Wildlife wonderful stories : Jenni et Jynx
Hello, my name is Jenni and I would like to tell the wonderful story that happened to me in 2005 ...
My father was walking down a riverbed on our farm with our dogs, he stumbled upon a tiny little ball of fluff, he looked around for any signs of a mother or other kittens but didn't find any so he wrapped her in his jacket and brought her back to the house.
It was a tiny female Caracal kitten. Her eyes were still blue and looked like they had just opened.
She was very thin, cold and dehydrated but she had the wild in her and hissed when she saw us!
Jynx stayed with me in my room and slept with me in my bed so i could keep her warm.
The first night she was crawling around the bed and then suddenly saw my hair, she got a very big fright and started growling.
It didn't take long for her to settle and get used to people. She loved to play with the dogs and slept with them on the sofa!
She started to show her natural cat instincts when we tried to play with her toys (a sock and a stuffed zebra) she would go into attack mode and the claws would come out!
When we had her for a couple pf weeks i took her for her first walk, she followed along with all the dogs down to the riverbed where we had found her and back up to the house!
We took care of her for 2 months, but under Gauteng (Johannesburg, South Africa) law could not keep her (even though we were going to try & get her back to being wild as we had a farm big enough and we had spotted another caracal in the area trying to eat our chickens, but he disappeared when he heard noise from the house)
It was very sad to say goodbye but we knew it was for the better and she was sent to "Free Me", a rehabilitation centre where they started the rehabilitation process by getting her started on a caracals' proper diet of birds, insects and other things. That found it tough in the beginning as her human imprint was very strong and she didn't want to be wild, she thought she was a person.
It took "Free Me" about 8 months for her to go wild and be big and strong enough to be released back into the bush.
Jynx was released in the Waterberg area on a game farm when she was about a year old.
The last we heard of Jynx she was being monitored & was seen with a male in the area. :-)
I am very happy we got the little bit of time with Jynx, it was a wonderful learning experience and even though it was so hard to say goodbye at least we all knew she would have the best life possible.
As my father always told me
~a day of life in the wild is better than a lifetime in captivity~
Jenni