30 days at Hustai

Hustai National Park is famous for being home to a successful wild Przewalski horse reintroduction project.  We stayed at the park for a month, as field assistants to some resourceful grad students.

Taking measurements from Amur falcoms

an Amur falcon fledgling

checking nests

an angry kite on her nest

In the winter, Bactrian camels are beautiful.  This was the summer time. 

 We latched on to so many projects at Hustai that I won’t muddle this post with the details, but I’ll try to tell a story or two.

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One early morning I was jogging down the park’s main dirt road, when I surprised two Bactrian camels.   The camels live at the park to give rides to the odd tourist. 

One camel loped away easily as only his two massive front feet were hobbled together.  But the second camel, my favorite camel, had a nose piercing through which a large splinter of wood was attached by a short tether to his ankle.  He couldn’t run away very well, because with every lumbering step, he yarded on his nose piercing. 

Soon he gave up and looked at me in absolute forlorn.  He couldn’t stretch out his neck or look around like his friend, and when he raised his head as high as his nose-tether would allow, he and I were eye-to eye.  He had a nose-bleed.  And, I swear, as I stood there facing him, he shed one giant shiny tear that ran down his face and dripped onto my running shoe. 

I have never seen a more pitiful one-tonne creature.  Bactrian camels are very tall; they are monstrous and hairy, and ugly as sin.  I felt like the mouse in Aesop’s fable about the lion with a thorn in his paw.  I looked around furtively, but there was no one in sight.  So, I deviously untied the poor camel, and he groaned as he stretched out his neck, and ambled off towards his buddy. 

Later that day I saw the little park cowboy chasing after him and losing ground, as a group of British gentlemen waited politely for their camel ride.  I ducked my head sheepishly and hurried away from the scene of my crime.

 

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taking some promotional photos for the park

Hustai, main camp

The research station

wild horses

some lovely camouflage

red deer

Edelweiss

kite

students from the US, Holland, France, and Mongolia (L to R)

horses escaping the flies

a Przewalski foal a few days after surviving a possible wolf attack.  the green is fly spray.

this horse, not my friend

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As part of Tim-the-Dutch-grad-student’s research, he wanted to measure fly densities around grazing Przewalski horses.  Dayle and I estimated this by counting flies on tethered domestic horses at particular GPS points around the park.  It was a great gig.  We’d get up early, each ride a horse to one of Tim’s GPS locations, tether the horse to a peg, and spend the rest of the day tanning, spotting wildlife, and counting flies.  

Watching 6 foot Dayle fly across the landscape on a little, full-maned, short-legged pony every morning was a sight to see.

But there was one horse that I just did not get along with.  He was a grey, free-thinking, pot-bellied thing, and he liked me even less than I liked him.  He always managed to pull out his tether because to him, the grass beyond his reach held such promise, such potential, compared to the very same green grass at his feet.  So every 15 minutes, I was sneaking up behind him to futilely drive his peg back into the ground.  Of course, the rest of the time I was lounging in my turquoise bikini in the shade, knee high riding boots and wooden saddle resting beside me. 

Then one day, he pulled out his peg, heard a wild horse whiney from across the valley, and took off.  Not fast.  Just slowly enough to make me think I might catch him.  Oh, he lured me all the way across the valley and up the other side in my boots and my bikini, as I slipped on shale, and tripped into marmot holes, and cursed him all the way. 

Then, he disappeared over a ridge and was gone.  I looked back across the valley to where I had left my clothes.  At the bottom, I could see a jeep full of European tourists eyeing me curiously through their binoculars.  I was not amused.  I wondered what the park rangers would say when they found out I’d lost their horse. 

But once I’d slipped and slid back down the hill to gather my things, thrown pony’s heavy-arsed saddle over my back, and schlepped it far enough down the road to hitch a ride back home, I found grey nasty pony back in camp scarfing grass with his friends.

healthy Przewalski foals

counting flies

Amur fledgling

who will win?  The Mongolian ranger, or the starving grad student?