Michael the monkey decided to enter for a Michael Jackson dancing contest. He has been practicing for days and days. So we let him go, packed a few bananas, gave him 50 cents and wished him good luck. I think he has a good chance, as you see , he has the moves, can only improve with age. I do hope he wears some clothes though, he could embarrass us. It leaves his enclosure empty now, but I think Linda has ordered a Gorilla.

Linda got some new animals for her aviary. I try to stay away as they look a scary bunch. Probably cost us a fortune to feed them too.

I found this tree. It seems to say everything

I spend a lot of my time making sure everything is up to standard. Quality control, I test the food, the conditions etc etc.

A new year, getting on with work!!!!!!!!!!! It is also cheetah breeding time. Here I am with Brettie and Gondor, two of our breeding males up Lovers lane. They are still new at this and were more noise than action. Gondor did introduce himself to "Mona L'eyesa" and got quite a hiding. Luckily he took well, as part of the ritual but you could see he was glad when I called him out.

One of the current jobs is getting the wild dogs organised. Wild dogs are one of the most intelligent predators around and can be very dangerous. I always like to speak to them before they get too big!!

This wild dog puppy didn't quite get the last lesson.

We managed to make a trip up to Shingwedzi and had Gertie the hippo do her famous charge. This is the second to last photo. The last one was blurred as I was running away.

Linda's mom and her husband came down just after Christmas. Linda managed to pack 3 months of visiting places into 10 days. Angela and Stig needed a holiday when they got home. Angela got to to see her favourite cheetah, Freya, again and it made her so happy. And Freya was happy to see her, I don;t think she had so much attention for so long. Linda, as usual, took about 5 million photographs.

Linda's folks also brought down some of her favourite food. Enough to keep her going for about 6 months. It took up about half of angela and Stig's luggage.

We had a bit of a problem with our swimming pool when we moved back here. Linda wouldn't get in and clean it so I had to make another plan!!!

We had a to hire a professional pool cleaner. he soon made quick work of the job. And it cost us peanuts!!! But took us a week to clean up the droppings he left.

Linda had to remove a few ugly things from the pool after it was emptied. Took it to the zoo, then a movie and supper. The things we do for wildlife. We let him go in a local dam. Lots of fishermen there.

Well, so much for the snow!!! We had a quiet christmas with my daughter, sitting outside at night when it had cooled down to about 25 degrees. I dont drink but did try to open the champagne. Tough job, even the silver foil shot off and knocked the poor kid in the background off his feet. It was fun when i eventually had the top off.

Hi Everyone, another 3 months have passed since I was on here. Where does time go? Christmas was quiet at home, busy at work. This is what christmas was like back at my brother in Edinburgh. Don't recognise the guy in the middle.