Molelo Tau Pride Newsletter December 2011

MOLELO

Tau Pride Newsletter

Welcome folks to the Tau Pride newsletter. Tau has great aspirations that this newsletter will reach you all, wherever you might be and in doing so hope to rekindle those breathtaking memories of the sights and sounds of Africa.

News

It’s that time of year again where the lodge is abuzz with the excitement of the festive season. Christmas decorations have been put up and all guests and staff are in good spirits. After all, Tis’ the season to be jolly!

Over the last few months we have been working on something big in preparation for the summer and we are proud to announce that we have successfully introduced five crocodiles into our waterhole. The croc introduction was done with the help of the North West Parks and Tourism Board and Bakwena Crocodile Farm.

The crocodiles are approximately two meters in length and are three years of age. We have erected a croc proof fence around the lodge to ensure that the crocs enjoy the water hole and not the well-manicured lawns around the lodge and chalets. There is also a healthy population of fish in our waterhole for the crocs to feed on, in addition to this we have brought in loads of fine river sand forming a sand bar and providing         them with a comfortable area to bask on.  

Photo by Brad Leighton

Sadly we have said goodbye to Morah-Leigh Cooper in November. I am sure that her fellow rangers and everyone else at Tau will miss her dearly. Thank you, for all your hard work and dedication to Tau over the past four years and good luck with your future endeavours.

We also bid farewell to Merlin Jones, our Assistant Head Chef who left us at the end of November. Go well and all the best Merlin.

On another note there are always sad goodbyes but also welcome another new ranger, Garth Harrison to the Tau Team. Garth has studied Nature Conservation and has been involved in Madikwe helping our resident ecologist in various exercises for practical experience, one such project was the recent buffalo auction that was held in Madikwe which was a huge success. Here’s to a productive future at Tau. 

Garth helping out with the recent buffalo capture for auction..

Bush News

The bush is starting to green up after our first big rainfall of the season and summer is once again upon us. This time of the year is particularly very special as we are starting to see the general game start to calf. This is providing some lovely sightings of the youngsters playing and learning from their mothers.

The sightings have been particularly good with leopard becoming an almost every day occurrence. One leopard in our area, the Maokeng Male has become very used to the vehicles and allows for great photo opportunities. He has also been seen outside of our crocodile introduction boma on several occasions, providing some very accessible sightings for our guests.

Maokeng Male: Photo taken by Megan Matern

The wild dogs have also been active around the Tau concession over the last while; they are looking healthy, as active as ever and constantly hunting. The picture below is of one such successful hunt where they managed to bring down a large Kudu female in Tau’s waterhole. Being such efficient hunters they manage to kill around 75% of the time. The carcass was finished up within the space of 45 minutes, once again providing Tau’s guests with some fantastic photographic opportunities.

Wild dogs at Tau’s waterhole: Photo taken by Gerard Ramage

Did you know?

·        The average age of a crocodile is between 50-60 years, but some have been known to live to over 100 years of age.

  

·        They can reach swimming speeds of up to 40 km per hour. (25 mph)

·        A crocodile has the ability to grow new teeth to replace the old teeth

·        Crocodiles have salt glands on their tongues to expel salt making them more tolerable to living in saline water. Alligators do not have this ability.

·        Crocodiles can grow to lengths of 16-18 feet (4.8-5 meters).

From the kitchen

Our Executive Chef, John Carelse has been nothing but outstanding and has continued to create some culinary delights. Again a big thank- you and well done to all the staff in the kitchen. Below are a few things John made for high tea for a group recently.

Sweet treats for high tea: Photo by Markus Kleinhans     

Chocolate fudge cake: Photo by Markus Kleinhans

We thank you for taking an interest in our newsletter and trust we can keep your passion and interests alive for this beautiful place we like to call home.

Regards

Brad, Markus and the Tau Pride

Ps: We would love to post some of our guest’s pictures, experiences and suggestions in our newsletter. If you would like to share your adventures with others, please send it to gm@taugamelodge.co.za 

You can also follow us on Facebook and twitter

LORD MADIKWE

A while ago we had a big bull elephant that was aptly named " Lord Madikwe", the name resembles Lord Muck, and pretty much he used to do just what he liked. He damaged numerous lodges around the park and ripped geysers off of walls, damaged gardens in lodges, vehicles and water treatment plants...all within the confines of the lodges electric fencing.

One evening, after trying his luck at our lodge Lord Madikwe marched into another the camp, broke down the electric gates to the lodge and went straight into the fenced area. I was told that the elephant had done so much damage and was in camp for almost the whole night. He ended up smashing the window on their company vehicle with his tusks, then he moved on to a beautiful big Marula tree and pushed it over...Next he decided that it was a good idea to move to the water treatment plant at the bottom of the lodge and push the water tanks over and puncture them with his tusks, and then play soccer with the tanks, pumps and pipes.

Eventually the manager had enough, as the guests had left the lodge as they were too scared of the elephant, the staff were petrified to come to work and there had been so much damage that the decision was taken to destroy him. One .375 monolithic solid bullet to the brain did the trick, as you can well imagine, the rest of the evening was pretty quiet !

The next day the elephants carcass was moved to an open clearing where vultures could come down and start eating the carcass. Besides vultures the carcass made for all sorts of great sightings with numerous lions, hyenas and jackal feeding on it. In total the carcass lasted about 5 weeks, so you can imagine how it smelt...

Above is a picture of a vehicle that was involved in an incident with an elephant that attacked the car and pushed it some distance. unfortunatley the driver was also killed. He was trampled to death as he fled from the vehicle. This is just to give you an indication of how powerfull these animals can be as this vehicle was pushed some distance before she decided that it was time to move off and get back to her youngsters and the rest of the herd. It's always a good thing to remember that we are in their space and that all animals can be potentially dangerous.



It is always sad when such a majestic animal has to be destroyed. Lets hope there won't be another "Lord Madikwe" for a long time.

Oz.....Down under

Here are just a few pics of our awesome 3 week holiday in Australia

At the Melbourne Cup, Oaks Day Races with Mark and Rebecca.

We had an awesome time, we bet a few dollars but did not manage to come right.

Kim at Whitehaven beach. So beautiful up that part of the country.

I was also lucky enough to meet up with some old school friends.

While in Tassie we managed to get up to Launceston to visit another old friend that I had not seen for
quite some time. While we were in Launceston we visited the Cataract gorge just outside of town.
Beautiful!

Bonorong Animal Sanctuary and animal rescue just outside of Hobart.

Great to see that these guys are doing such important work for the local wildlife.

.

On our way up to Launceston. There is an awesome little town called Ross.

The red bridge over the river was built by early prisoners on the island.

There are some huge Eucaluptus trees that have been carved out by an artist that tells the story

of the prisoners lives that built the bridge.

A local watering hole in Queensland just out of the Gold Coast.

We wanted to have a beer but they were closed unfortunatley.

We took Stew out for a early Christmas dinner to a Korean Barbeque resturant.

Awesome dinner and a really cool way to eat.