Pets, wildlife and animals in general

I think that there have been pictures of Friday here for a week now but no explanation of where she came from [Note from Chappen: Orjan cannot read the blog from the field camp]. When Kim and Namshur left the camp they found Friday at the airport in Dalandzadgad. Kim was playing with her for a while and Oyuna liked her so they brought her back. I think that Friday has had a pretty rough life cause she purrs as soon as I come near her and she is very social. First time Ashley and I took the car to field she snuck in. She behaves almost like a dog, not wanting to be left alone. I have never seen such a natural born killer cat. Not many minutes elapse from the time she hears a rodent until its dead. And there is no playing, she just kills them and eat them. She was very skinny when she came (I think that she is quite young too). I’ve never had a cat before, didn’t really know what to feed her but the only thing I have is sheep, sausage and milk. Plus rodents, but she takes care of that part herself. I would estimate that she has doubled her weight since she came here.

 Friday spends the nights on my sleeping bag, or if it is too cold, in my sleeping bag. That is until she hears a rodent, then the hunt is on. She is actually so good at killing rodents that even Midji likes her. A little at least.

 Together with Friday came a letter from Kim saying that Namshur had said that it was a female and that I should call her Narantsetseg. Kim likes both the word and it’s meaning; sunflower. The name is nice but it’s hard to teach a cat to listen to Narantsetseg (I think). And I wasn’t sure about the female part either cause Namshur thought that Aztai was a female too. He had probably not seen many cats before and when he checked to see which sex it was he didn’t see any penis, hence a female… Well, Kim was taking Aztai’s temperature and when Namshir said female, she looked at his balls thinking “What?” and said, I think it’s a male. No, no Namshur said; it is a female. At this point Kim started thinking “does snow leopards have some special glands that I have missed?” But she persisted and said “it has balls”. After some confusion we could all agree that Aztai was in fact a male.

 Considering that Namshur missed the balls on a 37 kg snow leopard I wasn’t sure that Friday really was a female but a cat expert told me that three-coloured cats are always females. So she is a female.  

 One night when Kim was up Signal Mountain I heard some commotion up at Midji and Oyuna’s ger. They had a little long-eared hedgehog there. We put it in a box so Kim could see it, she had been talking about hedgehogs since she came to camp. Somehow, the hedgehog ended up in a big cardboard box and we kept it for a couple of days. Kim named it Narantsetseg. We fed it with cheese and gave it water. Fun to see the little thing drink cause they have such long noses that it’s really hard for them not to dip the nose when they drink. Anyways, we caught crickets and grasshoppers for Narantsetseg and I must say that it was a natural born killer hedgehog. “Smack” and the grasshopper was dead.

 We let the hedgehog go after two or three days but a couple of days later we found a new one outside the kitchen. We put it in the box, Kim named it Narantsetseg and we gave it food and water.

 Some of you probably think it’s the same hedgehog but Narantsetseg differed a lot in its behavior from Narantsetseg. The second hedgehog was very bad at killing grasshoppers and much friendlier towards us. When we had breakfast, the hedgehog would sit in a lap and eat cheese and sheep fat, when it was full it crawled inside the jacket and went to sleep. It was also a lot hungrier than the first hedgehog; as soon as it saw a hand it figured that it was food. The little rascal actually bit my index finger and held on to it, even as I lifted the hand up it held on to the finger, hanging in the air. We kept Narantsetseg for maybe five days before we let her go.

 Couple of days later Kim found a third hedgehog, she gave it water, named it…  Yup, you guessed right. We didn’t keep this one though.

 One of Oyuna’s brothers came here with his family on a motorbike (his wife and two kids) and behind them were two dogs running. I walked past one of the dogs and it tried to get contact so I petted it for a while, gave it water and a piece of bread. She didn’t dare to drink the water until I moved away a bit. Every time I came near the dog I petted her and I taught her “Sit” and “lie down” in less than five minutes (with the aid of a little bread). Kim says that the dogs here don’t know any commands, this one seemed to learn almost too fast but maybe it was the food. When the brother left the camp the dog stayed. I asked Namshur if we got the dog or why it was in the camp. He grabbed to fist-sized rocks and aimed at the dog… 

 This upset me a little and I explained to him that there will be no beating or rock throwing of any animals in camp. The dog stayed for two days but when we were in field I reckon they drove it home cause when we came back it was gone. Well, I can’t really keep it. I will go home once in a while and I can’t bring a dog.

 The herders do not keep animals that do not contribute somehow. It’s a very different view of pets or livestock than the one we have back home, people here see animals more like tools. I know that some people think that I spoiled my Giant Schnauzer the last year but I think that I am quite fair to animals. I’m not mean to them but I do not tolerate bad behaviour. Ok, ok, Tinni might have slept in the bed in the mornings if I had a sleep-in but it only happened a few times.

 Well, all our staff has understood that we will be nice to animals in the future (though, I am a bit afraid that this rule only applies when I am around). A couple of days ago Ashley and I had a cup of tea at the patio and we saw Friday coming out of Midji and Oyuna’s ger and positioning herself for a “visit to the toilet” just three meters from the front door, when Midji came out he saw the cat and pulled his right foot back to give her a good old soccer kick but in the middle of the kick he realized we were watching and stopped himself. 

Except for the hamsters and jerboas (okenrattor in Swedish) that hang out in the gers at night, that is all our previous and present pets.

 This place is very quiet. We are living in a very harsh place but the few animals that exist do not make much noise. We see ibex (stenbock in Swedish. I will write the Swedish names for the animals in parenthesis) quite often. Right now, there seems to be many ibex around but it’s almost as if they move away sometimes. We think that it has to do with where they can find water. There are Argali sheep (ingen aning in Swedish) in the mountain range just north of us but I haven’t seen any. We also have wolf, red fox hares and some rodents. The funniest being a jumping mouse. It looks like a miniature kangaroo, you can see them when it’s dark.  

 And then there are snow leopards obviously. I haven’t written anything about them in a while, mainly because not much has happened. Both our collared leopards are about 20 km away; the last un-collared leopard that we took pictures of is Bummer. Most likely Bummer is the cat that stepped in two snares that didn’t close in (just after Tom and the others left camp) and that we also photographed at Lower Camp Canyon when he climbed over our funneling rocks. Bummer is his working name. If we catch it, we will re-name it.

 This is not a great place for seeing mammals but it’s a birders paradise. We see Lammergeier (Lammgam tror jag in Swed.), black vultures, golden eagles, falcons, buzzards and owls almost daily. I don’t know much about birds, I usually classify them as “ducks” and “non-ducks”. If a bird looks tasty, it’s a duck, if it doesn’t, it’s a non-duck.  

 The only ducks I’ve seen so far are chuckers (desert duck). They are big as ptarmigans (ripa) move around in big flocks and are not afraid of us. Besides that they make a sound that very much sounds like “tan-do-rii” (with a little imagination). I would so much like to cook some “chucker Tandorii” as a change from all the sheep but I haven’t figured out how to obtain the ingredients yet, especially the main ingredient; the chucker…  

We don’t have any bird book in camp but as soon as I get one, I will tell you what it is that we see. There is a possibility that we have tartar falcon here (I’ve seen a huge falcon) but I only know that they are big. I will get back to you with the duck info…