Durban - It’s baby season at the Centre for Rehabilitation of Wildlife (Crow), and leading up to Christmas Day it has highlighted its “12 Bae’s of Christmas” - featuring 12 rescued babies.
And while the song, The 12 Days of Christmas, first published in England in 1780 as a chant, starts on Christmas Day, the announcement of the Bae’s started 12 days prior to Christmas Eve.
The first Bae was baby vervet Mae. Now four weeks old, Mae has been successfully integrated with two younger vervet monkeys and “loves looking after her younger siblings”, according to Crow primate officer Tayla Hawkins.
Number two was Harper, a two-week-old baboon who loves her milk and teddy bear.
The third baby was a tiny wagtail bird found on the ground with no parents in sight, but which is now doing well and enjoys feeding time.
The next young rescue was Squeaky the banded mongoose. Squeaky was introduced to a new band of mongooses and they were all recently released back into the wild.
Next was Ali, a baby vervet admitted when he was 10weeks old. The sixth Bae was a baby bushbuck, and at number 7 is a tiny laughing dove.
Bae number 8 was a gosling, one of the Egyptian geese admitted into Crow. Yesterday featured Bae number 9, a small Bell’s hinged tortoise found wandering in a garden.
Crow has its “Trail of Lights” on display at the Durban Botanic Gardens until December 30. Pictures can be taken with Santa. All proceeds go towards the care of orphaned or injured wildlife.
Check out the “12 Bae’s of Christmas” on Crow’s Facebook page.