What a milestone. He finished that bottle and, an hour later, guzzled down a second one. Once a calf knows you are its source of food, trust follows quickly. I saw him tug on the teat, saw the milk level drop, and knew his chances of survival were good.
Then colic struck. And nightmares.
‘He began to shiver and jerk about in his sleep, squealing in terror. It was terrible. I think he was reliving what had happened to his mother. I didn’t know how to console him,’ groaned Axel. ‘I didn’t want to wake him in case that made it worse so I just sat at the barrier and talked to him. He eventually woke up and he was so scared and confused that he was spinning around his room in panic, peeing all over the place and flinging himself up against the wall like he wanted to climb out.’
‘Thabo and Ntombi were such healthy little thugs compared to him,’ Alyson sighed unhappily.
‘What Ithuba’s going through isn’t unusual given the trauma he experienced,’ the vet assured us. ‘People think post-traumatic stress is only experienced by humans but we see it in elephant poaching victims and military dogs too. I know that doesn’t take away how hard it is for you, but it does give us a better handle on how to treat him. One thing’s sure – his emotional recovery is going to be far more complicated than his physical recovery.’
It’s heartbreakingly hard to comfort traumatized animals, especially when they first arrive. They don’t understand what has happened and they’re terrified of everything. You need an endless supply of courage and love to help them. Our carers gave so much to Ithuba, holding nothing back. I envied their fearlessness. After losing little Thula and then Lawrence, my heart was locked away and I was still too numb to love so boldly.
‘What else can we do to help him?’
‘Routine and love. His carers will become his family, and when he starts to feel safe, he’ll begin to heal,’ the vet replied.
‘At least with Thabo and Ntombi, I knew if I rubbed their faces, it would calm them, but Ithuba won’t even let us near him,’ Alyson said.
‘Let’s see if going out of his room into the boma will help,’ one of our rhino consultants suggested. ‘If it’s warm tomorrow, open the barrier and let him explore. It might distract him, and having some outdoor activity will do him good.’
Ithuba’s room opened out onto a contained area with trees for shade and lots of toys to help keep him stimulated. In the bush, he would learn new skills through interactions with other rhino, so we had to recreate what he was missing, not only to stop him from getting bored and becoming destructive, but also for his own healthy development.
The next morning, the autumn sun poured warmth into the boma. Axel opened Ithuba’s gate as soon as he had finished his bottle. He trotted to the threshold, nose high to catch new scents, ears twitching and turning towards the new bush sounds, but he didn’t venture further. Our boy wasn’t rushing into anything new! Two days of timid inspection followed, then he suddenly headed straight for a tyre lying close to his open door. He had obviously been eyeing it for days and the compulsion to investigate it overcame his fear.
He sniffed it with great interest then gave a confident headbutt and tossed it over his head. He was so surprised! But then it landed with such a thump that he bolted back to his room. One step forward, two steps back.
Animals are drawn to gentle spirits, and the first human being Ithuba learned to trust was Axel. No matter how stressed or how agitated Ithuba was, Axel never got flustered. He stayed calm, talked quietly to Ithuba and bathed him in love. I don’t know how he did it. I’m a bag of jelly when an animal is sick or distressed. Slowly Ithuba understood that Axel was never going to hurt him as other human beings had hurt his mother.
I’ll never forget the day Alyson and I saw him trotting happily next to Axel. He kept bumping his rump into Axel’s leg, as if to reassure himself that he wasn’t alone any more. Trust is so precious when you look after these little orphans.
Alyson joined them in the boma a few days later to teach him to trust more than one carer. She stayed out of his way at first, near the fence, to give him space and let him feel in control. He stared at her from the shelter of Axel’s legs, then inquisitiveness won and he ambled over to her for a sniff, constantly looking over his shoulder to make sure Axel was nearby. Another huge step. Curiosity is vital at that age and it was exciting to see him display normal calf behaviour.
You can never tell which toys human children will love most, and it’s the same for rhino calves. Ithuba always homed in on anything made out of tyre, including his food bowl which was a home-made tyre contraption. He tipped it over, threw out the food, flung it about until it started rolling, then he ran after it until he managed to balance it on his head and preened and strutted about like a dressage horse.
Axel once went home to France to sort out his visa and on his return, he snuck into Ithuba’s boma and started rolling a tyre when he wasn’t there. Ithuba heard the familiar noise and came galloping in from the neighbouring boma, skidding to an astonished stop when he saw Axel. Pure joy followed at being reunited with his favourite human.
When you work closely with rhino calves, you learn to know when they’re happy, sad or angry. It’s in the way they walk or run. It’s whether they play half-heartedly or with gusto. Ithuba’s carers knew exactly how he was feeling and there was always one of them close by to comfort or play with him.
If a loud noise frightened him, he bolted to mum Alyson. Axel, on the other hand, was his surrogate big brother – with all the teasing, guidance and protection of an older sibling. Both of them were worried that he was still showing signs of trauma.
‘He really suffers in his sleep,’ fretted Axel.
‘And he still has panic attacks during the day,’ Alyson said. ‘He’ll be playing happily, clambering all over me, then he’ll suddenly squeal in fright, latch onto a corner of my sleeve and suckle it like a baby sucks its thumb. I don’t know what sets it off. We were playing and he seemed so happy.’
‘He’s making good progress,’ the vet reassured them. ‘He’s putting on weight, passing healthy stools and loves to play. Post-traumatic stress takes time but he’ll get there.’
Luckily time was on our side and there wasn’t a minute that Ithuba didn’t have the safety blanket of Alyson or Axel close by. Slowly his nightmares became less frequent, his insecurity faded and his appetite exploded. By the time he was nine months old, he had doubled his weight and turned into a happy little rhino tank!
With size came confidence and he gave himself the job of Quality Control Inspector and proceeded to expose every construction weakness in the orphanage with great zeal – usually smashing his way through to prove his point. By the time the Ithuba-QC test had been performed on every door, lock and barrier, no rhino calf was ever going to break out.
Which was just as well, because his days of being the orphanage’s only calf were fast coming to an end.
18
Ellie
‘He’s a desperately ill two-week-old elephant. Can you take him?’
‘Did you say elephant?’
‘Yip.’
We didn’t have a permit for elephant calves but we didn’t hesitate. The calf was at death’s door and we were the closest emergency facility. Alyson and Axel raced off to the Bonamanzi Game Reserve and returned five hours later with a very sick little elephant. My heart lurched when I saw him. He was identical to baby Thula, a tiny pink newborn covered in soft baby fuzz.
‘Blood pressure low. Breath erratic,’ Mike Toft said tersely.
His herd had rejected him – a bad sign.
‘He has an umbilical hernia with abscesses and a life-threatening infection,’ Mike continued. ‘Plus he’s dangerously underweight.’
‘Can we save him?’ I asked, dreading the answer.
‘Doubt it. Usually this kind of thing is fatal.’
I stared at him. ‘Options?’
‘Euthanasia,’ he replied flatly. ‘Or intensive round-the-clock nursing with a one per cent
chance of survival. He has a deadly bacterial infection that’s feeding directly into his blood supply. It’s bad, really bad. If we take him on, the next few days are going to be hell, and he may not make it.’
‘I’m up for it,’ Megan said.
‘Us too,’ Axel and Alyson echoed. ‘We have to try.’
Trying is an understatement. Between them, wildlife specialists across the country, our vet, and a whole bunch of angels, that little calf survived the night. He was named, quite simply, Ellie.
Alyson, Megan and Axel dived into a punishing schedule of feeds, three-hourly shifts, and constant monitoring of his blood pressure, temperature, breathing and heart rate. He had a human herd around him who smothered him in love. The slightest change caused elation or panic. Every breath was celebrated. Every change in temperature caused alarm. It was a frantic treadmill of cleaning, feeding, nursing and loving.
The team were stretched to the limit. Thabo and Ntombi still needed Alyson, and little Ithuba couldn’t do without big brother Axel. Extra volunteers were called in. Megan’s mother flew out from England to help.
Ellie survived twenty-four hours. Then another. Three days later, he was still with us. His temperature stabilized but he was still not feeding properly. Everyone was black and blue from trying to teach him how to drink from a bottle.
‘He’s going to make it,’ Megan said firmly, dark rings under her eyes.
The team weren’t the only ones watching over him. Our herd paid him a visit too.
The orphanage is in the north-western part of the game reserve and the herd don’t typically go near the building, and yet the day after Ellie was admitted, they arrived. No one really took notice at first but then they returned the next day, and the next.
‘That’s three days in a row they’ve been here,’ Megan frowned. ‘I wonder if they know we have a baby elephant?’
They must have, because they visited every single day for weeks, quietly milling about and grazing. Nana and Frankie would stand side by side and gaze at the orphanage, gentle wardens keeping watch over their own kind. They hadn’t shown any interest when Ithuba had arrived but were there soon after Ellie was admitted. Were they keeping tabs on him? Did they sense how ill he was? Did they send him telepathic messages of support? We’ll never know, but their presence was reassuring and we took it as a sign that we had done the right thing by rescuing him.
Feeds were just becoming less of a struggle when, from one bottle to the next, diarrhoea and colic struck. We couldn’t work out why. The washing machine ran day and night to keep his soiled blankets clean and hygienic. His room was scrubbed and disinfected non-stop. He squirmed and cried in pain. His carers rubbed his tummy and lay next to him. His temperature sky-rocketed and he became dangerously dehydrated.
Diarrhoea can kill. We were petrified we would lose him.
Back on the drip he went. We flew in special milk from Zimbabwe. We tried the milk formula from the Sheldrick Orphanage. Electrolytes and steroids were fed intraven- ously. He got sicker and sicker. Sleep-deprived and despairing, nobody gave up. Least of all him. He was such a little fighter.
At the eleventh hour, a mixture of over-cooked rice, coconut milk, desiccated coconut and special proteins and minerals did the trick. We discovered later that he was severely intolerant to milk. I don’t know who fought harder for his life, little Ellie himself or Team Ellie. He began to respond. His diarrhoea eased.
Nights were the hardest. Ellie was too distressed to sleep. Dead tired, barely able to stand, he wouldn’t close his eyes. He only slept if Megan was with him, so she took over his bedtime shift and curled up with him on his mattress, snuggled under his favourite Donald Duck fleece blanket, until he dropped off. She lay dead still, listening to the steady rhythm of his breath and his quiet snores, her arms and legs cramping, but not daring to move. Around 11 p.m. she carefully untangled herself to slip off to her own room while someone else did the night shift, and by 6 a.m. she was back in his room to be there when he woke up.
The team poured love into him and he gave it back with trunk-tip caresses and happy rumbles. He didn’t speak ‘human’ but his eyes said it all.
‘He makes such deep eye contact with me and I know he’s saying, thank you for helping me,’ Megan sighed happily. ‘He knows we’re saving his life and he loves us as much as we love him.’
His condition improved and he went from being at death’s door to critical, and soon the vet proclaimed him stable. The little thing was as excited as we were that he was getting better. What a relief to see him bouncing next to Megan, his busybody trunk scooting chaotically all over her as he did his best to control the fascinating object growing out of his face.
Week four arrived and we couldn’t believe he had pulled through.
‘He’s fallen in love with Megs,’ Alyson said to me. ‘Watch…’
Megan went into his room and was greeted by an explosion of excited rumbles. Ellie waddled up to her and trustingly lifted his head for his bottle. She nuzzled his forehead and slid the teat into his mouth. He latched straight away, then his trunk curled up and nestled over her mouth. Megan shot us a look of pure joy.
‘Her breath comforts him,’ Alyson whispered. ‘It’s the only way he’ll drink.’
Inter-species communication isn’t about a common language. It’s about reading cues and signals that have nothing to do with words. Ellie’s soulful eyes followed Megan wherever she went. He was calmer in her presence. He drank more milk. He showed his joy with rumbles, and later, when he found his voice, excited squeaky trumpets. He sensed he was safe with her, and once that first precious bit of trust was established, she and the team had something to build on. Just as Ithuba needed Axel, Ellie needed Megan.
Once Ellie was healthy enough, he loved nothing more than a wrestling match before breakfast. Megan would pretend to be a baby elephant and scamper around the room on all fours while he chased her. The winner was the one who climbed on top of the other first. As soon as he cottoned on to the ‘rules’, his competitive streak surfaced. Megan is a slender slip of a girl, a fraction of his weight, and he would push and bump her until she ‘fell’, then he would scramble onto her and claim his prize by hanging his trunk and front legs over her back. I won! I won! He was a very grumpy loser. If Megan pretended to win by putting her chest and arms over his back, he sulked until he won another game.
Exercise and sun are crucial for calves and it does them the world of good to go outside. We do our best to replicate their life in the wild, so every room has its own outdoor enclosure that can be shut off for a new arrival or interlinked with other enclosures for the little ones to mingle as they would in their natural habitat.
In the beginning, we kept Ellie and Ithuba apart but we gave them separate turns in the same boma so they could get used to each other’s scent without actually seeing each other. We had no idea how a baby elephant and a young rhino would react to being together.
When Ellie had been doing well for a while, his carers felt the time was right for him to meet Ithuba. They opened his door but kept the metal barrier in place so the two of them could see and sniff each other without being in the same boma together. Not yet. We weren’t taking any chances. Elephant calves are emotionally fragile and the last thing we needed was for Ellie to get the fright of his life and go into a downward spiral health-wise.
As soon as the door opened, Ellie shot to the barrier, expecting to be let out. He pressed his head against the bars, bewildered that he couldn’t go into the boma.
Ithuba seemed to ignore Ellie but his ears immediately rotated towards the noise of the opening door. Rhinos have superb hearing and a powerful sense of smell to make up for their weak eyesight, so Ithuba knew very well that something interesting was happening. Curiosity eventually got the better of him and he peered over his shoulder at Ellie. He couldn’t really see much with those bad eyes of his, but he could smell him and even though it was a familiar scent, he stuck close to Axel and didn’t want to explore furth
er.
Ellie, on the other hand, was very interested. He could see and smell Ithuba and his little trunk worked overtime to catch Ithuba’s scent.
We held our breath.
With Axel as his bodyguard to fight off any rhino bogeymen, Ithuba nervously approached Ellie’s room.
Ellie swirled his trunk up in greeting.
Ithuba squealed and darted behind Axel.
‘It’s fine, you big baby,’ Axel laughed. ‘He’s only a few weeks old. Man up, little one.’
Ithuba tried, he really did, but he was terrified.
Ellie didn’t know what the fuss was about and kept his forehead against the metal bars as his trunk hoovered up Ithuba’s smell.
The next day, we opened the barriers again. This time, Ithuba didn’t run off when Ellie slipped his trunk through the bars to smell him, but when it whirled too close to his face, his courage failed and he skedaddled off into the neighbouring boma. No bravery medal for this little rhino calf!
Ithuba was bigger than Ellie but he was clearly frightened of the strange creature with its hyperactive trunk, so we continued to keep them apart, which was a pity because Ellie seemed to like the idea of some rhino company.
Ellie’s easy-going reaction to Ithuba was very encouraging, but did it mean he had really turned the corner? Megan wasn’t so sure.
‘He still seems lethargic and there are moments when he’s so withdrawn and seems really down,’ she said helplessly.
Enter Duma, a German shepherd dog who had been trained from the tender age of seven weeks to help find rhino calves missing after their mothers had been killed by poachers. He then had a brief career hop as an airport sniffer dog, but his handler there quickly realized that he was miserable operating within the concrete walls of an urban environ- ment and that he was hankering after his old life in the bush. Given that he had grown up surrounded by baby rhinos, our orphanage was the perfect landing spot for him.
An Elephant in My Kitchen: What the Herd Taught Me About Love, Courage, and Survival Page 16