A little Education goes a long way (Hopefully!)

Hey everyone,

The past few days I’ve been feeling a  bit under the weather. I think I’ve picked up a kidney infection or something  along those lines. I’ll be heading to a doctor in the morning to have it checked out. Please keep me in your prayers in the meantime :)

Despite my illness I was unimpeded from hiking and adventuring around Kulmasa during the day while continuing my Crocodile work at night. This lead to some very cool occurrences in the last couple days I spent there before returning to Damango for some R and R.

The Trails behind my house were absolutely beautiful, a grassland/savannah was literally all around me and I was able to navigate the trails very easily! No major wildlife sightings while walking but man was the scenery just beautiful (See my previous blog post to get a taste of the scenes!).

However this changed pretty quickly due to the seasonal burning of the grasslands in the upper-west region. I woke up one morning to see all the bushes and small trees near me blazing with fire. It was pretty upsetting. I know the people here do it for harvesting purposes but it still made me a little upset as I watched small animals scurry out of the burning vegetation complete with burn injuries themselves.

It was however because of these burnings that I was able to do a little bit of Wildlife education on the fly! Sadly a group of Children playing in front of my house cornered a snake emerging from the burning bushes and hacked it to death. The snake they hacked Commonly known as The Elegant Sand Racer (Psammophis elegans for my biology nerds!),  a rear-fanged but non-deadly snake.  I went out to stop them but it was too late. However as I walked toward them a small Agama lizard fleeing from the flames ran right into my house, I was able to capture it and decided to use this and the snake as a learning opportunity for the children!

I brought the lizard over to them and immediately drew reactions ranging from scared faces, to yells of “POISONOUS!”  However this did not deter me one bit. I just began talking to them about the lizard, told them about their importance in the eco-system and began petting the little bugger on the head to show them he was not dangerous at all. 

The kids seemed to warm up to the idea with several of them coming forward to pet my tiny  "Makeshift-tool" of education! Then I turned my attention to the snake, telling that it was more dangerous for them to try and kill a snake than leaving it alone. I then proceeded to them about my LOVE of snakes and lizards and upon seeing my smile they began to smile back. They promised me they wouldn’t kill any more snakes that they saw and would come grab me anytime they found an animal!

My first Wild Chameleon! PHENOMENAL

Approximately 30mins later one of the kids came running to me screaming, CHAMELEON! CHAMELEON! At first I was skeptical because I knew how elusive and cryptic Chameleons are, but sure enough upon following him there was a Chameleon sitting in the middle of a freshly burning patch of brush. With small embers  still smoking I ran into the middle and snagged the poor little critter before he could become roasted!  I was able to get lots of excellent pictures of the little guy, and I’m fairly certain he is of the Chameleo gracilis species, also known as the Graceful Chameleon.  I released him into a nice low level bushy tree closer to my house , a safe distance from the flames. The Children saw my excitement with the Chameleon and told me they would come and get whenever they saw another one!

Chameleon numero dos! 

The following morning at 8am the children returned with cries of “Chameleon!” causing me to jump up from my sleep and follow them to again find a Graceful Chameleon trying to avoid the burning fires. I got some more great pictures of the little bugger and released him in a similar spot, in a different small tree right near my house. The kids were all smiles when they saw how excited I was, and really saw how much I loved these scaly critters. Hopefully my enthusiasm and small talks have helped encourage them to protect and preserve these creatures in the days to come!








 "And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."-Matthew 25:40