by Justin D'Ath
My brother Nathan reckons snakes won’t attack a human unless they’re cornered or feel threatened. He should know, he’s a tour guide for an outdoor adventure company. But that’s in Australia. This was Africa.
The cobra wasn’t cornered. It was a snake – it didn’t need to travel along the tunnel. But I did, and the thicket hemmed me in like a long prickly cage. Taking a deep breath to calm myself, I wriggled forwards a few more centimetres. Towards the snake. It held its ground. Its head rocked slowly back and forth atop its tall scaly neck. It flickered its black, Y-shaped tongue at me.
I stopped about one and a half metres short of the cobra. Too far away for it to strike.
‘C’mon, give me a break,’ I whispered. ‘I just want to get past you.’
The elephant trumpeted again. She sounded really close. Bushes crunched, the ground shook.
Snakes are deaf – the cobra didn’t hear anything. But it felt the vibrations of the approaching elephant. To a snake, vibrations mean danger. And danger means threat. The cobra’s small reptilian brain put two and two together and came up with the totally wrong conclusion: that I was the threat.
I had no idea what was going on in the snake’s head. I was more worried about the elephant behind me than the cobra in front. So when the snake opened its mouth and seemed to yawn, I was totally unprepared for what happened next.
A soft spray, like gentle raindrops, touched my face. next moment…AGONY! My left eye was BURNING! It felt like I’d been sprayed with acid.
The snake, I realised too late, was a spitting cobra. They spit venom as a defence mechanism, aiming at the eyes, and they seldom miss. While their victim writhes in agony, the cobra makes its getaway. Which was the only good thing about what happened: after it sprayed me, the snake darted off into the thicket. I didn’t even see it go – I was in too much pain. My eye was ON FIRE!
There was an ear-splitting trumpeting sound just behind me. for a moment I forgot about my eye.
I don’t recall much about getting out of the thorn thicket, only that I managed it in double-quick time. I remember seeing a small circle of daylight ahead, then scrambling to my feet and dashing across an open space to a large umbrella-shaped acacia tree. Ducking behind it, I pressed my back against the scratchy bark and hoped the elephant hadn’t seen me. I could hear her not far away, crashing about in the thornbushes like a bulldozer doing burnouts. I wondered how good her sense of smell was. Could she track my scent to the tree?
I listened and waited, my heart going flat out. There was another tree about eight metres away, and just past it was a clump of plants like giant aloe veras. They would be good to hide behind. But could I reach them without the elephant seeing me? It wasn’t a risk I wanted to take.
My eye was killing me. I had to wash the venom out. There were two water bottles in my backpack, but I’d left it on the bus. I turned my head, anxiously scanning the surrounding landscape with my unaffected eye. Where was the road? I’d lost all sense of direction. Toot the horn again, I thought, trying to send a telepathic message to the bus driver.
Get real! said a more logical part of my mind. How long is it since you’ve even heard the bus?
But the driver wouldn’t leave without me! I argued with myself.
He might, said my mind, if he didn’t realise you weren’t on it.
The bus had been seriously overcrowded – there were about fifty passengers, twice as many as the number of seats. I’d been travelling alone, squashed in next to a crate of chickens right down the back. And I wasn’t the only white passenger – there were some backpackers from Germany and a young Italian couple – so nobody might have noticed that I didn’t get back on.
A sudden movement near my feet made me forget about the bus. I flattened myself against the tree trunk as a familiar black-and-white animal came shuffling past. The honey badger was limping slightly and its fur was matted with dirt, but it looked as mean as ever. When it saw me it gave a low rattling growl, as if to say: Stay out of my way, dude, if you know what’s good for you! Then it limped off towards the giant aloe vera plants, dragging the mangled body of a dead cobra behind it.
5
DANGEROUS COUNTRY
It was two or three minutes since the mother elephant had last trumpeted. I could no longer hear her stomping about among the thornbushes. Where was she?
I peered around the tree trunk, hoping she had gone. no such luck. The massive animal stood only ten metres away, towering over the remains of the thicket, which looked like a demolition site. no wonder the honey badger had gone somewhere else to eat its dinner. As I spied on her from my hiding place, the elephant raised her trunk and sniffed the air. A scrap of frayed blue fabric dangled from one of her tusks. I gave a little shiver. That would have been me if I’d stayed in the thornbushes.
Slowly I edged back out of sight and leaned against the tree trunk, rubbing my sore eye. The pain was getting worse. I had to find water. But I was trapped behind the tree until the elephant went away. If she went away. I could hear a whoosh whoosh sound as she tested the air for my scent.
Then I heard something else – a rumbling noise, like distant thunder. The elephant heard it, too. She trumpeted softly, calling to her calf. There was an answering squeal from the trees over to my right, but I was more interested in the rumbling sound. It grew louder with every passing moment. And the louder it became, the less it sounded like thunder. Or like rumbling elephants.
It was the thrum of tyres on a dirt road.
Before I realised what I was doing, I’d left my hiding place behind the acacia and was running flat out towards the sound. Even if the mother elephant chased me, I reckoned I could beat her to the road. The approaching vehicle sounded close. A cloud of dust rose between the trees ahead. Sunlight flashed on a windscreen. next moment I was charging out onto the dirt road, waving my arms above my head and screaming like a madman: ‘Stop, stop, stop!’
It was a battered grey Land Rover with a brown canvas canopy on the back. It nearly mowed me down, skidding to a standstill with less than a metre to spare. Dust swirled everywhere.
‘Are you crazy? I nearly hit you!’ a man’s voice yelled.
I ran around the other side of the Land Rover, putting it between me and the forest.
‘Help! Let me in!’ I cried. ‘An elephant’s chasing me!’
The door flew open and a short, thick-set white man jumped out. He pumped a bullet into the breech of a big hunting rifle. It was a .460 Weatherby Magnum – this man meant business.
‘Where is it?’ he asked.
‘Just down there,’ I said, pointing back the way I’d come.
The dust slowly cleared but there was no sign of the elephant. The man lowered his rifle.
‘Are you sure you weren’t imagining things?’
‘She must have stayed with her calf,’ I said. My heart fluttered with relief. ‘Could I have some water, please? A cobra sprayed me in the eye. It really hurts!’
The man studied me for a few moments, his own eyes narrowed, and for the first time I realised how terrible I must have looked: no shirt, scratches and dirt all over me, my left eye swollen nearly all the way shut. He turned and spoke in Swahili to two native Africans waiting in the Land Rover’s dusty cabin. One of them tossed me a water bottle. As I rinsed my eye, the three men had a long conversation in Swahili. I knew they were talking about me because I heard mzungu, the word for ‘white man’, repeated several times. I recognised another word, too – tembo, which means ‘elephant’.
‘What are you doing here?’ asked the other mzungu when I’d finished sluicing my eye with water. It felt much better.
I explained what had happened, then asked, ‘Are you going as far as Marusha?’
‘Sorry, chum,’ said the white man, sliding back the rifle’s bolt and removing the big, soft-nosed bullet. ‘We’re headed the other way.’
He was lying – the Land Rover had been travelling in the same direction as the bus. But something in the man’s expres
sion reminded me of the honey badger, and I knew better than to argue.
‘Could you take me to the next village?’ I asked.
One of the men in the Land Rover interrupted. ‘Tembo!’ he hissed, pointing through the dusty windscreen.
I spun around, ready to run, but the elephant was two hundred metres away, crossing the road towards a grove of fever trees on the other side. The calf trotted behind her, the tip of its fat little trunk wrapped around its mother’s tail.
‘See that piece of blue rag on her tusk?’ I said. ‘That used to be my shirt.’
I don’t think anyone heard me; certainly not the white man – he was too busy reloading his rifle. I felt my mouth drop open as he raised it and took aim at the mother elephant.
‘Hey, don’t shoot her!’ I cried, knocking the rifle to one side.
BOOM!
The .460 Weatherby Magnum is the most powerful hunting rifle in the world. The recoil nearly knocked the man over backwards. A white spray of wood and bark chips exploded from the trunk of a tree fifty metres away and a huge branch fell across the road. The man cursed and pumped another bullet into his weapon, but by the time he raised it again the elephants had disappeared into the forest. He turned on me, his face bright red.
‘WHAT THE HECK DID YOU THINK YOU WERE DOING?’ he roared, spraying me with spit.
I took a step backwards. ‘Isn’t this a game reserve?’ I stammered. ‘I thought elephants were protected.’
The man’s face was nearly purple with rage. He half-raised his rifle. for a scary moment I thought he was going to shoot me. Instead, he shouted, ‘I WAS PROTECTING YOU, YOU MORON!’
‘But she wasn’t chasing me any more,’ I said, looking at the man, not at the big ugly rifle. ‘I didn’t want you to shoot her. She had a baby.’
He took a deep breath and seemed to calm himself. Clicking the rifle’s safety catch, he addressed me in a low steely voice. ‘A word of advice, Aussie. Go back home. This is dangerous country. A boy like you could wind up dead.’
It wasn’t advice, it was a warning. The man and I stared at each other for a few more seconds, neither of us speaking. I think he wanted me to back down and say I was sorry for interfering, but no way in the world was I going to do that. Especially not to a man with a .460 Weatherby Magnum. I had come to Africa because of my concern for animals, and men like him were part of the problem.
Finally he climbed back into the Land Rover and it roared off down the road. It swerved around the fallen branch, then slowed and went bumping off into the trees exactly where the two elephants had disappeared.
Only then did it dawn on me why the man had been so angry. And why he’d threatened me. He and his two companions were poachers. Ivory hunters.
Go, elephants! I urged them in my mind. It’s not safe around here.
It wasn’t safe for me, either. The ivory hunter was right – this was dangerous country. Already I’d been nearly flattened by an elephant, half-blinded by a spitting cobra, and threatened by a man with an elephant gun.
What next? I wondered, looking nervously into the dusty yellow forest that flanked the road.
A pair of evil-looking brown eyes stared back.
6
JAWS OF DESTRUCTION
Most animals will run away at the sound of a gunshot. not hyenas. When they hear a rifle, more often than not they’ll come to see what the hunter has killed. And to clean up whatever he leaves behind. Hyenas have the most powerful jaws of any creature in the animal kingdom. They can crunch through even the largest bones as if they were twigs. They will eat every part of a dead animal, including its horns, hooves and teeth. They are the ultimate scavengers.
They are also highly proficient hunters. They kill about ninety-five percent of the animals they eat. Most people don’t know that. I didn’t know that at the time. I didn’t think I was in any danger as the big, spotted hyena emerged from the bushes and came slinking towards me. It stopped in the tall yellow grass about fifteen metres away.
‘There’s nothing for you here,’ I said. ‘Nobody shot anything.’
The hyena held its ground. It looked like a cross between a very large dog and a leopard. I began to feel uneasy.
‘Scram!’ I said loudly. I picked up a small stone and threw it.
I didn’t aim directly at the hyena; I only wanted to scare it. The hyena turned to see where the stone landed, then looked at me again. It seemed to be frowning.
‘Scram,’ I repeated, more softly this time, and rubbed my eye. The effects of the water were beginning to wear off and it was starting to sting again. It was so swollen I could barely see out of it.
The hyena watched me closely. It seemed interested when I rubbed my eye. Did it sense that I was injured? Quickly I lowered my hand and returned its bold stare, trying my best not to squint. I knew hyenas preyed on creatures that were hurt and weak.
I might have been hurt, but I wasn’t weak. I picked up another stone. This time I didn’t aim to miss. The hyena let out a strange bawling sound – almost like a human baby crying – and went loping off into the trees. I felt bad for hitting it, but my own safety came first. I couldn’t take any chances. This was Africa.
Now that the hyena was gone, I could safely rub my eye again. The pain was getting worse. It felt like someone had wrapped my eyeball in barbed wire and pulled the ends tight. And my right eye felt slightly itchy, too, which was seriously scary. If it swelled shut like the other one, I’d be totally helpless. Hyena food. I had to find my way to a hospital.
The bus had passed through a small village about half an hour before we stopped. I could walk back there. They might have a doctor. At the very least, there would be water to give my eye another wash. Both eyes. My right eye was definitely beginning to itch. Some of the cobra’s venom must have got into it as well.
Keeping to the middle of the road, I set off back the way we’d come. Half an hour by bus would take roughly two hours on foot. But I didn’t think I would have to walk all the way. Sooner or later another vehicle would come along. Someone would give me a lift.
But would they arrive in time? After fifteen minutes my bad eye was hurting so much I could hardly stand it. It was swollen completely shut and tears streamed down my face in a steady flow. I staggered along in a daze, half-delirious with pain. Every footstep produced an excruciating, red-hot explosion at the back of my left eye, accompanied by a smaller, duller pain behind my right. My vision was down to one eye, and that was becoming blurry, too. When a troop of baboons went scampering across the road fifty or sixty metres ahead, I thought they were children.
‘Hey!’ I yelled. ‘Where’s your village? I need a doctor!’
Only when one of the ‘children’ shot up a skinny tree and went swinging out along a branch did I realise my mistake. Good one, Sam. Talking to monkeys.
There was a cackle of maniacal laughter behind me, as if someone was sharing the joke. My skin prickled and I turned around. The hyenas were about two hundred metres away, trotting boldly down the middle of the road. They stopped when they saw me watching. My vision was fuzzy, but I counted six of them, including a half-grown cub. Were they following me, or were they simply going in the same direction? I picked up a stone and hurled it towards them. The stone landed far short of the hyenas, but it had the desired effect – all six animals went slinking off into the roadside scrub.
I resumed walking, faster than before. Both eyes were throbbing but I forced myself not to rub them. I held my head high and resisted the urge to look over my shoulder. If the hyenas were watching, I didn’t want them to see that I was scared. Or that I was injured. My whole head throbbed. It was hard to think about anything other than the pain.
So when I saw the river, my only thought was: Water to rinse my eyes! I forgot that the bus had driven past this very same river about one hour earlier.
And I forgot what I’d seen in the river.
7
BOULDERS
The river was three hundred metres from the
road. It wound its way along the edge of a wide grassy plain bordered by a semicircle of distant hills. Herds of wildebeest, zebra and antelope grazed on the open grassland, but I didn’t take much notice of them as I staggered half-blind down the long, scrub-dotted slope towards the river. The water was toffee brown and partially hidden behind a screen of tall papyrus reeds. I crashed through the reeds, went skating out of control down the steep slippery bank, and landed waist-deep in the river. Plunging my face under, I peeled back the swollen lids of my left eye with my thumb and forefinger and allowed the cool brown water to wash over the inflamed cornea. Boy it felt good! I stayed underwater for as long as I could hold my breath, then came up whooping and gasping for air.
Holy guacamole!
Now I remembered what I’d seen in the river when the bus drove past – hippos. I was face to face with one. The huge, snoozing animal was immersed up to its nostrils and eyelashes in the water. It was almost close enough to touch. Slowly I backed away, all too aware that hippos kill more humans than any other animal in Africa. And nearly bumped into a big brown-and-pink boulder. A boulder with ears, eyes and nostrils. A boulder with a mouth like the entrance to the Sydney Harbour Tunnel. That’s how big it looked when the second hippo rose out of the water like a breaching whale and took a snap at me.
CLUNK!
Missed by two centimetres. I threw myself sideways, lost my footing on the slimy river bottom and went under. When I came up again, spitting water and blinking mud and silt from my single working eye, three hippos were coming at me, all from different directions. I scrambled backwards up the bank, slithering and sliding, and fell bum-first into the wet gooey mud at the top. Much to my relief, none of my pursuers followed me out of the water. One came churning towards the bank like a hydrofoil, but stopped two metres from shore. It stood watching me get up and stagger off into the reeds. The other two sank back into the river and became boulders again.