by Justin D'Ath
But she didn’t. We were standing in semi-darkness – the Land Rover’s lights were directed away from us – so I couldn’t see her eyes. All I could see with my ownnot-very-focused eye was her massive silhouette. Her calf touched me again with its trunk. Please don’t do that, I thought nervously, knowing how protective its mother was. But the adult elephant did nothing except make a soft rumbling noise. It didn’t sound threatening.
Was it possible that she knew I was trying to free her calf?
Slowly I turned back to the tree. If my hunch was right, she would let me cut the wire. If not… well, I was going to die.
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
It took about ten more chops before – finally! – the wire snapped. I dropped the tomahawk and pulled the wire clear of the tree. now the calf was free to go. But it stayed where it was. And the mother stayed where she was, too.
‘You’re free,’ I said, backing slowly away in the direction of the Land Rover. ‘You can go.’
The mother rumbled again, louder this time. She found the wire in the gloom and lifted it in her trunk. One end dangled free, but the other end was still attached to her calf’s leg. She pulled on the wire and the calf gave a squeal of pain.
I stopped. The mother wasn’t going to come after me. She seemed to know I had tried to help her calf. I was free to climb into the Land Rover and drive away. But I couldn’t just leave the baby elephant in the snare.
Slowly I inched back towards the elephants. My heart was thumping in my chest. ‘Easy now,’ I said, as I came up to the calf. I lightly patted its head, then ran my hand along its bristly flank as I moved slowly around behind it. All the time I was speaking softly, saying stuff like, ‘Easy now, take it easy, I’m not going to hurt you,’ and hoping my tone of voice would let them know I was their friend. When I accidentally brushed against the mother’s trunk with my shoulder, I thought I was cactus. But all she did was make another low rumbly sound and take a step backwards.
I crouched next to the calf, running my hand lightly down its leg until I came to the wire. It was dark and my eyesight was getting worse, so I had to feel rather than see. The wire noose was very tight and seemed to be embedded in the calf’s skin. Below the wire, the calf’s foot was sticky with blood. Working slowly, because I knew it must hurt, I found the wire slipknot and tried to loosen it. The calf squealed and behind me its mother rumbled in warning.
‘Sorry,’ I said, half-expecting to be pulverised, but nothing happened.
Turning towards the mother, I found the loose end of the wire and pulled it towards me to get some slack. Then I gripped the slipknot again and tried feeding the wire back through it to free the noose from the calf’s leg. But the knot was too tight – I couldn’t budge it. The calf squealed again and this time the mother’s trunk came snuffling down across my shoulder to check out what I was doing to her baby. I froze, speaking softly to reassure her, as she ran her wet-tipped trunk all over me. It gave me an idea. I found the end of her trunk and wiped my hand across it a couple of times, making my palm wet and slimy. Then I rubbed the slime onto the wire where it fed into the slipknot. It acted as lubrication. When I pushed the wire again, I felt it start to slide through the knot. Suddenly the noose fell to the ground and the little elephant stepped free.
I waited beside the Land Rover while the mother herded the calf ahead of her up the trail. The calf wasn’t limping, so the injury to its foot can’t have been too bad. Just before she moved out of the spotlight’s beam, the mother turned, raised her trunk high above her head and trumpeted. I reckon she was saying thank you. Then, silent as a ghost, she wheeled around and melted into the darkness. A frayed piece of fabric, the last remnant of my Youth for Wildlife shirt, fluttered to the ground where she’d stood.
I hurried to check on the injured poacher. He was barely conscious.
‘Where’s… elephant?’ he breathed, his eyes swivelling nervously in their sockets.
‘Don’t worry, it’s gone,’ I assured him.
He muttered something else that I didn’t understand. He was obviously in a lot of pain.
‘Try not to talk,’ I said. ‘I’ll see where your mates are, then we’ll lift you into the Land Rover.’
But I didn’t have to go looking for his friends. They came looking for me. I heard them before I saw them.
‘Mzungu!’
I straightened and turned around. The two Africans stood in the shadows near the back of the Land Rover. One of them clutched his right elbow as if his arm was broken. The other held the Ak-47.
Its evil black muzzle was pointed straight at me.
24
TRIGGER
CLANGGGG!
The man with the Ak-47 didn’t see what hit him. for a moment he stood motionless, holding the rifle in a dramatic pose like a statue on a war memorial, then he collapsed in a heap.
Olki jumped out of the rear of the Land Rover with the folding shovel in one hand. He raised it threateningly at the second African and spoke rapidly in Swahili. The frightened poacher shook his head, mumbled a few words in reply, then sat on the ground next to his fallen comrade.
Olki picked up the Ak-47 and brought it over to me. ‘Hunters no more trouble,’ he said.
It took several minutes to get everyone into the Land Rover. The second African had a broken collarbone, so Olki and I had to do all the lifting. The man Olki had kO’d with the shovel was still unconscious, and the white man was so knocked about that he could barely move. We lay both of them in the back among the elephant tusks, then we cleared out all the tools from the tool box in case the African woke up and got any bright ideas. I made the other African ride in the front with us, where we could keep an eye on him. His shoulder must have been very painful but I wasn’t taking any chances – I told Olki, who was sitting in the middle, to keep his shovel ready. And I jammed the Ak-47 between the driver’s seat and the door, where only I could reach it.
‘Next stop, police station,’ I said confidently, and put the Land Rover into gear.
My plan was to deliver the poachers and the elephant tusks to the police at the first town we came to, then go looking for a hospital or a doctor. But my eyesight was getting very bad. I could hardly see twenty metres ahead. I stopped the Land Rover.
‘Olki, can you drive?’
‘Drive truck?’ He sounded incredulous.
Silly me. Of course he couldn’t drive. He came from a tiny village half a day’s walk from the nearest road. And he was only ten years old. Even I couldn’t drive when I was ten.
‘Do you think you can steer?’ I asked.
Olki became my eyes. He sat on my lap and steered, while I operated the gears and pedals. It seemed to work. for about thirty uneventful seconds we bounced down the bumpy trail, picking up speed and gathering confidence every metre of the way. I had just changed up to second gear when Olki and the African in the seat beside us simultaneously yelled out:
‘Chui!’
The Land Rover swerved sharply as Olki spun the steering wheel and I instinctively slammed on the brakes. We slewed to a halt in the middle of the trail, almost at right angles to the direction we’d been travelling. It was a miracle we hadn’t rolled. Chui. My brain didn’t need to translate from Swahili – the man eater was so close that I could see it, even though the headlights were shining away from it into the forest. It was standing just below my window, its horrible scarred face looking up at me. Olki must have swerved to miss it! It was the worst thing he could have done. now we were stationary and all the windows, including the windscreen, were wide open. Meals on wheels.
Maybe not. I reached for the Ak-47 and tugged. But it was wedged between my seat and the door and wouldn’t budge. In desperation, I tried the window winder knob, but the rifle’s big crescent-shaped magazine was jammed against it.
The man eater growled. Its tail twitched.
Olki slid off my lap and offered me the shovel. I shook my head. A shovel might be effective against poachers, but it was no matc
h for a man-eating leopard. I had another idea. It was our only hope. I still had my foot on the clutch, so the Land Rover’s engine was still running. Shifting my other foot from the brake to the accelerator, I stamped it all the way to the floor and spun the steering wheel. Engine roaring, the Land Rover lurched in a semicircle, narrowly missing the trees at the edge of the trail. But I’d forgotten it was in second gear and we didn’t accelerate fast enough. A large spotted shape flashed past my window and landed – thump – on the front of the Land Rover. The African yelped in terror and Olki raised the shovel. We were hurtling down the trail with the man eater on the bonnet. Belly flat against the metal and paws spread wide for balance, it came scrabbling towards us. There was no windscreen. We were sitting ducks!
I stamped on the brakes. The Land Rover skidded to a halt. But the leopard kept going. It went sliding away from us, its claws squealing on the paintwork, then it toppled over the front of the bonnet and disappeared. But it was only gone for a moment. With a roar that rattled my eardrums, the man eater leapt back onto the Land Rover.
The engine had stalled. nothing was going to stop it this time.
I flung my door open and rolled out, yelling to attract the leopard’s attention.
Time slowed right down. My whole life flashed before my eyes as I lost my footing and landed flat on my back in a crunchy bed of leaves and grass. Winded, I lay looking up at a sky full of fuzzy white stars.
Where was the man eater?
‘Saaaaaaaaaam!’ Olki cried out, in a strange, slowed-down voice that seemed to echo across the universe. ‘Saaaaaaaam, looooook ouuuuuuut!’
The stars disappeared. The sky seemed to fall on top of me and everything went black.
I pulled the trigger.
25
A WORLD WITHOUT ANIMALS
REIGN OF TERROR ENDS
A young wildlife ambassador has ended the reign of terror that has gripped a large part of Western Tanzania for the past eighteen months.
Samuel Fox (14), from Australia, fatally shot the Chui Hills man-eating leopard on Tuesday evening. The rogue leopard was responsible for the deaths of five people.
Mr Fox was travelling to the International Youth for Wildlife Conference in Marusha when he became separated from his bus. Aided by local resident, Olkilia Nyambui (10), Mr Fox used a firearm confiscated from illegal ivory hunters to rid Tanzania of the most notorious man eater in living memory. The three poachers are being held in police custody in Marusha.
Police spokesman, Sergeant Francis Iboti, commended the two young men for their bravery.
Mr Fox, who spent last night in Marusha Hospital receiving treatment for temporary blindness following an encounter with a deadly spitting cobra, said he regretted killing the leopard.
‘Leopards are beautiful animals,’ he said. ‘But it would have killed me and my companions, so I had no choice.’
Today he and Mr Nyambui will be special guests at the International Youth for Wildlife Conference, where Mr Fox will be speaking about efforts in his country to save the endangered Australian bilby.
Mr Fox believes that young people worldwide should become involved in wildlife conservation.
‘A world without wild animals would be a pretty boring place,’ he said.