by Pamela Jekel
In the distance, they heard new and strange noises, almost like a flock of birds settling on the ground.
Desta swung her binoculars away from the horizon. “It’s the Mara pack.”
“Lions?” Chase asked again.
“Wild dogs.” Jomo climbed back on the roof. “A decade ago, we had none in the Mara. But now they’ve moved in, following the game. They were almost extinct once, but they’re coming back. You may see something now, lad.”
The pack of dogs seemed to be playing, cavorting and frisking about, chirping and yipping to one another, almost dancing among the herds, with little obvious intent to hunt. But each time they moved close to any herd, the animals stopped grazing, all heads up. If the dogs moved nearer still, the herds scattered in panic, and the dogs watched them closely, even as they played. There were six dogs, small, dark, and brindled, with rounded bat ears, white tips at their tails and broad skulls. Their sharp pointed muzzles were short, and when they grinned and yawned, their white teeth flashed. Jomo carefully drove the jeep closer. He said, “They’re watching the zebra foals.”
One of the female dogs with slightly sagging belly-skin and obvious teats seemed to be the pack leader, and she suddenly stopped playing with her pack mates, her round ears pricked forward, as she scanned a zebra herd that was running past her. There were foals in the herd, and she rounded on one mare and foal and began to run. Jomo moved the jeep again, so they had a clear view of the hunt. In an instant the pack mood changed, a jolt of electricity raced through the wildebeests, zebra, and gazelle, and the animals charged away with single-minded desperation to survive.
“They’re the most effective hunters on the plains,” Jomo said. “The wolves of Africa. Bad-smelling, four-toed wolves. They’re not sprinters like the cheetah or ambushers like the leopard. They use teamwork like lions, but they’re better at it, because they can run forever. Off they go,” he said, pointing as the pack had separated the mare and her foal from the rest of the herd and were running them down. “Now watch.” He had his binoculars to his eyes. “They make it look so easy.”
The dogs were chasing the mare intently, streaming across the plains with an economy of movement, lean bodies stretched out in easy leaps after their prey, chirping and yipping to encourage each other. Suddenly, the lead bitch put on a spurt of speed, caught the foal by its hind leg, expertly flipped it on its side, and went in for the kill, but the mare whirled on her and charged. The bitch dodged, the pack circled, and the foal jumped up and ran towards its mother. They tried to make it back to the safety of the herd, but the bitch leaped at the foal again, sunk her teeth in its nose, and braced herself with all her weight, tugging backwards. The mare turned to charge again, but the rest of the pack was ready for her and surged forward, snapping at her heels and leaping at her belly.
The foal’s mouth opened as it tried to breathe, and they could hear its soft cry. The bitch dragged the foal’s head lower, and it made a last frantic bray. At that sound, the rest of the pack surged up and tore into its belly, opening it swiftly. The mare rushed them again, but half-heartedly, and she was easily turned away by one dog. The foal slid to its front knees, its neck still extended, its muzzle still clamped by the bitch remorselessly, its entrails now out of its body. The bitch let go the nose and joined the pack at the foal’s belly. The foal raised its head one last time, its eyes sought its mother, and struggled to keep her in its sight over the digging, rooting bodies of the dogs, while she stood motionless only a few feet away, gazing at her foal eaten alive.
“This is hard to watch, I know.” Jomo’s voice was suddenly gentle. “But the foal is in deep shock now and likely feels little.”
“Why doesn’t she do something?” Chase asked, his throat thick with horror.
“She knows there’s nothing she can do,” Baako said. “Her instincts tell her to survive and have more foals.”
After the foal was nothing but a flopping, jerking carcass, its only movement and sounds being those of the dogs half-inside its body, the mare turned and walked away. The rest of the herd stood watching, their ears all turned to the dogs, their flanks packed tightly together. Hundreds of other zebra clans were grazing close by, seemingly blind to the death that had just occurred, and the mare joined her family, moved off, and grazed with the others.
The dogs fed quickly and quietly, with none of the snarling or snapping of a lion pride, each one gulping as much meat as swiftly as possible, no fighting over positions or portions, only the smacking sound of wet meat being devoured. The bitch moved off first, licking her red muzzle, and the carcass was down to the bare rib cage, although only eight minutes had passed since the foal gave its last bray.
“They’ll carry it back to the pups,” Baako said. “She’s obviously had some lately. When they’re old enough to hunt, they’ll be given first place at the kill, but for now, they stay behind, and every member of the pack will feed them and the auntie left to watch them.”
“Vomit it up, he means,” Desta said.
“An efficient way to carry large portions of meat back to the den,” Jomo said. “They’ve no pockets, after all. Oho,” he added, “here comes trouble.”
Three hyenas came out of the bush, dark and dappled, loping towards the kill. The herds parted calmly to let them pass, sensing that they were focused on the carcass and the dog pack, not the live prey around them. The hyenas came round the side of the jeep, ignoring the people and the machine. By using the jeep as cover, they were able to get closer to the kill without actually showing themselves, although the dogs certainly knew they were there, darting glances towards the jeep as they ate even more quickly.
After a moment of sniffing the air and watching the dogs, they deliberately moved towards the kill, whooping softly, tauntingly, three of them abreast. The bitch trotted back to the kill and began to eat again, growling a warning to keep off. The hyenas moved closer, giggling maniacally, their sloping hindquarters almost dragging on the dust in a move designed to be appeasing, but another dog, a large male, left the kill and rushed at them, snarling and snapping. The hyenas stopped and whooped among themselves for a moment, as though conferencing their strategy.
The dogs moved shoulder to shoulder now, finishing the largest parts of the foal. Both eyes were gone, the most tender parts of the flanks, all of the belly down to the rib cage, and the legs stuck up stiff and splayed in the air, still jerking with the tugging, thrusting of the dogs. The pack pointedly ignored the hyenas, which moved ever closer, still whooping and giggling and moaning as if in piteous hunger.
The bitch left the carcass first, taking off in an easy stride across the plains, without a backward glance at the carcass or the rest of the pack. Her belly was swollen now with meat, and her tongue moved over her jaws as she loped back through the herds which divided before her without haste or fear. Another dog turned from the carcass to follow her, then another, and finally the last dog left, never looking in the direction of the hyenas. With each dog that abandoned the kill, the hyenas moved closer, until finally they ringed the rib cage of the foal which was still attached to the legs and the head. The last dog to leave had to practically push through them, and he snarled and snapped, causing one hyena to snort and dodge.
What had been a fat and sleek little foal a dozen minutes before was now nothing but a bag of wet skin, a head, and bones. The hyenas fell on the carcass immediately, dragging it towards a culvert, making hideous yapping and groaning noises, cracking the bones of the legs and the neck.
“If there’d been more hyenas or less dogs, it would have been a different scene,” Jomo said. “The hyenas are scrappier than the dogs, much tougher in a stand-down.” He glanced at Chase. “You don’t look quite as green as I would expect for your first close-up kill. It can be pretty gruesome. First time Desta saw a foal taken, she wept.”
“Are you going to cry?” Baako’s question was light and taunting.
“Nenda kajitombe,” Chase muttered. Go fuck yourself.
“Shut
it, you two,” Jomo said.
Desta turned and glared at them both.
“So. Let’s have a go at the river, shall we? Always something brewing down there,” Jomo said.
He drove the jeep slowly through the animals, and they parted around him like a vast multi-colored sea. The wildebeest bulls were the most disconcerting to watch, standing and staring at them and then suddenly erupting in a mad circling rush or a frenzy of bucking, leaping about without apparent pattern or dignity. One bull in particular seemed particularly crazed, leaping into the air, kicking legs in all directions at once, blarting frantically as though to warn the others of a dire calamity that only he could see.
“They call them the clowns of the Serengeti,” Jomo said, weaving the jeep expertly around termite mounds, culverts, and snorting, bolting animals. “Looks like God put them together from spare parts. The dragging hind end of a hyena, the head of a horse, horns of a buffalo, ears of a rabbit, beard of a goat. They were born to pronk.”
“What’s that?” Chase asked.
“That ridiculous bounce they do, like a Tommy or an impala. Zebra don’t do it, and the bigger antelopes don’t, but wildebeest pronk like they’re mad as hatters. Nevertheless, they have a swarm intelligence that makes them brilliantly impressive.”
“Tell us all about it, Wiki,” Baako said.
Desta laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Jomo asked in genuine confusion.
“Wiki. Like Wikipedia. That’s you, Baba.” Desta stroked the back of his neck. “You know something about everything.”
Jomo tried not to smile. “Well, I hardly think that’s the case.”
“Go on,” Chase said, “what’s swarm intelligence?”
Jomo went on with relish. “It’s where a species systematically overcomes an obstacle with one mind. In other words, the individuals don’t really think as individuals. They only feel safe in a group, doing what the group is doing, even if it kills them. For example, when they cross a river, it looks like chaos with hundreds dying needlessly, but truth be told, there’s a method to the madness. A few are sacrificed so that the majority of them survive. It’s usually the old and the young, the weakest, that don’t make it. The strong ones do, and pass on that strength in their DNA, making the herd tougher each year.”
“Of course, the crocs get tougher, too,” Baako said.
“Everybody must eat.” Jomo drove to the brink of the Mara River, where hundreds of animals crowded the edge, trying to drink all at once. He parked the jeep on a high bank, so they could watch the drama below. “They’re quite strong, actually. A wildebeest can injure a lion with a good kick. They can run more than eighty kilometers an hour. The act like silly sods, but they’ve got some fairly sophisticated cooperative behavior patterns. They take turns sleeping and standing guard, for example. And they manage to calve within a few days of each other. Half a million calves, all at once. Safety in numbers. But they need that because they’re dumb as stones, individually. Unlike the zebra, who actually have fewer young to look after and more brains to do it with. One scarcely ever sees a lost zebra foal, but with the gnu---we call them that as well---it’s typical to see hundreds of them separated from their foolish mothers in the crowds, and then they’re doomed. Any number of killers looking to pick them off. I’ve actually seen a newborn wildebeest totter up hopefully to a waiting lion, while his idiotic mother searches in the wrong direction.”
“Do the zebras have their babies all at once, too?” Chase asked.
“No, they foal all year, and they somehow manage to keep their progeny to what the stallion can hope to protect.”
The noise from the river as the wildebeest jostled for drinking positions was deafening at this close range. The grunts and bellows, snorts and groans made a riot of sound, and it got much worse when the zebras joined in, kicking and barking and squealing. As they watched from that height, they could clearly see crocodiles submerged very near the bank, waiting for an animal to step into the river shallows.
At one side stood the more delicate impalas, their golden bodies taut with nervous energy, starting and leaping aside at the least wheeze of warning from a zebra. But they did not run. They needed the water.
As though at a silent signal, the wildebeests surged forward in a frantic avalanche of bodies, tossing their heads and rolling their eyes, a calf and cow were pushed to the front, and they stumbled into the shallows to drink. The cow tried to maneuver behind a rock, so as to provide some protection for her calf from the pushing animals, and the calf stuck to her side determinedly, shoving his flanks under her belly. The water exploded before the cow, and a crocodile lunged at her head; she reared and twisted to get away, stumbled over her calf, and both of them went down into the water, her calf pinned under her belly.
The huge crocodile thrust forward again, and in the spray of water and the confusion of kicking, twisting animals, for a moment, they could not see who was the victim. “Get up, get up!” Desta whispered urgently, leaning forward on the doorsill of the jeep, her eyes jammed into her binoculars. The cow was scrambling up the bank, but where was the calf? “There he is!” She slapped the jeep in triumph. The calf had somehow been shoved behind the rock, and as the crocodile slipped back into the river and invisibility, he stood up, tottering and splay-legged, wet but unharmed. Blurting and bleating his indignation at having been rolled on by his mother, he followed her up the bank on shaking legs.
“Did they even get to drink?” Chase asked.
“Probably not,” Baako said, “so now they have to get to the front again and start all over.”
“The shadows are getting longer,” Jomo said. “We’ve got about an hour before your mother will want a starter, her sundowner, and some company. Who’s famished?”
“I am, Wiki.” Desta patted her father’s shoulder with approval. “Brilliant show you put on here.”
They backed the jeep gingerly from the brink and maneuvered through the herds, making no abrupt turns, letting them move away from the vehicle with few surprises.
“You don’t use the horn?” Chase asked as a zebra snorted and shied away, kicking once in rebuke.
“Try not to,” Jomo said, going around a culvert and a trotting line of warthogs and piglets. “Seems uncivilized.”
“You use it in Nairobi quick enough,” Baako chuckled.
“Yes I do, don’t I?” Jomo shook his head. “How extraordinary of me. That lot deserves it; this lot doesn’t.”
Finally, they drew within sight of their camp again, and now the glow of a campfire greeted them. Lanterns were lit and hung on each tent, even though the sun was not yet at the horizon. In the other corner of the sky, the moon was already rising, as if to hurry the sun along, and they gathered at the fire for cool drinks and a re-telling of the day.
Jata sat them down to a dinner of roast pork, noodles, and applesauce, and she said, “Bwana bring meat soon, or pork on his table again.”
Jomo laughed. “You heard her, lads. The hunters must provide. No rest for the wicked.”
As though to punctuate his remarks, a loud groaning roar echoed over the plains and rolled into their camp with the darkening shadows. Another joined it from the same direction, crashing through the dusk, stilling the birds and silencing the herd noise, until even the insects seemed to stop to listen.
Jomo said, “Well, Chase, there are your lions at last.”
The boy listened to the majestic, defiant roars, announcing the end of the safety of the day and the beginning of the time of the hunters. “They sound big. And really close.”
“Those are likely the pride males,” Jomo said. “The lionesses tend to roar at dawn.”
The sounds of challenge were so clear in those roars, much closer than he had heard them at the farm in the distance. These were lions who owned the bush and who owned the bush in the near vicinity. These were lions which would soon kill, and they were so confident of their ability to do so, that they could signal their intent to the listening prey. E
ach laboring roar ended with a series of deep, coughing, groaning grunts. The air vibrated with the challenge, and every other sound silenced for a moment, even the singing, shrilling cicadas stilled, frogs went quiet, no zebra barked, as though all of nature stopped to listen, frozen in the darkness.
“Almost sounds like he’s in pain,” Chase said.
“More like he’s promising it,” Baako said. “The Maasai say he’s telling everyone who can hear him, ‘Hii nchi ya nani? Yango, Yango, Yango!’ Whose land is this? Mine, mine, mine!”
* * *
They rose when it was still dark, quickly ate some hard-boiled eggs, toast, and tea, and piled into the jeep which Peter had already packed with their guns and gear. Chase was unusually quiet, Jomo thought, and he wondered if the two lads were finding it difficult to share a tent. Sometimes Baako seemed to accept the boy as a brother; other times he was snappish and cruel, doing his best to humiliate Chase. It hurt Jomo to see his son capable of small behavior, even though he understood it. Perhaps the sharing of such experiences as the hunt would help them bond, Jomo hoped. He sensed a reckless wildness in Chase, barely repressed, perhaps the result of the premature loss of his mother. He both feared and respected it.
The dawn in Africa was one of Jomo’s favorite times, though he only truly experienced it when he was out in the bush. Asha liked to rise early on the farm, putter in the garden, walk among the fields, but Jomo relished the wide empty bed when she had left it, the silent cool expanse of the linens all to himself, and so he often missed the time of day he liked best.
In the long hot middle of the day, when the sun and time seemed to slow to a sweaty crawl, one could hear the actual sound of heat in the sing of grasshoppers, the high-pitched drone of crickets, the crackle of dry grass, the panting of dogs, the constant swish of a horse’s tail and stomp of a hoof to send flies moving up in desultory spirals, only to land again. One could hear one’s own breath, panting with the sheer exertion of holding up one’s body, and the languorous slide of the earth grinding to a stop and collapsing under its own weight and hot tropical apathy. No one liked that time of day best, man nor beast.