Giraffe in a Jam

Animal Ark. In South Africa. Giraffe in a Jam
by Lucy Daniels

Mandy and her parents and her friend James were visiting a game reserve in South Africa. One day they were on a game drive and they saw a whole lot of animals and some giraffe. Lavina said that Mandy and James could go with her the next day to the part where no one was actually allowed. On their way they stopped at a waterhole and they saw a whole lot of giraffe. All the giraffe except one left the waterhole. When that last giraffe tried to get up from drinking, it couldn’t. They stayed and watched to see if it would get out but it couldn’t. When they were just about to leave, they saw a little baby giraffe coming out the bushes and going to its mother. So they stayed some more and Lavina said “I would like to take them back to the boma so I can study their reactions to each other.” So the man who was with them called another man to come and take the giraffes back to the boma.

While they were waiting for the man they had a walk around. Then they came back and soon after that the men came with some trucks and they managed to get the mother out of the mud by digging around her feet. And then they took them back to the boma and got them off the truck and got some acacia branches for them to eat and they rubbed some arnica on the mother.

The baby at first didn’t come up to them but after a while the baby came right up and Mandy got to touch it. The day came that they had to release the giraffes to the wild because the baby was getting too used to humans and because the mother was better.

So they got the mother in the truck but they couldn’t get the baby in. So Mandy begged that she could try and get the baby into the truck. So she went in and persuaded the giraffe to go into the truck. He followed her to the truck and stopped for a little while and then he trotted up to his mother. And then they took them back to the wild and Mandy and James went with and watched them go with the other giraffe back into the wild.