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

by Françoise Malby-Anthony

  * * *

  Every time I watched Ellie play in his paddling pool, I marvelled at the similarities between him and the herd’s babies and I felt so sad that he didn’t have elephant playmates of his own. Thank heavens for Duma, who outdid himself as stand-in elephant friend and raced around Ellie’s paddling pond, pawing the sides and barking his heart out in excitement.

  One morning Ellie didn’t finish his bottle. At first we thought the heat had affected his appetite but he drank even less from his next bottle and when he rejected his third bottle, we called the vet.

  ‘His temperature is 38.4 degrees. That’s high,’ he said grimly.

  Elephants have similar body temperatures to humans and if a calf as vulnerable as Ellie has a temperature spike, it’s serious. To make matters worse, Ellie’s blood proteins were dangerously low. The vet hooked up a drip to feed and hydrate him. We kept him inside to protect him from the sun. Duma sensed his buddy was sick and stayed close by, patrolling non-stop, licking his face and trying to persuade him to get up with nose nudges. Ellie barely reacted, lethargically twitching his trunk when Duma dropped his favourite dinosaur toy in front of him. His eyes lost their sparkle. His temperature didn’t stabilize. He shifted about in pain.

  I couldn’t believe we were reliving the baby Thula nightmare. Like Thula, Ellie had been doing really well and everyone had been confident that he had turned the corner. The vet thought he was fighting an infection but didn’t know what had caused it. These little creatures are so vulnerable. We work so hard to save them and then out of the blue, they fall ill and we have no idea how to help them.

  ‘It could be that pockets of his old infection are still in his body and have flared up,’ the vet speculated. ‘I’ll pump him with antibiotics and nutrients.’

  ‘Please say he’ll get better,’ Megan pleaded.

  He looked at her, unwilling to answer.

  ‘Let’s just focus on the fact that he’s a much stronger and healthier little calf than when he first came here,’ he said quietly.

  Day four and Ellie wasn’t any better. He hadn’t even stabilized. We still kept our hopes up. He had survived once, he would survive twice. Megan was beside herself and didn’t leave him for a minute, stroking his baby face.

  ‘You can’t die, my Ellie. You’ve got things to do, a life to lead. You’re going to be a magnificent tusker like Mabula with a herd of your own.’

  He looked back at her with sunken eyes. Diarrhoea struck. The vet battled to keep him hydrated. Nothing helped. Ellie couldn’t move without pain. Megan covered him in blankets and lay on his mattress with him. Duma slept near his head.

  Our Ellie took his last breath cocooned in love by his human and doggie family.

  He had fought valiantly to get better but the infection was too strong and he gently surrendered to his fate, missing his six-month birthday by just a few days.

  Everyone was inconsolable. But there were hungry rhino mouths to feed and no time to grieve. The carers kept going. The void Ellie left was unbearable. We kept expecting him to come bounding around the corner whenever the hosepipe was switched on. His paddling pool was packed away. Duma spent days lying on his grey friend’s bed.

  Ellie was laid to rest on a balmy summer’s day with his favourite blankie, his green dinosaur and the silver Pilates ball he had shared with Duma. Cotton wool clouds floated overhead and the leaves whispered hymns in the breeze. He lies in peace in an old riverbed, protected from vultures and scavengers, and his spirit mingles with other brave spirits buried at Thula Thula.

  22

  Rather a live rhino without a horn than a dead rhino without one

  ‘Siya to base. Do you copy?’

  ‘Roger that. Go ahead,’ replied Christiaan, manager of our tented camp.

  ‘Drone sighting over Mkhulu Dam.’

  ‘What the hell? Maintain line of sight. On my way. Over and out.’

  Christiaan grabbed his rifle, called Vusi to join him and the two of them bolted to the Land Cruiser. On the way, they called me.

  ‘Françoise, there’s a drone over the reserve.’

  I froze. There’s only one reason a drone flies over Thula Thula and that’s to locate our rhinos.

  ‘Do we know where Thabo and Ntombi are?’ I asked quietly.

  ‘Richard is with them. He’s armed and prepped for trouble. I’ve called backup.’

  ‘Good. And the drone?’

  ‘We’ll shoot the damn thing.’

  Twenty minutes of rutted dirt tracks later, and Christiaan and Vusi joined Siya on the hill overlooking Mkhulu Dam.

  ‘It flew off the minute I radioed you,’ Siya reported tersely.

  Christiaan slammed his fist on the vehicle in frustration. He is a man of the bush through and through, even having changed careers, swapping his pilot’s uniform for khakis. He has a better bullshit detector than I’ll ever have – a good man to have on your side when interrogating poachers.

  ‘Damn it! They’re on our frequency. This isn’t the first bloody time this has happened.’

  We had long suspected that our radio frequency was being accessed, probably by a disgruntled ex-employee, but changing frequency regularly in the bush is complicated and without concrete proof we were powerless to do anything about it.

  I felt sick with fear. The reserve had never been breached before by anything as high-tech as a drone. Poaching was fast becoming so well financed and organized that I despaired of ever being able to keep Thabo and Ntombi safe.

  ‘We’d better increase boots on the ground for a while,’ Christiaan said.

  I nodded bleakly. That afternoon, eight extra men arrived from the private security firm we used in emergencies.

  ‘They’re doing a perimeter check before nightfall,’ reported Christiaan. ‘Then they’ll fan out across the reserve with our own guys to look for signs of poachers.’

  They found nothing. The fence hadn’t been breached. There were no remains of furtively packed away camps. It was good news but it didn’t mean Thabo and Ntombi were safe. Today’s reprieve is tomorrow’s poaching opportunity. You can never take your foot off the pedal.

  Two days later, Christiaan dropped a copy of the Zululand Observer on my desk.

  Poacher Wounded in Shootout. I scanned the first paragraph. Three rhinos killed at a neighbouring reserve.

  ‘Cops received a tip-off but they arrived just as the poachers were making their getaway,’ he said. ‘They went after them and nailed one guy. The other got away.’

  The police had pursued the poachers’ Isuzu truck on the R22 heading down to Durban. I grimaced. It was a bad enough road as it was. Throw in a high-speed chase with poachers who didn’t give a damn about their own lives, let alone anyone else’s, and it could have ended in a catastrophic pile-up with innocent people killed. I shook out the paper and kept reading. The police had fired at the truck, hit a tyre, and the vehicle had veered off the road into a ditch. One man disappeared on foot, the other was shot and caught. A 9-mm pistol and a .303 hunting rifle without serial numbers were found in the back of the truck, along with ammunition and two bloodied axes.

  ‘And the horns?’ I frowned.

  ‘The cops think they were in a second car.’

  ‘This is close, Christiaan. Much too close.’

  ‘Must be the same crew that sent the drone. Keep reading. It gets worse. One of the rhinos they killed had been dehorned a couple of months ago.’

  I stared at him, aghast. It takes three years for a horn to grow back. The rhino had been slaughtered for little more than a stub.

  ‘They risked their lives for next to nothing,’ I said.

  ‘They must have thought it was worth it.’

  We digested the horror of the attack.

  ‘I’m calling Mike Toft and we’re going to dehorn Thabo and Ntombi,’ I said.

  As fast as that, I made one of the toughest decisions of my life.

  What choice did I have? It’s a war out there and I didn’t know what else to do
any more. A rhino’s horn is Mother Nature in all its glory and when I look at our rhinos, I see prehistory, power and dignity. Poachers see dollars.

  I had had such high hopes for the infusion procedure but it had failed. I’m glad I tried but I had to move on, accept it hadn’t worked, and find a safer solution for Thabo and Ntombi.

  There are only 25,500 rhinos left in our world and they are being wiped out. Rhinos have no natural predators other than man, and beyond using their horns for territorial scraps amongst themselves or to protect their young, they can fortunately live without them.

  White rhinos have a small horn and a second very long one that they use to dig up mud for their wallows. They dig, make mud, lie down, dig some more, roll about. When the mud dries up, they churn it up some more. It’s useful but not crucial to their survival.

  Black rhinos on the other hand, have two long horns that they also use to churn up mud, but I’ve seen our two orphans, Nandi and Storm, manoeuvre a branch between their horns, give a sharp twist and break the branch to get to the leaves. Again, the horns are useful but not life-and-death necessary.

  With my stomach in a knot, I called Mike Toft.

  ‘You’re doing the right thing, Françoise,’ he reassured me. ‘I’ve dehorned over two hundred rhinos in recent months and it’s the only way to keep them safe.’

  ‘But did you hear what happened this week? One of the rhinos poached had been dehorned not so long ago.’

  ‘I saw the headlines. The strange thing is that the reserve had made arrangements with me to dehorn the other two next month.’

  It took me a moment to join the dots. ‘You think the poachers had inside information?’

  ‘Who knows, Françoise? Who knows.’

  We all work so hard to protect our rhinos but access to information about them is impossible to control. Inside a game reserve, anyone from housekeeping to rangers could be the source of a leak, and outside the reserve, anyone from clerk to government official could be ‘persuaded’. The rhino information chain has more holes than a sieve.

  ‘Look, dehorning isn’t a guarantee of safety,’ Mike continued. ‘But it’s better than having Thabo and Ntombi walking around with a few million rand on their faces. If we dehorn them, we know they’ll be alive the next day. If we don’t, there’s a chance they won’t be.’

  ‘How soon can you do it?’

  ‘It’ll take me a few weeks to do all the paperwork. What about the end of July?’

  I wrote Thabo and Ntombi in my diary, unable to write the word dehorning.

  ‘Anything you need from us?’ I asked.

  ‘Some of your guys in case they don’t fall properly once I’ve darted them. I’ll need their muscle to move them into the right position.’ He paused. ‘And you’d better arrange extra security for the horns.’

  I put down the phone, overcome by sadness. There was no going back.

  Dehorning is a tightly controlled procedure and is taken very seriously. Wildlife officials have to be informed, a permit issued. An Ezemvelo wildlife monitor must be present. The horn is weighed, marked, microchipped and every bit of it, even the smallest shaving, is gathered up. I immediately made arrangements for top-level security transportation of the horns. I didn’t want horns worth R10 million at Thula Thula for a moment longer than necessary. The best place for them was a high-security vault that was nowhere near us.

  Two weeks flew past and D-Day arrived with a winter chill in the air and icy shreds of cloud overhead. Thabo and Ntombi had been watched over 24/7 for the entire period.

  ‘They’re on the airstrip,’ reported Richard, one of their armed guards.

  Airstrip is an extravagant word for a narrow strip of flat, grassy bushland. Perfect for landing small aircraft and for darting two rhinos. Having them so accessible meant we could dart them from the ground. Helicopter darting is extremely stressful, not only for the animals being darted, but for any other animal in the vicinity of the terrible racket that the rotor blades make.

  I have always been present at every procedure carried out on Thabo and Ntombi, but this one was the hardest of all. I still couldn’t believe it had come to this.

  We drove up to the airstrip in a dusty procession of 4×4s. Ntombi looked up but Thabo kept grazing, indifferent to the clatter of approaching vehicles. Still so trusting. I felt the same terrible pang of betrayal as I did when I had put them through the horn infusion, but this was worse, far worse. They were about to lose the very part of them that made them rhinos. If I could have stopped Mike there and then, I would have.

  He lodged the gun against his shoulder and fired off two darts in quick succession. Thabo and Ntombi began to teeter within minutes. Vusi, Christiaan, Promise, Siya and Andrew leapt out of the Land Cruiser and ran towards them to control their fall. I sat dead still, hating every minute of what I was seeing.

  ‘They’re down,’ shouted Vusi.

  ‘Looking good, guys,’ said Mike. ‘I’ll bring the 4×4 closer.’

  He stopped the vehicle next to Thabo, and he and his assistants flew into action. Thabo and Ntombi’s eyes were covered, ears plugged, heart rates monitored.

  ‘Jenny, you take Ntombi. Martin, you’re with Thabo. Six breaths a minute. If it drops below, I want to know.’

  Their confidence eased my anguish. Mike positioned a visor over his eyes, slid on industrial earmuffs and gloves then revved up a bright-orange Husqvarna chainsaw. The shriek of the machine gave me gooseflesh. The blade plunged into Thabo’s horn. I know it doesn’t hurt but it looks like it should. The blade sliced deeper and white horn shavings flew everywhere. A black tarpaulin caught every scrap that fell. Nothing could be left behind; the horn is so valuable that thugs would come just for the shavings.

  The chainsaw fell silent. Thabo’s horn lay on the ground.

  I gritted my teeth, gulped back tears. Mike caught my eye and gave a sympathetic nod. He knew how hard this was for me. One of our anti-poaching men wiped his eyes, devastated by the mutilation of the rhinos he had protected for so long.

  Mike trimmed away the last bits of horn with a smaller chainsaw and finally, an angle grinder. Short back and sides, was his description. It’s a new technique he developed to leave behind as little as possible. The old method left up to a kilogram of horn – too much, too risky.

  Mike carried the equipment over to Ntombi while his assistant rubbed purple Mercurochrome on Thabo’s horn base to sterilize it, then added special oil to stop the stump from cracking.

  I plucked up the courage to go closer and watch Mike operate on Ntombi. The noise was shattering and I was shocked at how quickly the horn was cut off – although I shouldn’t have been. Horn is just keratin. It looks rock-hard but it’s no harder than a tree trunk.

  The horns were put into a Checkers supermarket packet and placed on the back seat of the Land Cruiser. Mike injected the reversal drugs, and minutes later two groggy rhinos tottered down the airstrip, none the worse for the dehorning. It had been tougher for us than for them. As soon as we were confident that the rhinos had recovered from the anaesthetic, we weighed and marked the horns and headed to the lodge to unload ten million rands’ worth of keratin to the security company responsible for their transportation.

  Five 4×4s, ten men and their K9 unit were waiting for us at the lodge. The men stood next to their vehicles, alert, grim-faced, armed to the teeth and wearing full camouflage with bulletproof jackets. They knew the risks. I handed over my supermarket packet to Larry Erasmus, head of the company, and they were gone, the horns securely protected in a reinforced Land Cruiser in the middle of their military-style convoy.

  The transfer took less than three minutes but it was all I needed to realize how weak our own guards were. For the first time I saw what real security looked like, and I wanted it for Thula Thula. The Security-4U men were hardcore professionals who meant business. My guards were amateurs by comparison. No wonder our radios were going mad every day with sightings of animals killed by poachers. No wonder I hadn’t
been able to protect our wildlife, even with twenty-three full-time guards.

  It may sound like a big team but once you factor in annual holidays, bank holidays, sick leave, shift breaks, and the un- predictability of managing a group of Rambos-in-the-making who didn’t want to report to a woman, even indirectly, it wasn’t enough to keep our animals safe.

  It was time for an upgrade.

  Within six weeks, Larry Erasmus and I reached an agreement for Security-4U to take over Thula Thula’s security. All I kept in house was a small anti-poaching unit of four guards, reporting directly to Christiaan, to ensure Thabo and Ntombi’s 24/7 protection. Everything else related to security became Larry’s responsibility. It was such a weight off my shoulders and my only regret was that I hadn’t done it sooner.

  The next challenge was letting our guards know about the changes. Yet another manager had in the meantime resigned so it was up to me to talk to them. I had never had direct contact with them so they knew something was up. We set up chairs outside the main office building for the meeting.

  I stood in front of them and tried to hide my nerves. They slouched in their chairs, shirts unbuttoned, boots unlaced, picking their teeth with twigs. What a contrast to the seven men from Security-4U who were standing behind me.

  ‘Sanibonani,’ I greeted them in Zulu.

  ‘Sawubona,’ some murmured back.

  The majority didn’t speak English – another drawback – but Vusi was there to translate for me.

  ‘I’m here today to talk about changes that will be coming soon,’ I said.

  The tension ratcheted up a notch. I took a deep breath.

  ‘It’s been four years since Lawrence passed away and I’ve realized that I can’t manage security on my own. I don’t know enough about it to do the best for you and for the animals you protect. My plan is to outsource all security matters to a company that knows what it’s doing.’ I glanced behind me at Larry and his business partner. ‘Mr Erasmus and Mr Mathabela have been in the security business for well over twenty years and they are better equipped than me to provide you with training, firearms and knowledge to protect our wildlife.’