Jack Summerfield was slightly shorter than average but solid and self-assured. Every morning he woke up with a smile, even when there was shit to shovel, one way or another.
“Cross Boereperd and Nooitgedacht yearlings,” he mulled over the exotic-sounding words. If they were not perfectly African then nothing was. They sounded ideal. Just bring your own truck and trailer, advised the advert in Farmer’s Weekly.
The End
Notes on the Life of Zulu
THIS BOOK IS BASED ON THE LIFE of a real horse, named Zulu, that lived and died in Africa.
I first encountered Zulu on a safari with Steven Rufus in the Northern Tuli Game Reserve in 1997. On that occasion a needy woman (who in the safari industry have the generic name Ms Schwartz from the Hamptons) was among the party and was riding Zulu. True to form, she was X-ray thin and all the other people on the ride were more focused on her moods than noticing much about her horse.
Staying in touch with Steven over the years I learned about the “great storm” of 2000. The next I heard of Zulu was when a colleague of mine went riding there, recounted here as “the chase”. Stephen was very excited about it and suggested I join him to try to search for and recapture the black stallion. For various reasons, I could not.
However, artist Gavin Doyle was at Mashatu around the time he was recaptured and was able to capture sketches of Zulu in the wild, which he later turned into outstanding paintings of the horse in his element. Subsequent to this I visited Mashatu about a dozen times, delving deeply into the facts and spirit of the place.
Parts of Zulu’s life are documented. For example, it is known that Zulu was born on a farm and then taken from Onderstepoort as part of the start-up herd for Limpopo Valley Horse Safaris (LVHS). There is circumstantial evidence he was sired by a Namibian stallion and a Boereperd dam.
During the first few years at LVHS, Zulu was used as a safari horse, not particularly favoured over any other, although his mild temperament was appreciated. After his recapture, however, he emerged as something unique: a domesticated horse with the survival knowledge of a wild zebra. He passed this on to both the horses (pitses) as well as the humans of Mashatu.
Almost nothing is known about those “lost years” while Zulu was running wild with the zebras (pitse-ya-nagas). However, there were certain other avenues of investigation to pursue. First was the work done by the various researchers at Mashatu, which gives great insight into conditions at the game reserve during that time.
Another, and this was most intriguing of all perhaps, is why Zulu did not succumb to either predators – of which there is no shortage in the area – or African horse sickness, to which horses in Africa are highly susceptible. There are no facts to be shared but the incident with Zulu and the African foxglove was observed.
Various people offered insights into the how and maybe, which has been used as the foundation for those chapters in the book. Perhaps the biggest gap in our knowledge is whether or not Zulu bred successfully with any of the zebras in his harem, although there are unsubstantiated reports that he did.
Then there is the ending. Even here, where we have a report from the person who was closest to Zulu where his days ended, with the passage of time and much debate, several versions have emerged as to what happened, or might have happened. They do not all tie together neatly.
When Herman Melville set out to write his classic Moby Dick, based on the terrible saga of the whaling ship Essex that was sunk by a giant sperm whale, he noted that it would be based on the facts, but “we do not have to include all the facts”. Such is the case with the story of Zulu. All the rest is Africa.
An Etymology of Horses
EQUUS IS LATIN FOR HORSE, coming from the Greek ἵππος” (hippos, i.e. horse), and from Mycenean i-qo /ikkos/ – the earliest known variant of the Greek.
Equus is a genus in the mammalian family Equidae including horses, asses and zebras. Equus is the only recognised surviving genus of the family that comprises seven living species. The term equine refers to any member of this group of an odd-toed ungulate mammals:
E africanus – African wild ass
E ferus – Wild horse (
E. f. caballus being the domesticated horse sub-species)
E grevyi – Grévy’s zebra
E hemionus – Onager, Asiatic wild ass
E kiang – Kiang or Tibetan wild ass
E quagga – Plains zebra
E zebra – Mountain zebra
The first known equids were small, dog-sized mammals that lived around 54 million years ago (mya) and were browsers or leaf eaters. They had three toes on their hind feet and four on their front, each with a small hoof in place of a claw, with soft pads beneath. One of the oldest species of true horse is Equus simplicidens which looked like a zebra with the head of a donkey. The oldest remains have been found in Idaho, USA.
Equine species have been known to crossbreed. The most common hybrid is the mule, a cross between a male donkey and a female horse. With rare exceptions, the offspring are sterile and cannot reproduce. A related hybrid, a hinny, is a cross between a male horse and a female donkey. Other hybrids include the zorse, the cross between a zebra and a horse, and a zonkey or zedonk, a hybrid of a zebra and a donkey. In areas where Grévy’s zebras range alongside plains zebras, fertile hybrids have been recorded.
The modern horse (Equus ferus caballus) is one of two surviving subspecies of Equus ferus. The horse has evolved over the past 50-odd million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today.
Humans began to domesticate horses around 6 000 years ago and their domestication is believed to have been widespread by 3000 BC. Horses in the subspecies caballus are domesticated, although some populations live in the wilds as feral horses. These feral populations are not true wild horses, as this term is used to describe horses that have never been domesticated such as the endangered Przewalski’s horse, a separate subspecies, and the only remaining true wild horse.
Some products made from horses
Blood
used to make tetanus vaccines, also antivenom; once used as food by the Mongols;
Bones
used to make bleach to whiten sugar; made into implements such as shoe horns;
Hides and bones
used to make gelatin (Jell-o);
Hooves
made into glue;
Meat
for humans and their pets;
Horsehide leather
used for boots, gloves, jackets, baseballs and baseball gloves. Also for making sabas, milk containers in Central Asia;
Kunis
fermented horse milk;
Mare’s milk
used mainly by nomadic people such as the Mongols;
Premarin
a mixture of oestrogens extracted from the urine of pregnant mares, previously widely used as a drug for hormone replacement therapy;
Tail hair
used to braid ropes and to make baskets, belts, bird nests, hair and industrial brushes, buttons, carpet, curlers, fishing line, furniture padding, hats, lariats, fishing nets, plumes for military hats, horse bridles, surgical sutures, upholstery cloth, bows for string instruments, artists’ brushes, whips and wigs;
Tibia
sharpened into a probe called a spinto, used in Italy to test the readiness of hams as they cure.
Breeds
Horse breeds are loosely divided into three categories based on general temperament: spirited “hot bloods” bred for speed and endurance; “cold bloods” such as draft horses and some ponies, suitable for slow, heavy work; and “warmbloods” developed from crosses between hot bloods and cold bloods, often focusing on creating breeds for specific riding purposes such as dressage and eventing, particularly in Europe. There are more than 300 breeds of horse recognised in the world today, developed for many different uses.
Literary References
“When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk: he trots the air; the earth sings w
hen he touches it; the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes.”
– William Shakespeare (WS), Henry V
RICHARD: A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!
CATE: Withdraw, my lord; I’ll help you to a horse.
– WS, Richard III
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
– 14th century ref. to King Richard III, from C11 German proverb – Diz ſagent uns die wîſen, ein nagel behalt ein îſen, ein îſen ein ros, ein ros ein man, ein man ein burc, der ſtrîten kan – The wise tell us that a nail keeps a shoe, a shoe keeps a horse, a horse keeps a man (knight), a man who can fight, keeps a castle.
So I have had to pay in spades for my vanity, because I ought to have understood that my feeble Rocinante could never withstand a horse so immensely strong as the Knight of the White Moon’s.
– Cervantes, Don Quixote, Volume 2, Chapter 66
“My horses understand me tolerably well; I converse with them at least four hours every day. They are strangers to bridle or saddle, they live in great amity with me, and friendship to each other.”
– J Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, Book 4, ‘In the land of the Houyhnhnms’
Cannon to the right of them,
Cannon to the left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
Boldyly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.
– Alfred Lord Tennyson, ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’
Since that Neolithic moment when first a horse was haltered, there were those among men who understood this. They could see into the creature’s soul and soothe the wounds they found there.
– Nicholas Evans, The Horse Whisperer
At the battle of Waterloo men formed squares into which the wounded were brought for medical care. At the height of the battle, in the madness of the cannonading and death, the riderless horses of the cavalry, the caisson horses of the slaughtered gun crews attempted to penetrate the squares to be saved by the humans.
– Thomas McGuane, Some Horses
It seems that horses have no relations; at least they never know each other after they are sold.
– Anna Sewell, Black Beauty
No matter how good a man is, there’s always some horse can pitch him.
– John Steinbeck, The Red Pony
“I don’t like people,” said Velvet. “… I only like horses.”
– Enid Bagnold, National Velvet
People may talk of first love – it is a very agreeable event, I dare say – but give me the flush, and triumph, and glorious sweat of a first ride.
– George Burrow, Lavengro
Somehow the horse has managed to connect himself with so much that is interesting and valuable in life, that we cannot abuse or insult him without wounding our self respect.
– John Osgood, The Vermont Farmer
A good rider on a good horse is as much above himself and others as the world can make him.
– Lord Herbert
I always imagined I could read in the conduct of the horse a certain measure of the character of its owner.
– John Osgood, The Vermont Farmer
You can tell a gelding, you can ask a mare, but you must discuss it with a stallion.
– Anonymous
When you are on a great horse, you have the best seat you will ever have.
– Sir Winston Churchill
If I was not a princess, I would like to be a horse.
– Princess, later Queen Elizabeth II, age 6
1 For oblique reasons, around a decade ago Australian botanists filched the genus name Acacia and declared we had to call our African acacias variously Vachellia or Senegalia. But we don’t have to if we don’t want to.
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