Mhudi

by Sol T Plaatje

  Holding Lawrence’s black mamba firmly in the snake stick, I could study its potent beauty closely, while it literally chewed on the foam that lined the aluminium of the grip. Eventually the lining glistened, soggy with enough venom to kill a dozen people.

  I then walked down to the river bank to release it a good distance away from the lodge. Initially I thought of letting it go in the thick riverine vegetation but changed my mind and decided I’d rather release it in the river itself. Although the river was swollen from recent good rains upcountry, it was not a raging floodwater, but flowing steadily and smoothly. Knowing that snakes are excellent swimmers, I assumed that the flow would carry the mamba downstream until it found some flotsam, or managed to swim to the bank, which hopefully would be some way off down river. So I tossed it in.

  I then drove home quite pleased with myself and also pleased to see there was still enough time left to go on a run. It was quite humid that afternoon so I took it easy, returning to base shortly before sunset. I remember drinking what seemed like a gallon or so of Oros and ice cold water before taking a cold shower and beginning to cool down. Then it was time for supper.

  The radio crackled and disturbed the peace of the evening.

  ‘Mario, Mario come in,’ went the caller.

  ‘Go ahead,’ I replied.

  ‘It’s Lawrence again,’ he said, then paused. ‘I just wanted to let you know, our friend is back again, but don’t worry to come out again, I’ll just live with him!’

  At the time, I wondered how to interpret this. Had Lawrence lost complete faith in my ability to rid his space of a deadly snake? Or did he realise the mamba’s homing instinct and territorial imperative was so strong that in order to guarantee it would not return, I would have had to kill it.

  Having got to know Lawrence and his conservation ethic, I now know it was the latter.

  A Close Call at Hide Dam

  January 2006

  The first effective rains of the 2006 season unleashed a deluge of 110 mm in less than three hours. The relatively bare and fragile substrate could do little to contain or absorb this volume in such a short space of time, with predictable consequences. Frankly, the reserve could have used half this amount to more beneficial effect, had it fallen at a more moderate rate. The difference between quantity and quality of rain again raised its contradictory head.

  Having not seen rain like this in years and knowing that heavy falls are often localised and patchy, Meagan and I were eager to see how widespread the rainfall pattern was. We climbed into the Land Cruiser and headed along the usual route that would take us through Palm Loop, up over the railway line and into the main part of the reserve.

  On approaching the Palm Loop crossing, our headlights fell on a sight not easily forgotten. The river had broken its banks and the floodwater had swollen the stream to about 30 metres wide and well over two-and-a-half metres deep. In 13 years I had never seen Palm Loop carrying so much water, but it was not the volume of water or rate of flow that concerned me, but the colour of the water. Normally, within a few hours of heavy rainfall, the clarity of this river’s water resembles that of good homemade ginger beer, which then fines off within a day or so, running gin clear. The chocolate brown water we were seeing tumbling across the headlights in mini tsunami-like bulges, could mean only one thing.

  ‘Hide Dam’s wall is gone!’ I blurted to Meagan.

  The knot in my stomach would only untie itself if I could see for myself one way or the other just what had happened. I had to get to the dam quickly, but I’d have to go the long way round. How frustrating this was, the dam was only two kilometres away on the road that the waterway now blocked; the alternative route would mean a detour of at least ten kilometres.

  Worse, while I mentally reviewed the reserve and its network of roads, there was only one option and, given the present conditions, there was no guarantee that we would get there. We had to try, and the Land Cruiser did what was expected of it, churning easily through the washaways, ruts and muddy sections. Eventually, we made our way to where I knew there was a narrower crossing of the Palm Loop River, which is near its catchment area and source in the Klaserie. The gamble paid off, as by the time we got there it was only about half a metre deep and receding.

  Approaching Hide Dam from the north-east, I stopped the vehicle, took out the powerful spotlight I keep behind my seat, and plugged it in. The cacophony of thousands of frogs all competing for call space was almost deafening, but it was good to hear them, as frogs meant water. Apprehensively I shone the light on the tail end of the dam … it was full. I breathed a sigh of relief, because I knew this picture would not be possible if the wall had been breached and washed away.

  Moving slowly along the road, we approached the edge of the spillway, switched off, and climbed out of the 4x4. The roar from the water tumbling over the jagged rocks that make up the base of the spillway was deafening. As awe-inspiring as the sight and sound of so much water was, my mind recalled the words of Lyle Thole, a founding shareholder and our tame consultant engineer who understands the mechanics and power of water better than most. Years ago, when we widened the throat of the spillway by 100 per cent, which I thought was ample, I remember him saying that he would have been more comfortable if it was even wider!

  Relieved that the spillway appeared to be doing its job, even if only just, Meagan and I sat a while taking it all in. I remember wondering where all the different frogs came from – Hide Dam was at least five kilometres from the Olifants River and there wasn’t a wetland or vlei anywhere on the reserve. On our way back I stopped in at the airstrip vehicle park and went over to read the rain gauge we kept there. Incredibly, the gauge read a mere 40 mm, while a couple of kilometres away over 110 mm had fallen. This rain gauge has since been trampled to pieces by elephant so they probably weren’t too impressed with the reading either.

  At first light the next morning, I drove around and came in from Jackal Plains on the eastern side of the dam. Approaching the parking area behind the hide enabled me to ascertain the source of the dark brown water seen in Palm Loop the previous evening. The debris left by the water told the whole story. The storm had released so much water in such a short time, that a wave of water too large for the spillway to cope with had topped the dam wall itself. We estimated that the wave would have been something over half a metre high when it went over the wall. It then subsided so quickly that the erosive power had only enough time to gouge out the back slope of the wall, before it dissipated to the volume and level that the spillway was able to cope with. Had the wall not been so well-compacted during its construction it would not have held.

  The wall needed extensive repair. The hide itself, which was not accessible at the time due to the damaged wall, we planned to demolish and rebuild, once repairs to the wall had been completed. A second spillway or an enlargement to the existing one was also considered. Three months later all the repairs envisaged to the wall were carried out and a second smaller spillway was cut.

  The storm’s ‘epicentre’, for want of a better word, appears to have been the area, roughly triangulated, between Hide Dam, the four power lines and Nyosi Pan on Dinidza. This translates into an area of approximately twelve square kilometres. Most of the roads downslope of this region were washed away completely. As a result, landowners couldn’t get into town until our heavy machinery effected repairs to the main access road a few days later.

  Many of Olifants’ lodges had their retaining walls silted up and overtopped. We prioritised what had to be done and where, then got stuck in, concentrating on clearing the silt. The office and admin block was flooded to a depth of 200 millimetres. Due to the water reticulation behind the lodges, we could not use the grader to cut mitre drains for fear of cutting into the main water supply pipelines. In some cases, laborious, time-consuming berms or humps were built to divert any possible future floodwater, which have since proved extremely effective.

  Dinidza’s Nyosi Pan, a beautiful waterhole about the size
of a large swimming pool, was completely silted up and flattened so smoothly that if you didn’t know what had been there before, you’d be forgiven for thinking someone was preparing a volleyball pitch. Situated in a valley, it lay in the path of channelled floodwater which was too powerful to be contained. The hand of man played a major role in the reconstitution of this pan, involving enlarging and extensive rebuilding. The rich silt loads brought down by the floodwater have been employed to create a mini-wetland with a substantial reedbed and a perimeter of nutsedge. Nyosi Pan’s appeals are now well-established and natural, with a little helping hand …

  Thousands of small fish, mostly tilapia Oreochromis mossambicus that were washed out of Hide Dam, were found trapped in rapidly drying pools below the dam. The larger fish, some of which were pan size, were netted and eaten by the staff. Others were relocated and established in Double Dam and Big Dam. Saddle-bill storks, black storks, hamerkops and kingfishers made short work of the remainder we left for them. All the fish, including a sawtooth catfish or barbel Clarius garipinus of over ten kilograms, which was found in a pool a kilometre downstream, were descendants of a few specimens of each species represented when we stocked Hide Dam six years ago. Some of the smaller Barbus species have also done surprisingly well. This is important as these fish play a vital role in the control of mosquitoes by consuming the larvae of this deadly pest. Tilapia are eaten by the barbel, which are in turn eagerly taken by crocodile.

  Giant bullfrogs Pyxicephalus adspersus, the first I’d ever seen in the bush, seemed to have erupted out of nowhere. There were thousands of them in and around the dam, but where they came from is still a mystery. Hide Dam is in the middle of the reserve’s driest area, and there are no wetlands or natural water for miles. I know this threatened species can lie buried in the soil for a year or so waiting for the right storm conditions to trigger emergence. Could it be that they had lain buried in the soil near the dam for some twelve years? As suddenly and as mysteriously as they’d appeared they were gone, and a mere week later there wasn’t a bullfrog to be found. The only evidence they left were millions of tadpoles, but we have never seen their parents since.

  In the Marula’s Shade

  August 2004

  The late Rodney Kapelus, a former shareholder of Olifants, was one of the more familiar and regular intra-African migrants to the reserve. Each year he eagerly anticipated his winter migration up from the rich feeding grounds of Plettenberg Bay’s Keurbooms River estuary to the banks of the Olifants River. Here he would soak up sun-drenched days relaxing in the tranquillity, while recharging his batteries and putting on enough condition for the return flight a few months later.

  This season, however, was a little different, and not as peaceful as he’d hoped. Rodney found he had to share his space with millions of red-billed queleas. Each evening, for over a month, these incredible little birds roosted in the larger riverine trees in front of the lodges on Olifants. They would concentrate in such numbers and in such a small area that in the morning the trees and the area underneath their crowns would be blanketed in white from their droppings. At times, the smell became overpowering and quite impossible to live with. It was a bit like having the aroma of an intensive poultry farm in your back garden, and that wasn’t the only problem. Their collective chirping would coagulate into a din that could drive the most enthusiastic twitcher to enlist the services of those inexplicably trigger-happy Italian bird hunters on the opening day of their ‘If it flies, it dies’ season. This cacophony turned out to be the least of Rodney’s worries, however, as something far more surreal was to make this year’s migration even more memorable and besides, the queleas were considerately concentrating their roosting activities at the lodge next door.

  Many of you may have read Herman Charles Bosman’s classic ‘In the Withaak’s Shade’, which takes place in the old Western Transvaal area, on the edge of the Kalahari Desert. This area has given rise to some of the most interesting characters of yore, notably J Barnard or ‘Bvekenya’ as he was better known, whose exploits as a hunter and adventurer are legendary, and, of course, Groot Marico’s most famous storyteller, Oom Schalk Lourens.

  One day, Oom Schalk was out looking for some strayed cattle. At about midday it occurred to him that they might be under the withaak trees, because of the softness of the grass. And since cattle were large enough to be seen from a recumbent position, he lay on his back under a tree, with his hat tilted over his face, from where he noticed that the tip of his boot looked just like Abjaterskop, a familiar peak in the local mountain range. His reverie was interrupted by the appearance of a strange spotted cloud on top of the mountain, which turned out to belong to a leopard sniffing his boots. Paralysed with terror, Oom Schalk was unable to stop the leopard from progressing embarrassingly to his trousers, which were old and torn. He decided that the next time he lay under the withaak tree looking for cattle, he would wear his best black ‘Nagmaal’ hat …

  Back on Olifants, on a similar quiet lazy afternoon, Rodney also felt like a snooze and lay down, not on the grass as Oom Schalk did, but in a reclining deck chair on the edge of his deck. Drenched in dappled shade from a large false marula tree, this area of the deck was effectively shielded from the midday sun. Shaded and relatively cool, it must have produced the same effect on Rodney as the withaak did when Oom Schalk lay in its shade. So, understandably, it wasn’t too long before he too dozed off.

  It didn’t seem as if he had been asleep more than a few moments when he was woken by an ever-so-gentle, but insistent, tugging on his foot. Lifting his head up just enough to see what or who had the audacity to disturb his siesta, Rodney found himself looking straight into what appeared to be the side of a moving grey mountain.

  As he emerged from his doze and began to focus, the rumpled forehead of a large elephant bull loomed in front of him. The curious pachyderm was nudging and sniffing at his foot with the tip of his trunk!

  Needless to say, once the reality that this was no dream dawned on him, he spoke rather firmly to the elephant. Apparently the expletives he used to articulate his feelings had the desired effect. The startled jumbo, unaccustomed to such abusive language, moved quickly away.

  Confirmation of the position of the elephant in relation to the deck chair was plain to see by the tracks it left behind in the soft sand in front of the deck. According to the spoor, it was clear the elephant had spent quite some time milling about, before actually reaching out to touch Rodney’s foot with its trunk.

  What was it that prompted this tactile curiosity from the elephant? Could he determine Rodney was asleep, or was he trying to find out if he was alive? Maybe Rodney’s feet smelt interesting, or he’d stepped in something the elephant liked. Who knows?

  I remain convinced, however, that while Rodney’s experience shares a few common threads with Oom Schalk’s tale, it is less likely to be an exaggerated account; it is too new, too recent. There is a certain licence given to exaggeration that legends allow and thrive on, but they need the key ingredient of time. The more time that passes, the more imaginative and colourfully embellished the recollection becomes. More important to the establishment of the truth of this tale, though, is that we know Rodney Kapelus, as opposed to Oom Schalk, was not partial to the midday consumption of witblits.

  Management of Game Populations

  A Never-ending Story

  We know that ecology is not an exact science and that no game reserve encompasses a complete, self-regulating ecosystem. Depending on what the objectives and vision of a reserve are, policies may be determined which will necessitate some degree of intervention by the hand of man. This means implementation of agreed policies through active management from time to time. This is usually justifiable in situations where growing game populations begin to adversely affect their own habitat in a confined area, and where we then make use of all the scientific information available to balance things a little.

  Prior to the removal of fences, some serious management decisions had to
be made each year on Olifants. This process mainly dealt with game removals in the form of live capture and translocation. Up to 50 buffalo, 60 zebra and as many as four rhino were being captured and sold in severe winters. This may sound like a lot of animals, but if we take the buffalo population as an example, study of the actual results indicates a conservative rather than radical approach. When I arrived in 1993, the buffalo population stood at 65 and at the time of our inclusion as full members of APNR twelve years later, the number was nearly 300. In this twelve-year period, we had captured and sold more than 150 buffalo, with predation, natural deaths, hunting and train deaths accounting for quite a few more. Despite all manner of intervention by man, the population grew by nearly 15 per cent per annum. However, the same cannot be said of wildebeest numbers.

  Prior to the removal of the internal fences in Balule, the wildebeest population in the Olifants west region stood at nearly 800. Today, as I write, that number is down to fewer than 200. Fence removals, which allowed predators into an area that they formerly found difficult to access, combined with a bad management decision to capture and remove 85 wildebeest, pushed the wildebeest population off the knife edge and into a spiral of decline.

  Giraffe have been removed in the past, albeit in relatively low numbers, but I have never been an advocate for the removal of browsers from our reserve, particularly giraffe.

  Our stipulation with regard to removals from Olifants was always that the animals captured represented as closely as possible a natural breeding group. As a result, we would often risk lower financial return rather than place any stress on the existing population structure. We have always adopted a conservative approach. For example, when taking off buffalo, buyers only wanted breeding heifers and trophy quality bulls. In the case of rhino, only cows and adult bulls were wanted. However, we insisted on only removing a rational mix in order to prevent structural imbalances in the herds. It may have cost us money, but the result of our fastidious selection policy over the years meant that when we approached the APNR for membership, we did so with a healthy representation of the larger species of herbivores. We were proud of it and others envied it.