An Elephant in My Kitchen: What the Herd Taught Me About Love, Courage, and Survival

by Françoise Malby-Anthony

  Exactly six weeks after Ellie arrived, Duma joined Team Ellie. Gypsy was as thrilled as I was and the first time they met, she skipped up to him, stretched her little neck to sniff his nose, then the two of them bounded across the lawn together – my tiny black furball dwarfed by her lion-like new best friend.

  Ellie had shown such interest in Ithuba that we were looking forward to introducing him to Duma. Their first meeting at the barrier was a jumble of inquisitive trunk, sniffing snout and wagging tail. Duma restrained his excitement for about two seconds before leaping up against the bars. Ellie calmly took a few steps back, his little trunk moving constantly. It was fascinating to see him use his trunk to figure out what the intriguing apparition of lolling tongue and love-struck eyes was on the other side of the bars. He was enchanted and not the slightest bit frightened.

  ‘Not bad for an elephant calf that has never seen a dog before,’ said Megan proudly.

  ‘What a brave little thing. When will they be allowed in the same boma?’ I asked.

  ‘We’ll do what we did with Ithuba,’ said the vet. ‘Let them get used to each other with a barrier between them and then they can meet.’

  For the next few days, Duma bounded up to his new friend at the barrier and they caught up on things that baby elephants and German shepherds talk about. The day for their first real play date came too soon for mum Megan.

  ‘Duma is so boisterous. What if he’s too rough with Ellie and scares him?’

  ‘If it was Ithuba and Duma meeting for the first time, I’d agree, but your Ellie is a little warrior. You’re the one who’s scared,’ teased one of the volunteers.

  Duma was in the middle of a digging frenzy, sand flying everywhere, when Megan led Ellie towards him. Ellie was wary but intrigued. Duma’s head shot up.

  ‘Uh-oh,’ Megan said, but to her credit, she kept walking towards him with Ellie.

  Duma bucked and reared at the sight of his buddy, found his yellow ball, and dropped it at Ellie’s feet – let’s play!

  Ellie’s ears flapped out, his body shook and wriggled, and he whipped his trunk about like a lasso.

  ‘He’s going to charge,’ Megan giggled.

  Duma was definitely up for a game of chicken. They raced onto the sand pile from different directions, trunk and tail waving wildly. Duma ducked under Ellie’s belly and escaped. Ellie whizzed around and lumbered after him.

  They ran, they chased, they hurtled up and down the sand pile.

  You didn’t have to be an elephant psychologist to see that gentle Duma had helped Ellie find his mojo.

  19

  And then there were seven

  Megan wrapped the scrawny rhino in a blanket and held him against her to warm him. He was covered in blood and carcass fluid but she ignored the stomach-churning stink. His eyes widened at the slightest sound. It was the middle of winter and he had travelled a long way to get to us.

  For six days, he had stood by his mother’s poached body, desperately tugging at her decaying teats while vultures tore at her flesh. He was so hungry, he gorged on mud from a nearby waterhole.

  How do you even start to console a little creature like that?

  Dr Mike Toft raced across KwaZulu-Natal to come to his aid. His gloved fingers massaged the calf’s ear, searched for a vein, inserted an intravenous needle and hooked up a drip. Electrolytes, nutrients, glucose and antibiotics poured into him. Mike rubbed and probed the calf’s distended belly.

  ‘Rock hard. We have to get the mud out of him. Fast.’

  Megan stayed with him the entire night. He ran round and round in circles, crying non-stop, too terrified to sleep, desperate to find his mother.

  ‘I didn’t stop talking to him,’ she said. ‘I told him what had happened to him, that he was safe with us, that there was another baby rhino just like him called Ithuba and that I was sure they would be friends.’ She shrugged self-consciously. ‘I always talk to them as if they understand.’

  ‘Of course they do. Lawrence did the same,’ I said gently.

  ‘He eventually realized that I wouldn’t hurt him and came up to me and stood silently at my knees as if pondering what to do next. He looked so lost. I longed to take him in my arms to comfort him but I didn’t dare move in case I frightened him. Then he collapsed at my feet and fell asleep. I was thrilled that he felt safe enough to do that and covered him in a blanket and stayed on the ground with him in case he woke up and didn’t know where he was.’

  By noon the next day, he hadn’t passed any faeces. He was listless and skittish and not interested in eating.

  ‘If the blockage in his hindgut isn’t sorted out soon, we have to operate,’ Mike warned. ‘But it’ll be a last resort. He’s too weak for surgery and I’m worried about his tick-bite abscesses. Keep trying with small amounts of formula. See if you can persuade him to walk about. Movement might help loosen his bowels.’

  It took three tough days of passing hard balls of clay before he managed to get rid of all the mud he had eaten. The change in him was instantaneous. Now he couldn’t stop eating and indignantly headbutted his carers if he was hungry and his bottle wasn’t ready. What a breakthrough. There’s nothing more rewarding than seeing a little calf put on weight again after he’s been too sick to eat.

  We named our number-three orphan Impi, meaning ‘warrior’ in Zulu, because he fought so hard to live. He had the sweetest nature and the same gentle, silent way of getting someone’s attention as Gypsy. One morning, Megan was on her hands and knees giving the floor in his room a good scrub when she felt two little eyes boring into her and looked up. He gazed at her for a long time then shuffled closer and nestled his chin on her shoulder.

  ‘He wasn’t that heavy in the beginning so I just kept cleaning and he waddled along with me but the dopier he got, the heavier his head was!’ she grinned.

  Some calves are boisterous and belligerent, but not Impi. He was a tender little creature who was afraid of everything. Like Ithuba, he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, and any unfamiliar sounds – even a bird’s squawk – would send him fleeing for cover, squealing in panic. Nights were a terrible struggle for him. No matter how exhausted he was, he didn’t feel safe enough to lie down until a volunteer started reading her book to him and he quietly nestled on the hay next to her, burrowed his head into her legs and fell into the deepest sleep.

  Ithuba wasn’t happy about losing his pampered role as the only rhino at the orphanage and was particularly jealous when he realized that Impi was in his old room. He bumped and charged the barrier to get in and was so relentless that he knocked the sliding gate right off its rail. It was only the sound of Axel rolling his favourite tyre behind him that pulled him out of his bad mood.

  The team were by now on an exhausting schedule of looking after Ithuba, Ellie and Impi, and we couldn’t believe it when another rhino calf arrived.

  Baby Thando was found trapped in mud in a neighbouring reserve. He was stuck neck-deep and couldn’t move. To make matters worse, his mother had disappeared. It was pure luck that he was discovered before he became completely submerged and died.

  Severe drought dries up waterholes and turns them into dangerous sludge that traps small creatures in a vice-like grip. One of the most tragic things I ever witnessed was an emaciated baby giraffe struggling to free itself from mud while its deeply stressed mother paced nearby. The giraffe calf fought hard to get out but became so glued in the mud that he couldn’t move. Rescue was impossible and a ranger was forced to euthanize it. Its frightened calls and that gunshot will stay with me forever.

  I was so grateful Thando had been found in time. The rangers were divided into two groups. One group searched for the mother while the other tried to free him from the mud. It took five men to pull the calf out and there were whoops of delight when they saw he was strong enough to stand.

  The ideal procedure in situations like this is to release the calf back to its mother. It was still quite early in the day, so it was decided to set him free w
ith a guard monitoring and protecting him from predators in the hope he would find her. In the meantime, no cost was spared to look for the mother – a helicopter was dispatched, rangers searched on foot and every available 4×4 scoured the reserve for her.

  Back at the orphanage, the carers spun into action in case he wasn’t reunited with his mother. A room was cleaned out and disinfected, bottles and teats were readied, drips were laid out and pots of water pre-boiled to have cool sterile water on standby when he arrived.

  Meanwhile night was now falling and Thando was still alone in the reserve. It was too risky to leave him and the decision was made to bring him to us.

  Guardian angels were watching over that little calf, because he hadn’t spent too long in the mud and so arrived at the orphanage in excellent condition and not nearly as frightened as Ithuba had been. We never discovered what happened to his mother. Perhaps she had realized that she couldn’t save him, or maybe predators had interrupted her vigil and forced her to abandon him. We’ll never know.

  Right from the word go, the difference in trauma behaviour between Thando and the other two calves was startling. Thando hadn’t witnessed his mother being hacked to death, nor had he been out in the wilderness on his own for nights on end. He obviously wasn’t happy when he woke up in a strange room surrounded by humans, but he was more stroppy than petrified.

  Like Impi, Thando had eaten a lot of mud and his stomach was swollen and painful. Shana, an emergency volunteer, tried to give him his bottle.

  ‘He won’t drink,’ she despaired.

  It turned out that Thando hated anything near his face, and even if really hungry, he shrank away from a bottle. Creative solutions are alive and well in the bush and soon Thando was happily slurping up his milk formula from a bright-red cat litter tray. He gained weight and very quickly became one of the orphanage’s most laid-back little rhinos.

  The first time he went into his boma, he trotted straight up to the fence to say hello to Ithuba next door. They snuffled each other through the poles with such familiarity, as if they knew each other. They had come from the same reserve but Ithuba had already arrived at Thula Thula by the time Thando was born, so they couldn’t have met before, and yet right from the word go there was a really strong connection between them. Did they have family members in common? Were they exchanging gossip about rhinos they both knew? Who knows how rhinos talk, but looking at them during that first meeting, it seemed they recognized something about each other. There was no territorial huffing and neither was the least bit skittish about being with another male calf. We know so little about the amazing capacity of animals to communicate with one another.

  * * *

  Within five months, we had four orphans, each with their own personality and quirks.

  Ithuba was sturdy, confident, loved attention and was always up for a game of chase-the-tyre with anyone who had the energy to keep up with him. Once Thando settled down, he overcame his dislike of strangers and turned into a very curious rhino calf. He would look up at newcomers with a puzzled expression that seemed to say, hello, I haven’t seen you here before! Impi, on the other hand, was shy and lovable, easily frightened and hated being left alone. And Ellie was the most mischievous of the bunch – a lovable, naughty and smart little elephant.

  The carers were rushed off their feet. Sleep was interrupted. Food was gulped down. Burnout was close. A roster was set up to spread the workload and to make sure mistakes didn’t happen. Two teams were created – Team Rhino and Team Ellie, dedicating at least three people to each orphan. Changing carers regularly not only ensured there was time for them to get some rest but it also meant the calves wouldn’t get overly attached to any single person.

  It was tough to implement. Orphans need love to flourish and they often bonded more deeply with one specific carer, no matter how hard we tried to stop it from happening. Ellie struggled to fall asleep without Megan, and Ithuba was happiest with Axel. Besides, with four little ones clamouring for love, a schedule was hard to stick to. The team grabbed sleep when and where they could. No one complained. They swapped information about their charges between yawns and often didn’t bother with their own beds, collapsing next to one of the orphans instead.

  ‘It’s time for Impi and Thando to meet,’ the team was advised. ‘Neither is infectious any more and it will be good for them to have each other for company.’

  ‘What about poor Ithuba? He’s been on his own for ages,’ protested Axel.

  ‘He’s much older than them and too big to play with them. He won’t have a clue how strong he is and we can’t take the risk that he’ll hurt them by mistake. He’ll have to wait until they’re a bit bigger or until a rhino calf that’s closer to his size arrives.’

  Both Impi and Thando had explored the bomas often on their own and adored being outside. One overcast summer’s afternoon, the doors and barriers to their rooms were left open at feeding time. The carers hovered out of sight but nearby. There was no danger to either calf but like any worried parent with a new play date, they were on tenterhooks.

  Thando ignored his open door and finished lapping up his milk.

  Impi walked out of his room immediately, nostrils flared and ears flicking, then he scampered over to ‘his’ mud wallow and dived in.

  Thando heard the commotion and ran outside with a magnificent milk moustache.

  In an unusually bolshie move for this timid little rhino, Impi sprang up and headed for Thando as if charging him, mud flying off him as he ran. Thando didn’t blink. Baffled by this non-reaction, Impi skidded to a halt. They stared at each other. Thando calmly licked away the last milk remnants from his mouth, then trundled up to Impi and squeaked hello. Impi huffed and scampered off.

  By dusk, and after a few hours of uncertain rhino posturing and strutting, the team left the door to the high-care room open and Thando and Impi jostled each other to get inside, more interested in grabbing the cosiest spot under the infrared lamps than in being territorial with each other. After more bumping and squealing, they flopped down on the mattress, stumpy little feet intertwined, and best friends were born.

  Rhino calves usually have a huge warm mother to comfort them, so it was wonderful to see these two take comfort from each other, cuddling up together, playing in the mud pool, chasing each other around the boma and practising their charging techniques. Thando was the chunkier of the two and could be very pushy with Impi, but our little Buddha-natured calf wasn’t the least bit bothered at being bossed about by his new friend.

  At this stage, the game reserve, our security, the two lodges and my staff of fifty were taking up every spare minute of my life. If I could have doubled the hours in my day, I still wouldn’t have fitted everything in. The orphanage was growing faster than I had dreamed possible, so during the course of 2015 I handed over all operations to an external management team. Anything to do with administration – from supplies to handling donation funds – was controlled by the Durban branch of an animal welfare organization Lawrence had created, while all health and medical matters became the responsibility of a Johannesburg-based wildlife rehabilitation consultant. It was such a relief and seemed an excellent solution to ensure that the orphanage would be supervised by committed people with more time and expertise than me. I trusted them completely and had no reason whatsoever to doubt that this partnership would work, especially as the day-to-day running of the facility wouldn’t change at all – our hand-picked gang of carers continued with the toughest part of looking after the orphans. They were the ones who were there 24/7 and who gave and gave, even when they had nothing left to give.

  I stayed on as director and also held on to the responsibility of raising funds, because without donations the orphanage couldn’t survive. I am constantly confronted by the brutality of poaching and it’s hard not to lose faith in mankind, but I also meet so many beautiful people and organizations who remind me not to give up hope because they care so deeply for animals and do everything they can to help keep fa
cilities like ours alive.

  One morning, I received an out-of-the-blue call from Reha Hutin, president of 30 Million d’Amis, an animal charity based in France.

  ‘We’d like to help,’ she said. ‘We have 15,000 euros to donate but it must be for a specific project. What do you need most?’

  The timing couldn’t have been better. We had realized that the orphanage needed a more specialized ward for newborns and very fragile orphans. It had to be an independent smaller building where the temperature could be properly controlled in both winter and summer, where food and medical supplies could be on hand and where handlers could sleep. A lot to ask for, but all of it was necessary if we were going to keep extremely sick animals alive.

  ‘A neonatal unit,’ I said without hesitation. ‘We have an old water reservoir right next to the existing orphanage that could be converted.’

  ‘Send me a proposal and let’s get it done,’ she replied.

  It was one of those days that made me believe in fairy godmothers. Work started that month and construction was almost finished in November when Nandi, our first black rhino, arrived.

  The difference between black and white rhinos has nothing to do with colour. They’re both grey, have armour-thick skin, two horns, strong, stocky bodies and short but very powerful legs. From behind they’re identical, and it’s only when you look at them front on that you can tell them apart – their mouths and lips have completely different shapes. A white rhino has a flattened mouth with square lips, whereas the black rhino’s mouth ends in a pointed upper lip – which makes them look almost as if they’re pouting! The rhino uses this muscular finger-like lip to hold and twist leaves and twigs from bushes and trees.

  Black and white rhinos have very different natures. White rhinos are typically quite even-tempered and less easily frightened, while black rhinos are shyer and as a result, more skittish. Everyone knows that if you come across a black rhino on foot, you scale the closest tree – unless you’re brave enough to stand dead still, which I definitely wouldn’t be!