Tiban our mischievous little warthog

If you’ve liked or become friends with Ubizane on Facebook you would have seen pictures of Tiban. He is now part of the Ubizane family. Keep reading to hear his story.

Tiaan our manager was doing his usual daily fence checks one morning; making sure everything was in order, he suddenly drove past a baby warthog frantically running up and down searching for his mother; he was extremely lost and scared. Tiaan was able to catch him and brought him back to the Lodge. We were worried that he wouldn’t survive as he was covered in ticks and terrified of humans. Tiaan and the whole Ubizane team were determined to keep him alive and nurse him back to health as he was only a couple weeks old, weighing less than 1 kg. Tiaan went through the procedure needed when rescuing wild animals; this included an internet search and phone calls to the vet to find out what foods or liquids are right for each different animal and Tiban’s was baby’s milk. So with that said a baby bottle, an old blanket and a hot water bottle was found for the little guy. He drank all his milk and got comfortable in the blanket.

A few days later, Tiban was getting stronger and more fighting fit by the day. He was with us for a week when he decided to give us all the biggest fright; he escaped through the narrowest opening of a window when he was left alone whilst we quickly ran out to do grocery shopping. When we got home and saw him missing we all broke into tears and started a frantic search for our little baby. The afternoon turned into a stormy evening and we were so worried because we knew he was still too young to fend for himself. We decided to call Ziquenya; our anti-poaching/sniffer dog to help as well because it was getting very late and dark outside, the storm didn’t help either, that made us worry even more for his safety. A good few hours of searching went on with no luck; we had no choice but to stop searching for the night.

Everyone woke up bright and early the following morning and continued the search because we didn’t want to give up on our little Tiban; we still had faith in finding him. We searched and searched up until lunch time and then it was known to many of us the chances of him surviving 24 hours outside by himself were very slim. We all went back to the lodge; all filled with sadness that we had lost him and would never see him again. Until… it seemed like a miracle, Tiban came crawling out the bushes covered in dirt, grass and few ticks. We got hold of him and brought him back to nursing, with everyone holding their breath in hopes of his survival. That day Tiban proved to us that he was a fighter.

This is what he looks like today (March 2012), all grown up. Tiban has turned out to be such a fun and loving warthog, always looking for attention and food of course.

For more stories and follow ups on how well Tiban has been, keep following the Ubizane blog and Facebook pages.