Running Wild

by Bristow, David;

  One day while trudging on the endless cycle between finding grazing and drinking water, Zulu came across a shell of leather and bones that caused him to break his trance-like migration and sniff the carcass. Slowly, he walked around it like someone who has come across a discarded bag in a field.

  Among the many ailments that inflict horses, thrush is one of the more common. It is a bacterial infection not related to the yeast infection in humans and usually attacks their hooves and, if left untreated, can render them lame. In the months directly following Cyclone Leon-Eline, Tommy had developed a bad case of thrush and then he got a devil thorn lodged in the diseased, softened frog of one hoof.

  Normally thorns, even devil thorns, do not worry animals. But when a hoof or foot pad is already compromised, the woody spikes can pierce the skin. The frog acts as a shock-absorber under the foot and it is also an important part of the circulatory system: each time the frog strikes the ground it acts like a piston, sending blood up that leg. Continued traipsing through the soggy terrain caused Tommy’s by then lame leg to become infected. Following the Bushveld waltz, Tommy went into septic shock and his final performance was the dance of death.

  The once-burnished chestnut coat had turned black in the sun and all that was left of the flesh was some hardened connective tissue around the joints. Scavengers had not found the body to rend it asunder, but blowfly larvae had made a good job disposing of all the soft parts. Something stirred inside Zulu and he sniffed and sniffed until his harem grew restless and their calling broke his deliberations.

  March saw a cold front coming from the south force its way into the high-pressure system that normally sits over the southern African interior, bringing two days of low cloud and soft rain. Not enough to soak the ground but just enough to tease out a flush of green shoots and quick-blooming flowers.

  The fields surrounding Disappointment Koppie, located on a wide sweep of the Majale River near the central part of the reserve, were awash with soft green leaves and butter yellow flowers. But of course, being Africa, this was no host of yellow daffodils nodding their heads in some delicate glade; they were the harbingers of a very painful kind of fruit, the woody devil thorns.

  No animals loved the flush of new growth more than elephants. They started arriving almost immediately as though by some secret messaging system. Elephant society is divided into family groups led by a matriarch and bachelor herds of mature males. Older tuskers hang around in small groups, the living embodiments of the potency of Africa. Females will remain with their breeding herds until they die. Only on special occasions will the two come together – for water, for breeding or when the devil thorn plants flower. Elephant catnip, the researchers at Mashatu called it.

  First to arrive at the flower fest was the grand old matriarch Herstel and her family of around 30 mature females, sub-adults and calves. It was a large herd for this arid environment but Herstel was a resourceful leader who had never lost a family member for lack of water. She knew every well, seep, spring and reservoir in the greater Tuli expanse and she respected neither fence nor passport control to get to them when conditions required.

  Noticeable to the researchers, though, was that there had not been any recent births in her herd. In the dull light of early morning the elderly lady and her group were scooping up leaves and flowers like syrupy koeksisters at a peach-brandy fest in Marico. By mid-morning the congregation had swelled to close on 300 bulky animals, having arrived from just about every compass point – but how did they all get the trunk call?

  It has been discovered that long-distance low-frequency rumblings pulse through the elesphere. They can pick up waves in the substrate much like whales communicate across the vastness of oceans using low-frequency singing. When another approaching herd saw Herstel’s group they broke into a run, trumpeting with trunks held high. Was there going to be a Battle of Armageddon of the tuskers out on the open plains below Disappointment Koppie, the likes of which had never been recorded?

  As they came trunk to trunk and tusk to tusk, trunks entwined and there was audible squealing of delight as they embraced in a greeting ceremony. Seeing elephant families re-uniting after months apart, each having been engaged in the taxing business of staying alive, is one of the more moving sights of the African plains. The rumbling and trumpeting and squealing could be heard for kilometres around.

  Each elephant went about slowly and delicately plucking leaves and flowers with its finger-like trunk tip, knocking each bunch against a foot to get rid of any soil sticking to the roots before curling around and plopping the bouquet into its mouth. Devil-thorn plants are extremely high in minerals and vitamins, and elephants are loath to share them with anyone else.

  By midday, the plain had been denuded and the great herd began to move off eastwards on the shortest bearing to the Majale River – the nearest water. They walked in single file, kicking up a line of dust that stretched more than a kilometre from head to tail, like an army of titans on the march to Elysian Fields broadcast by trumpeting audible only to themselves.

  One noticeable absentee from the daisy feast was Floppy Ears. Just why she chose to lead such a lonely and belligerent life was discovered only after she was found dead, reduced to a sorry heap of crinkled leather and bones by a poacher’s bullet. Where the ivory thieves had opened up her head with axes to extract her tusks, the horse guides who found her also found the suppurating mass of a grapefruit-size tumour.

  For Herstel the flowering banquet was her last great feast. She had been losing condition and although in all her years of leading the herd she had never lost a single member through hunger or drought, as she neared her 50th year her own life was teetering on a riempie. Her last set of teeth was worn down to the dentine and when the others of her herd fed on mopane branches she could only pick delicately at the branch tips that had any leaves left on them.

  While the summer solstice marked the highest, harshest arc of the African sun, the grand old matriarch sunk to her knees into the soft sizzling sand next to a pool in the Majale riverbed. When the rest of the herd began to move off, having drunk their fill, she stayed put, unable to raise her enormous bulk.

  The normally placid pachyderms became highly agitated, returned and tried to lift her with trunks and tusks, stroking her, pushing her rump with their feet. But try as she and they might, she just could not lift her burdensome form. They stayed with her overnight but by morning the old lady had rolled over onto her side and showed no sign of life. The rest of the herd made a circle around her body, continually stroking her with their trunks. But eventually they had to take their leave, driven by the pressing need of finding food. One other old lady refused to leave her comrade and stayed put.

  As the drought extended, herbivores had to travel further and further each day between the two vital resources. It was purely coincidental, and she would not have been able to do anything to prevent it, but within the week of Herstel dying the first calf of the herd succumbed, unable to make the arduous daily journey. It was the first of many that would not get to see the good times return to Tuli.

  That night its mother stood vigil over the baby elephant while the rest of the herd headed back to the Majale. As they passed the body of Herstel, already caved in by the ravages of death, each one fondled her head with its trunk as a blind person might gently caress the facial contours of another person in order to see them.

  This ritual was kept up for days as the old carcass desiccated in the relentless sun, until about a week later. The cauliflower heads of cumulonimbus clouds simmered in the sky above, rumbling and bruising from white to purple, sending thunderbolts earthwards and unleashing a violent afternoon deluge that swelled the rivers around sufficiently to wash away several tonnes of sorrow and suffering.

  A week later, all traces of the old elephant were gone and the only evidence that remained that rain had fallen at all were a few pools in the riverbeds. Once the brief flush had cleared the pipes of the ecosystem, it was back to work for the heavenly me
talworker, labouring furiously every day over his anvil to coax the day’s drama to life under the hellish sun.

  The entire bushveld montage was like a forge. And out of the workshop came stark baobab and leafless leadwood trees cut from sheets of tin; herds of elephants marching trunk-to-tail beaten in pewter; wildebeest drop-forged from slag iron; giraffes, fine-worked from molten gold with tourmaline insets; a lion cast in bronze with one eye of opal and the other agate, lying under a mahogany tree.

  Out on the powdery plain, heads low and bobbing with exhaustion, a herd of zebras seemed to float on puffs of white-hot dust, their shapes jig-sawed from a plank of African ebony and delicately inlaid with slivers of ivory. Except for one that looked incomplete, just a small ivory chip on its one foot.

  The heat sucked up all sound. Each patch of sunlight was like a hammer blow from a celestial smith beating the scene into the copperplate ground. Lizards hopped, two feet at a time, to prevent their feet from blistering. Animals gathered in the shade of large trees that had withstood droughts like this before. The few remaining brittle leaves on the rain trees clinked like tortoiseshell chimes in the wind. You could have dragged a bleeding impala carcass across open ground and no predator would have bothered to look up.

  But for Zulu his job was not merely to keep his tribe fed, watered and protected. It was mid-summer and the females were again coming into heat. He had to keep all other stallions away and he had to cover each of his females lest an interloper creep in when his guard was down and do the job for him.

  Zebra hybrids have been noted in the wilds and zorses (a zebra sire and donkey dam) have been bred in captivity since the 1880s when they were considered an exotic spectacle for circuses and pony rides. Zorses have been recorded in southern Africa in places like the Kalahari where zebras and donkeys live side by side around dusty villages. But a horbra (a horse sire and zebra dam) is unknown in the wilds. Then again, there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamed of in any philosophy we are schooled in.

  There is no doubt that Zulu covered his dams, otherwise he would not have managed to maintain his harem intact through four extremely arduous summers. And the females stayed with him. It is also known that he was fertile because he later sired horse offspring. But whether or not he actually fathered any zebroids – as the cross equines are generically known – was debated hotly for many years around the campfires of Limpopo Valley. Some time later, Ruff Stevens would lose some blood and not a little dignity for expounding his views on the subject.

  From a paediatric point of view, the mating between horses and zebras is beset by all manner of pitfalls including dwarfism, sterility and the sheer improbability of it. It is like the observation made by Samuel Johnson about women preaching and dogs walking on their hind legs – it is surprising to see it done at all. It was about as unlikely as seeing a black stallion leading its own zebra herd.

  17

  Earth Walkers

  BACK IN THE WATERBERG, Wendelle Eaves eventually went off in search of her own place. She moved away from Double M Ranch and the Therons to establish a horse safari business on a rhino conservancy deep in the mountainous heart of the Waterberg, in the valley of the fabled Mara River.

  The hard-tack horsewoman named her outfit Pegasus Safaris. Her first guests were a well-heeled couple lured by the “no malaria, only three hours from Joburg” marketing. Which was only half a lie: it was more like four hours and then some.

  The husband dominated the dinnertime conversations and could trump every story: “That’s nothing, when I blah-de-blah.”

  When he went off to the “little boys room”, Wendelle asked the wife if her husband was an I-specialist.

  “No,” she pronounced loudly, “he’s an implant orthodontist.”

  “Why don’t you call it Pegasus Horse Safaris?” inquired the specialist on his return. “Then people will know exactly what you are offering.”

  “Or I could call it Pegasus Horse Safari Safaris,” Wendelle replied with a look of innocence.

  He looked nonplussed and tucked into a second bowl of malva pudding and custard.

  Dell rolled her eyes. It was going to be a long long weekend. She would have to find a way to dodge these bullets. She could ride better than most, so what she needed was someone who knew more than she about wildlife.

  She advertised in Farmer’s Weekly (Wanted: game ranger, groom and guide for horse safaris) and found young Karl Eardmann, a nature conservation graduate with a fancy for horses. Two and half out of three was a good start, she supposed. He taught her about the ways of animals while she schooled him in the finer points of riding and horse care. Wendelle was a hard taskmistress but it bode well for Karl in the long run.

  He had grown up in a typical suburb of a typical mining town, populated with little boxes surrounded by marigold flower beds and filled with people who, it was said, were so narrow-minded they could spy on one another through the keyholes with both eyes at the same time. Lucky for him, holidays were spent on a family farm in the green hills of Zululand where he discovered horses and open spaces.

  Living and working in the Waterberg was a naturalist’s dream and Karl was as happy there as he could be, almost. Wendelle was firm but could also be a fun boss. He loved riding out with clients, or without, his rifle in its canvas scabbard, absorbing the spirit of the savage mountains where leopards and mambas and the other spirits of Africa abounded.

  But the business was new and the place not well known, which was great in one aspect but it also meant long days and weeks of stable mucking and polishing leather and brass through the long, dry winter months. However, as spring always follows winter, so business picked up.

  One morning over breakfast Wendelle said rhetorically: “We are going to need some extra hands. And legs.”

  Not that Karl would have any say in it. And Wendelle did not engage in small talk. It was her way of letting him know there would soon be new company. He assumed another guide like himself and he wondered how that would work out. They had been getting busier and bookings were on the up. Still mostly weekend riders from Joburg, but inquiries were also starting to come from travel shows abroad.

  This time she needed someone with a different set of skills than those that Karl offered. Email was in its infancy and the Internet was still the secret domain of gaming warlocks. So she advertised in a horsey magazine that enjoyed some support among international readers. They were doing a round-up on African horse safaris in that month’s issue.

  Lounging in her parents’ sunroom in far-off Surrey, a short trot from the Hundred Acre Wood, Juliette Milne was contemplating the options that life offered a young horsewoman while her parents wondered how to broach the subject of her moving on. She picked up a magazine with a tantalising cover image of riders silhouetted in front of a small herd of white rhinos on a golden grassland. She started flipping from the back cover where the adverts were stacked.

  “Hmmm, ‘horse guide and trainer …’,” she read over her croissant and coffee.

  “What dear?”

  “I’m just reading the job ads, Mum.”

  “Oh, jolly good Jules.”

  I can do that, she thought. “Must love horses and the African outdoors.” Well, three out of four is not bad. I’m sure Africa and I would get along just fine. “Must be prepared to ride in big-game country and camp out if necessary.” I think I could learn to do that.

  By the time Juliette sat down to compose her first job application, you could say she was a complete horsewoman, if not yet quite a complete woman. From the time she could walk she could ride. A donkey ride on a Devon beach (Punch and Judy, ice cream, Brighton rock) led to pony club and riding camps.

  Instead of entering culinary school in Switzerland as her parents had wished, she persuaded them to send her to a riding school instead. On her CV she could boast, although she did not, to being a graduate of the French military equestrian academy at Saumur.

  A month later, Juliette landed at Johannesburg’s int
ernational airport, bags bulging with horse paraphernalia. Karl was waiting in the Pegasus transporter to carry her to her new home in the African bush.

  “Juliette. Milne,” she put out her hand.

  “Hello,” Karl shook her hand slightly awkwardly.

  “And you are?” she raised an eyebrow.

  “Karl.”

  “Karl …?”

  “Er, Eardmann.”

  “German then?”

  “My mom said it’s Anglo-Saxon … we come from a pretty opgemeng, mixed-up, family tree. Dutch, German, French, maybe even a bit of English,” he laughed softly.

  Juliette also had something of a mixed-up past, having been schooled in England, Germany, Switzerland and the United States, the family following her diplomat father around. So, an earthman, she thought, things are already looking up.

  On the three-hour-and-then-some drive she did not see anything she didn’t like. Karl, a natural introvert, answered all her questions, although in truth there were not that many as she was not a natural chatterbox. More of the “what bird is that”, “what kind of rocks are those”, “what deer is that” kind.

  “Antelope.”

  “Hmm?”

  “It’s an antelope, vaal ribbok, we don’t have deer in Africa.”

  “Oh, good.” She was nothing if not an eager learner.

  Once ensconced at the Mara River Reserve, Juliette discovered she and Wendelle were like-minded souls and she was happy to defer to the older, wiser woman with her short, curly salt-and-pepper hair, taut limbs and brown-baked skin. There was nothing Wendelle did not find to be smug about her new hireling. No bullshit about her, just hard work, harder on herself than anyone else. She had a caring if firm way with horses, but when it came to dealing with people the younger woman was barely a few shades less abrupt than the older.