It's a jungle out there

  • Published
  • By Capt. Heather Healy
  • MedFlag Public Affairs
DITHOLO, South Africa (AFPN) --  Many Airmen may describe their lives at the office as wild, but for those deployed to nearby South African Air Base Hoedspruit for exercise MedFlag 2004, it really is a jungle out there.

“We actually enjoy telling people about our environment,” said Lt. Col. Philip Oosthuizen, South African environmental officer for the base.

The base is packed with wildlife, which makes sense. It is located right next to the world famous Kruger National Park , which is best known for the “Big Five” -- lions, elephants, leopards, buffalo and rhinos.

When not busy working logistics for medical teams or digging wells for clinics, deployed Airmen are finding ways to fill their time.

“How often do you go out for lunch and … see cheetahs 50 feet [away] as you’re eating a chicken sandwich?” asked Master Sgt. Edward Ellis who is from Royal Air Force Mildenhall, England.

“I’m excited to (send) the pictures … to my family. My kids are going to enjoy being able to see these animals in the wild. We see them in the zoo, but that doesn’t compare to seeing them in their natural habitat,” Sergeant Ellis said.

Animal spotting has become the new coffee break here. Instead of calm chitchat while mixing cream and sugar, Airmen look more like celebrity-obsessed paparazzi as they grab their cameras and run out the hangar door to see the newest creature emerging from the brush and onto the flightline.

Colonel Oosthuizen said keeping the runway clear is an issue for South African airmen.

“The smaller mammals are quite a big problem to the aircraft. We must control them on the fightline and promote flying safety,” he said.

“Impalas, antelopes and warthogs are all short grass grazers; and because of the maintenance of the grass next to the runway, (we are) actually creating an ideal grazing habitat that leads them toward the runway,” he said.

How they handle this problem may seem unconventional by U.S. Air Force standards.

“We were looking for a more natural control measure to control the numbers of small mammals in an environmentally sound way. Using the cheetahs was a way to control the number of game on the runway,” Colonel Oosthuizen said.

Letting three cheetahs roam the flightline has done the trick, and this technique has produced strong results. The number of game found on the runway these days has decreased by 90 percent, the colonel said.

But cheetahs are not the only animals lurking about.

“There are a lot of harmless and poisonous snakes in our area,” Colonel Oosthuizen said. “Lucky for us, it’s winter … so they’re not very active, and we won’t really have a problem with it.”

Tech Sgt. Doug Gosselin, who is deployed from RAF Mildenhall, disagrees.

“I went into the bathroom in my dorm the other day, and I just glanced in the toilet,” he said. “And I saw a darker color than white, so I immediately went to flush, but the water was off because the maintenance people were working on the pipes.

“Upon further inspection, I realized it was a coiled up snake,” he said. “I didn’t know if it was alive or dead.”

When the building custodian came to remove the snake, he had good and bad news for the onlookers. The good news was that the snake was dead. The bad news was that the snake was a black mamba, one of the deadliest snakes in the world.

All the scary beasts aside, Airmen here seem to relish in the unique experience.

“There are always animals everywhere,” said Staff Sgt. Allan Derenne who is from Ramstein Air Base, Germany. “Just driving to work the other day, we saw a group of monkeys on the side of the road. We had to turn around so everyone could get pictures.” (Courtesy of U.S. Air Forces in Europe News Service)