary burrows in the southern part of the territory. And one afternoon when i got to the burrows i could not see any sign of the babysitter and after a while two yellow tailed mongoos came running out or the burrows and vanished into the shrubs.
The next morning the meerkats moved to another burrow, witch means all the baby,s were dead.
Normaly january would be the last baby,s for the season but it looks like Liefie is pregnant again.
All five of the November baby's are still alive, so there is still 14 members to the family.

End of season

Well it is the end of the festive season, almost the end of tourist season and the end of breeding season for meerkats. You know it is the end of the festive season when shops put up Easter adverts. The end of holiday when there are no more caravans traveling north towards Johannesburg  and the end of breeding season when Liefie the dominant female had her last batch of baby's.
She had the baby's on 16 January.   
The whole family is doing well. All five November baby's are doing well.

The photo was taken the 15th of Jan and she had the baby's on the 16th

Embarrassing

The middle of December season, 12 people booked. 31 December.

I went to the meerkats the previous day to see where they would sleep. I do that every day so as not to embarrass myself.
Now on this specific day i could not find the meerkats, it was a very miserable windy day and a couple of goshawks were having a fears territorial battle over the north western territory.
This made me think that the meerkats were nervous and has thus gone underground for protection, as i could not find them at any of the burrows in the territory.
So using my tracking skills i found some fresh footprints at one of the northern burrows and decided to take a chance and do the tour. I also took my son JD with the next morning as backup to patrol the other burrows. But no meerkats. Had to send my guests home without seeing one meerkat.
When i got back that afternoon all the meerkats were there waiting for me. I did promise them each a radio collar.
The rest of the family is doing fine. Liefie is growing very big and would ave her baby's around the 17th of Jan.  

At last the wait is over

Born on 1st of November they eventually showed their faces for the first time today, five new baby's and they look strong and healthy.

First hot summers day

So what do you do when it is 40° in the shade and you are a meerkat in the Karroo?

You find some shade under a tree, scratch the hot topsoil away and lie down flat on your tummy to cool down.

??????????????

So Boeta is still with the family, no sign that he has any plans to leave soon. The young female that left after he came back also returned to the family.
I do not take kids younger than 10 years on my tours, just because it is cruel to the child to sit still for that long.

So when someone asked very nicely, i decided to take them with me when i do my afternoon trip to the meerkats. I do not take people with me in the afternoons because the sightings are not guaranteed. But these people asked nicely so there we go. Got to the burrows just after 18H00 with still 1 ½ hours sun left, but no sign of the meerkats, i even canceled my tour for the next morning. Next morming i'm there and found them at the main burrows, so i let the people know to meet me again the afternoon and again no meerkats. This time i did not cancel my morning tour and there they were. So the third afternoon i went to find them and 17H45 they were at the burrows but only went to bed when the sun went down. Only the 4th afternoon did i find the reason, I went to the burrows at 16H00 and staked out from a distance with my binoculars and then i saw the culprit, a yellow mongoose attached the baby sitters, who then gave alarm the whole family came to the rescue and to protect the baby's the whole family stayed with them for the remainder of the afternoon, so that was why we did not see the meerkats at the burrows ore anywhere in the territory the first two times.

It is Time

Well just when you think you have things sorted and you know how their heads work they bowl you out, No i'm not talking about woman but meerkats.

When Boeta came back last week the young meerkat female that has just reached maturity end of August, got confused because of the young hunk who joined the family. It activated her hormones and she was kicked out of the family.

Well except for being a bit confused by the comings and goings of old family members it was a rather uneventful week.

My predicted birth date fore the new baby's were out by two day's, so in stead of the 30 th of October it was the 1 st of November.

Yesterday the tour went quiet uneventful till the two youngsters who were supposed to do babysitting duty, thought they can get away with leaving me and the guests to do baby sitting duty.

I was just bragging about what good baby sitters meerkats are when all of them left to go and forage. A bit confused, i lead my group of guests to follow the family to see whats going to happen next.

Without warning two very upset young meerkats charged down on me and the very surprised guests and the one stopped about 6 inches from my feet and with the attitude of a 7 feet meerkat, let go with a string of verbal abuse that i cannot word for word repeat on a public blog, told me what a bad and undisciplined babysitter i am to leave new born baby's unattended. And what a bad example i set in front of guests. I reluctantly bowed my head in shame and asked my guests to politely step out of the path and let them past to go and do what i have failed in so miserably. I was on the point of giving them a peace of my mind and tell them that i will not be discriminated against just because i am a human, but kept my mouth shut when the rest of the family came running down the path to come and see what the racket was about. So me and the guests made our way back to our vehicle's before i got into more trouble.