Swingkat reports back to duty. Caruso is a girl

These photos show Swingkat taking over guard duty again.

He declined any attempts by the young ones to initiate playfighting, obviously he still felt too weak to exert energy on mere play. He would just move away and sun himself in a different spot.

But he did climb up on the highest lookout hill and held guard duty alone or together with Stubbytail (Stummelschwänzchen).

He still tires quickly and will curl up tightly in a ball to conserve warmth and lock out all the noisy and boisterous activity of the juveniles. But he definitely seems well on the road to recovery. We will hope the best for the next weeks; it seems that now the crisis is past, the natural resilience of the meerkat species is revealing itself again.

The playfight pic shows Caruso, Snoutie and Orlok. Orlok loves playing with the young ones. he was always fond of biting into other meerkats, and it was like a gift from the gods for him to suddenly have these new friends who would never tire of playfighting :)

We are almost 100% sure now that Caruso is a girl. Probably we will keep the name however. There are examples of other meerkats who have gender-inverted names :)
The last of the three young ones (who is actually the biggest) is going by the name of Rüsselchen (Snoutie) because he has a bit of a funny nose. This is probably only a temporary "baby name" until we get to know him better :)

All photos were taken on October 19, 2008