Running Wild

by Bristow, David;

  Generally zebras will gather in large congregations only when water is scarce and they rely on the same shrinking, stagnating pools. By now, with the great flood well and truly over and without any further purpose or forward momentum, the mega-herd started to fragment.

  Real fights broke out between dominant stallions as attempts were made to re-establish breeding herds, stealing females away from harems, or younger males attempting to move low-ranking females out of their former groups in order to start their own harems. The super herd spread out and moved off westwards away from the wedge of land at The Confluence. That was the last and best chance for stallions without harems to take advantage of the confusion.

  Zulu had never been part of a wild herd before. At Bergsig Farm, at Karl Plaas research centre and at Limpopo Valley humans had always defined the boundaries of movement and behaviour. A pitse never had to find food or protect itself from other wild creatures; even when and with whom to mate would be predetermined in the confines of paddock and stable.

  Zulu took his time observing the zebras, learning the subtle ways in which they differed from his own kind, working out the various poles of attraction and repulsion of the emerging groups as they moved westwards back towards the Jwala and Majale catchment areas, seeing which was strong and which was weak, waiting for the moment when he could take a gap.

  A smart strategy for Zulu would be to convince the zebras he was just one of them: a zebra is after all a black animal with white stripes, not the other way around. The optical illusion is of our own making, perceiving white as a positive space and black as a negative one, like a black gash in the white fabric (foetal zebras start life all black). He would have learned that deep down, at the level of instinct and DNA, horses, pitses, were not so different from wild pitse-ya-nagas. Especially a black one.

  Studies of feral mustang herds in Wyoming have shown that bonds between second- and lower-tier horses create second hierarchies within the herd quite distinct from the main pecking order. A low-ranking member that allies itself to one higher up enjoys more access to better food and they are picked on less than “nerd” horses that do not have the protection of a “jock” horse – not much different from any schoolyard. Similarly, a coalition of nerd horses, while not offering any real protection from a serious onslaught by the jocks, at least serves as positive reinforcement within the low-ranking circle (think The Big Bang Theory).

  Using the camouflage of herd behaviour the black stallion made a slow approach, grazing nearby, never too close but always in sight or scent of the moving crowd. Slowly the lower-ranked individuals began to approach him, curious animals as they are.

  Given his size advantage, Zulu soon started gathering the attention of younger males who were at risk of being bullied in the herd. He felt secure in the knowledge that he could hold his own in any one-on-one confrontation with a zebra stallion.

  Both horses and zebras form harems or long-lasting family groups with a strong bond between individuals. Even when the dominant male is replaced or dies the group will stay together. It is not only the stallion that chooses his mares; mares play an active role in choosing which stallion to follow. This mutual attachment is one factor that gives zebra herds their stability (horses in the wild are much the same). Stallions will not tolerate the close attentions of any other sexually mature male without challenging it to a fight.

  The other bond is that between mothers and their offspring. A herd is a harem with usually around six adult females, their offspring and the alpha male. Male offspring will stick with their mothers until around three years of age, at which stage they become sexually mature and drift off or are pushed out (often by their own mothers with whom they might attempt to mate) to seek the company of bachelor herds.

  If they try to stick around any longer they will be chased out by the dominant male. From around the age of five they will start to challenge for their own herd. Zulu was around 10 years old at this stage but he was in no great rush to challenge for a herd; first order of business would be merely fitting in.

  The dawn chorus along the densely wooded Jwala River is positively orchestral – to human ears at any rate that regard birdsong as a thing of beauty unto itself alone. Like Keats’ nightingale that is “pouring forth thy soul abroad in such an ecstasy”. However, to wild animals the hue and cry of other wild creatures is a message with gradations of meaning: fear, fright, warning, anger, or the simple expedient of saying, “This is me, this is my place. I dare you to prove otherwise.”

  Alarm calls are primarily what to listen for. There is a symbiotic relationship between many wild creatures, for example baboons up a tree having the advantage of distant vision and impala foraging below having their acute senses focused on the ground. Both baboons and impala have strikingly similar alarm barks that warn their own kind as well as each other of imminent danger. Although baboons are not above snatching a lamb for a meal.

  Game birds such as francolins, spurfowls and guineafowls, which scratch around on the ground for seeds and insect larvae, are usually the first to see a small-spotted genet hunting for eggs or chicks in the tangled mass of vines and burr grasses, or a serval hunting for field mice and small game birds. Or perhaps a leopard stalking in the grass that would not turn up its nose at a passing guineafowl but would much prefer an adult impala or baboon.

  All animals, as well as hunters and game rangers, listen for these calls. At approaching danger an ever-alert impala will issue a loud snort and then take off in leaps and bounds, clearing the bush in arcing vaults. A baboon sentry (there is always one on duty while the troop is foraging) will issue a sharp ba-hoo as a general danger alert. However, when their arch-enemy, a leopard, is seen the troop will scatter with all manner of shrieking and barking and then the entire group will take up the alarm and rush around in panic.

  Unfortunately for baboons, leopards can climb trees nearly as well as they do, so their normal escape strategy is compromised. The baboons will retreat into the uppermost canopy of a large leadwood or mashatu tree and continue shouting down. Safety in numbers, rather you than me, Bob. Like surfers out on the backline.

  A wise leopard knows it is simply a waiting game. It only has to sit at the base of the tree and issue wood-sawing grunts to keep the primates in a high state of panic. Eventually one will climb too high and its branch will break or, in a general free-for-all, one baboon will push another and it will fall to its fate.

  A fast, high-pitched beer and cognac, beer and cognac will be a crested francolin issuing an alarm call. A piercing, two-syllable co-qui, co-qui will be a pocket-sized coqui francolin. A Swainson’s spurfowl in peril will issue a kraaa kraaa kraaa, dropping in pitch and volume when startled. The Natal spurfowl’s alarm call is kak-keek, kak-keek, kak-kekeekeek kacheeky kacheeky. They will all try to creep deeper into dense undergrowth to hide, but might eventually take to the wing in a loud fluttering that in itself can spook the ambusher.

  Helmeted guineafowls have one of the most recognisable alarm calls, not least of all because they roost in trees and are always on the lookout for trouble. A resonating kek, kek, kek, kaaaaa, ka, ka is their bugle cry. Once they have dispersed, a family of game birds will use a special contact call: buck-wheat, buck-wheat for the guineafowl; ki-kerrick, ki-kerrick for the crested francolin. This call is in fact a duet – the female calling ki, ki and the male answering kerrick, kerrick.

  All this noise will sound like gibberish to the safari novice, just background music or din, depending: a francolin calling stridently outside a safari tent at first light is likely to be the target of a well-aimed boot. But to animals tuned in to the every twitter and chirp, tweet and woof in the bush, it is a language clear in meaning. While working as a safari horse Zulu had learned the general vocabulary of the wild creatures but did not pay it full attention. Now he was taking a crash course in advanced savanna survival like his life depended on it.

  Zulu followed behind a herd of zebras he had selected on account of the lead stallion being som
ewhat older and less aggressive than the others. They headed south and moved across open, stony terrain parallel to the Matabole River in the direction of Cheetah Koppies.

  The various fragmented zebra herds were all headed in more or less the same direction, but began to drift apart like galaxies in an expanding animal universe. The area was dotted with stunted mopane trees, terminalia and combretum bushes on which large antelope and giraffes liked to browse. In the distance, impala were giving alarm calls while watching a lioness walking with the swaying, nonchalant gait of a very confident lady going calling.

  Because she was far off and travelling ahead of the zebras there was no sense of panic. The giraffes watched from their elevated position, carrying on eating but never taking their eyes off the tawny predator. The day was cool, even into the afternoon, with streets of cotton-wool clouds in the sky softening the early autumn sunshine. It would be a good winter in Mashatu, with grass enough for all and everyone well fed deep into the driest months of September and October.

  Dotted among the mopane and silver cluster-leaf bushes were umbrella trees, Acacia tortilis. Normally they would grow into impressive leafy awnings but here the briny soil of an old pan prevented them growing much more than a metre in height. The close-gardening attentions of browsers such as steenbuck and kudu that loved their nutritious, feathery compound leaves helped maintain their bonsai appearance. Their armoury of long, slender white thorns could easily pierce a leg or the frog of a horse’s hoof.

  As the herds moved across the gravel beds and towards the alluvial plains that were their preferred habitat, Zulu hung out at the back, cosying up to any foals that lagged behind, urging them forward until their mothers came to fetch them, slowly gaining the confidence of the adult females as well as the attentions of the young ones. Although an alpha male leads the herd, it is actually an alpha female that keeps the zebra harem together. When on the move a herd will march in single file, the alpha female in front, the rest of the females in order of their social ranking and the stallion somewhere in the middle. Foals walk behind their mothers, all in Indian file along well-worn game trails, moving aside only to avoid any thorn bushes, boulders or aardvark holes.

  A black-backed jackal that had been dozing under a bush in their path jumped up and trotted off into the distance. Then a family of kudu caught the attention of the lead female; they were all standing stick still with heads above the foliage staring intently towards the afternoon sun, their large radar-dish ears at attention. The zebras bunched into a tight group. They too stared into the low sun. That was when a group of five cheetahs stood up out of the shade of a white-trunked shepherd’s tree (Boscia albitrunca) and trotted off on a heading that would cut diagonally across their own.

  Zebras can go without water for a few days but ideally like to drink every day. There was no standing water on the quarzitic swells of land, so on through the afternoon the zebras trudged. They were headed for one of the waterholes of the Matabole called Moddergat that lay just east of Cheetah Koppies. The cheetah family had long since gone its own way and the zebras – including Zulu – were somnambulating, heads hanging low, hard hoof keratin clunking on small rocks in the path every now and again, each one lost in its own daydreams (of whatever zebras daydream about, most likely water).

  While on the move it is almost impossible to tell the difference between dried-out elephant droppings and small rounded dolerite boulders in the path. Since all the major game paths in the region are really elephant paths, you only find out which when you feel and hear either a soft thwock or a hard clunk.

  As they approached the first line of riverine trees where the Nyaswe and Matabole rivers converge, the soil began to get softer and sandier as the distinctive group of 12 zebras and one horse reached the alluvial floodplain. The single path fanned out into a confusion of tracks as it neared the river. That was when the lead female stopped; she had picked up lion spoor and immediately became alert. The rest of the herd quickly sensed her trepidation and came to a halt behind her, ears pricked, nostrils flared.

  The lioness had rejoined her pride. The zebras had not yet had a drink that day but between them and sweet, cool water was a stumbling block. The zebra stallion made his way to the head of the line and took stock. There was about 30 metres of open ground to the croton thicket. The lioness had gone into long grass somewhere there, but where was she? The zebra stallion slowly approached the riverine hedge, snorting to make his presence known. That was when a large maned lion sat up in the gloomy shade of a wobbly-trunked appleleaf tree, the blackened end of its tail flicking from side to side in agitation.

  While horses will flee at the first sign of danger, the first instinct of a zebra herd is to stand and fight. The stallion takes the head while the females form a circle around the young. Hyenas and wild dogs know this and will exploit it by darting in from all sides, but a well-drilled zebra herd can hold off a bunch of dogs or cats until they lose interest. It is only if they make a run for it that they become vulnerable because there will always be a weakest one.

  The alpha stallion moved slowly forwards and the lioness rose, along with two sub-adult males. The zebras stopped. This gave Zulu his gap, taking a position just slightly behind the alpha stallion to show his support. Being of a flighty nature he was unnerved by the zebra’s defiant tactic but took comfort from the herd around him. The lions were not ready to hunt yet, but if a tray of canapés is presented to you who’s not going to grab a bite? But the zebras weren’t serving and stood their ground.

  Luckily these were not desperate times and although they were standing in the hot sun, they waited until the lions slumped back down in the shade. Zulu had seen lions previously but there had always been a rider with a rifle to send them scattering.

  While lions living in the Okavango Delta have no option but to cross open water frequently in their travels, the lions of much drier Tuli do not care to swim at all and will do so only if absolutely necessary. This allowed the herd to move off downstream, cross and then drink safely at Moddergat.

  Zulu maintained a close distance to the zebra stallion, having established his allegiance. It was a strange coalition, almost certainly unique, preposterous, but it would work so long as the horse did not get ideas above his rank.

  12

  The Night of the Hyenas

  THE ANIMALS OF MASHATU WERE following the drying rivers. The Jwala was bone dry and the Majale had just a few stagnant pools, running more as sand with interspersed pools and not much grazing to be found between. This was the time when large, sometimes even huge, flocks of birds – saddle-billed and yellow-billed storks, grey herons, great white egrets, hamerkops – gathered around the fringes of the last pools pulling out barbel that were trapped, writhing in the grim sludge.

  When the Majale dried to just stagnant pools the zebras resumed their slow drift towards the Pitsane. Along the way they passed the ruins of Bryce’s Store, set up to supply the needs of the Zeederberg coach line more than 100 years before. Considerable drama had played out around the store – little more than a wood and iron shack really.

  It had been flattened by an artillery shell during the Anglo-Boer War, possibly by a gunner who felt he’d been cheated by the wily Scots storeman. (Actually, it was the Boers’ doing, who had correctly surmised Bryce was supplying ammo to the empire.) Even today a jackal might sniff at an old container or a zebra might kick over a flattened, rusted bully beef tin or shell casing. Evidence of this backwater skirmish is still in evidence at Fort Tuli on the east bank of the Shashe, and the barricade of dolerite boulders Boers had erected hastily on the ridge alongside Nel’s Vlei.

  The wide floodplain around the vlei is a favourite among grazers that feed on the greenery well into autumn. But come winter, which was fast approaching, the apron of black cotton soil turns to stoneware in the furnace of the African sun, pocked by deep impressions where elephants sunk in with their mammoth feet when it is still sodden. Once set, the clay is more rock than soil and extremely hard to ne
gotiate.

  By the time the main zebra herd reached Nel’s Vlei, the grazing was all but gone, scrumptious guinea grass and foxtail buffalo grass tufts grazed to their nubs. Most grazers eat only the more nutritious grass leaves and the upper stalks, so they had long moved off in search of greener pickings. But equids can eat right down to the dust.

  What was left was giant turpentine grass, good only to lions for lying up and setting ambushes behind the two-metre-high stalky screen. The grass has a strong oily taste and is not fancied by any animal. Since there was no longer water or grazing to be found around the vlei, the zebras and their honorary member turned course for the upper Majale catchment. If they did not find good water there it would augur hard times ahead.

  The ground around the Matabole, a tributary of the Majale, was entirely bare with just a thin grey-green line of vegetation showing where the streambed ran. Sheet erosion, the kind that follows heavy thundershowers wherever there is not much ground cover, had washed the surface down to bedrock and gravel.

  Ignoring the zebra troop, a group of four sub-adult cheetah siblings ambled towards the riverine bush where impala were likely to have hidden their lambs. The zebras stopped. Zulu, not yet fully wise in the ways of predators, took his place near the back of the line. His companions did not seem to be particularly worried about the sleek spotted cats but they could never afford to let down their guard. Mom or dad could be near.

  Once among the croton scrub the cheetahs began sniffing around and soon found a new-born antelope. Instead of killing it, however, they began playing with it, as all home-schooled cats will. The youthful exuberance of the sub-adult cats dictated they play with their food before eating it. Vervet monkeys eating fruit in the wild fig above did not react as they were never on the cheetah menu.

  When a jackal started barking in alarm, however, the monkeys started screaming. One cheetah had a paw on the little impala when a low growl sounded through the thicket: a leopard was lying up in a nearby sausage tree and they, the monkeys, were definitely on its carte du jour. The cheetahs dashed off and the leopard slid head-first down the tree trunk to investigate. The monkeys had skedaddled by the time the leopard found the still-shocked baby impala and began devouring it.