Welcome to Notes From the Hide. I am Sipho Mthembu, I am a wildlife ecologist, and most of my job is waiting. This show is about the waiting and what comes after it. For this first episode I went to the Kalahari with a small team trying to fit a tracking tag to a pangolin, an animal covered in scales that walks on its hind legs and is trafficked more than any other mammal on Earth. We did not find one on night one. Or night two. You will hear the cold, the stars, and a tracker named Oupa who can read a line in the sand that I cannot even see. I will explain what the tag tells us and why it matters. Then I will tell you about night three. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts. Boots on.