Cry of the Kalahari

by Mark James Owens

  We ate the banquet under the old acacia tree. Delia and I, not having seen anyone since Bergie’s crew had come with the news of his death, rattled on like ticker-tape machines about the fire and everything we had learned about jackals. When we had finally run down, Kate asked, “By the way, did you know your country has a new president?”

  “No—why, what happened?” I asked.

  “Nixon resigned because of Watergate about a month ago, and someone named Ford has taken his place.” We had not read a newspaper or listened to a radio for more than six months.

  Norbert, who was worried about the trip back to Maun, herded his family to the plane after only an hour. They all waved from the windows as the aircraft roared down the riverbed and lifted into the sky, leaving a tunnel of dust behind. When they were out of sight we walked quietly back to camp. Their brief visit had reminded us of our isolation, and now we felt a loneliness that had not been there before. The bundle of letters they had brought was not likely to offer any consolation. This was it: We had to hear soon about a grant or pack up and go home.

  The mail lay on the butt of a fallen tree, daring us to open it. Delia picked it up, removed the string and began shuffling through the letters. “Here’s something from National Geographic.” Her voice was tense.

  “Well, go ahead and open it—we may as well get it over with,” I said glumly. We had been disappointed so many times, and this was our last hope. Delia tore off the end of the envelope and took out the letter.

  “Mark! It’s a grant! They’ve given us a grant!” She jumped around, waving the papers and cheering. At last someone believed in us—at least in the amount of $3800. We were a bona fide research team.

  After a trip to Maun for supplies, we set about our studies with renewed confidence and determination: Sooner or later the brown hyenas would get used to us and, in the meantime, we would follow jackals until they did. Delia’s stomach ailment immediately disappeared.

  In September the hot-dry season came to the Kalahari. We were as unprepared for it as we had been for winter in July. Almost overnight, midday temperatures climbed above 110 degrees—then up to 116, in the shade of the fallen tree where we had posted our thermometer. The ground outside of camp was too hot for our thermometer, but it must have been over 140 degrees.

  We withered, like the new tender grass, in the strong easterly winds that swept hot and dry across the valley. In the late afternoons, when the winds had quit for the day, our ears rang from the silence. Barren trees, a brown monotony of dead grass and bush, with a bleary simmering sky above: It was a different Kalahari from the one we had known. Moisture escaped our bodies so quickly that our skin stayed dry of perspiration. Our eyes felt scratchy; they seemed to shrink into our skulls, away from the heat.

  We rationed ourselves to seven gallons of water each per week, for bathing, cooking, and drinking. The water from the drums tasted like hot metallic tea, and to cool it for drinking, we filled tin dinner plates and set them in the shade of the acacia. But if we didn’t watch it closely, the water would quickly evaporate or collect bees, twigs, and soil. After washing the dishes, we took sponge baths in the dishwater, then strained the coffee-colored liquid through a cloth into the truck’s radiator. A jerrican stored any excess for later use. We always shared a few cupfuls of fresh water a day with the birds, who flocked to our camp for shade, bread crumbs, and mealie-meal.

  Our skin chapped and flaked, our fingers and toes split and bled. Day after day it was the same: the same T-shirt, ragged cut-offs, and holey tennis shoes, the same grey calcareous dust over everything, the same heat that sapped our strength away. We tried to sleep by lying in the back of the Land Rover with wet towels spread over us, but within fifteen minutes we were covered by a carpet of honeybees attracted to the moisture.

  The grasses of the riverbed, duneslopes, and savannas had become dry and lifeless; the waterholes were dusty. There was no water left to drink anywhere in the Kalahari. Without sufficient moisture in their forage, the antelope herds had broken into smaller groups of fifteen or so and nearly all had left the fossil river, dispersing over thousands of square miles of range. By spreading out into the sandveld to browse from trees and shrubs, and to dig up fleshy roots and succulent tubers with their hooves, most of the antelope had survived the dry months without drinking. Soon after their departure from the riverbed, the lions, leopards, and other large predators had followed.

  By October it had been more than six months since we had seen rain, or even a cloud. Then one afternoon we noticed furry cat paws of vapor tracking into the eastern sky. The hot wind died and a curious quiet fell over the valley. Worn out from heat and night work, we dragged ourselves from camp and stood in the open, watching the billowing vapor above. A lone springbok faced the tentative clouds, his head raised in the sweltering heat waves, as though praying for relief. But the white ghosts vanished before the sun.

  Each afternoon they came back, but they only dissolved in the heavy heat that ran like molten glass over the bleary image of the dunes. We were constantly dizzy and could not concentrate enough to read, repair the truck, or perform even the simplest of tasks. We were irritable and our arms and legs seemed too heavy to drag around. At night we followed jackals anyway, always hoping to see a brown hyena. Each hot, sleepless day began at dawn, before the heat, when we worked on our soil sampling, grass transects, and fecal analysis. Three weeks of this were about all we could take, then we would collapse for a cool night of deep sleep.

  Most of the jackals along the valley had paired, each pair having established a territory of about one square mile, including a portion of prime riverbed habitat and an adjoining section of duneslope bush savanna. Captain and Mate held Cheetah Hill, Bonnie and Clyde defended an area near “Last Stop,” Gimpy and Whinnie roamed east of North Tree, Sundance and Skinny Tail owned North Bay Hill, and so on. They called every sunset and periodically throughout the night, and we could recognize each of the seven pairs by their voices or by their location in relation to camp.

  Their thick, black saddles of long hair insulated them against the sun to a great degree. All Captain and Mate seemed to need for shelter was the patchy shade of a small leafless bush on Cheetah Hill, where they slept through the scorching days. Even the early mornings and late afternoons were hot now, and they hunted only at night, when it was cool. They had had no water to drink for months, and we often saw them fighting other pairs of jackals for the moisture in a single wild melon.

  November clouds tantalized us: Their filmy curtains of rain smelled incredibly sweet and fresh—but always fell somewhere far away in the desert. None of the clouds was dark and heavy enough to challenge the great convective barrier of heat that rose from the baking riverbed.

  One day the morning winds did not come; the air was utterly still, as though waiting. At midmorning clouds began building beyond West Prairie. Hour by hour they grew until they stood shoulder to shoulder, towering columns of water vapor too big for the sky. By midafternoon the purple-black sky was boiling with vapor. Daggers of lightning slashed across the clouds and thunder boomed through the valley.

  After weeks of disappointment we were sure the storm would probably pass us by. But then an avalanche of black cloud tumbled over the shoulder of West Dune, sucking up a yellow blizzard of sand as it rolled toward camp. The stagnant air began stirring around us. We ran to the truck and backed it out from under the trees.

  Thirty yards from camp I turned the rear of the truck to the coming storm. Seconds later, the sand and wind slammed into us. We pressed our shirts to our faces, trying to breathe in the grey air while the Land Rover rocked and creaked, the keys jingling in the ignition. Hail drummed on the truck’s metal roof, and through the windshield we could see boxes, sacks, pots, pans, and other bits of camp rising into the air. The acacia tree was reeling like a crazed animal clawing at itself.

  At last it was raining. Water was streaming through gaps in the window frames and trickling into our laps. “Smell it! Smell it! Go
d, how wonderful! How beautiful!” we shouted over and over.

  The storm came in surges, craggy fingers of lightning skittering over the low, black clouds, causing a ghostly blue glow to reflect off the rain and sand in the air. Much later that night, we finally drifted off to sleep between gusts of wind that shook the truck.

  The valley was bright with sunshine when we opened our eyes the next morning. But it was not the same malevolent sun that had scorched the Kalahari for months. Soft, mellow rays caressed the backs of several hundred springbok, nibbling grass bases succulent with glittering droplets. The storm was only a smudge on the distant horizon. From camp we could see Captain and Mate and a pair of bat-eared foxes drinking from puddles on the spongy desert floor.

  Our clothes, pans, papers, and other belongings were scattered over the riverbed. Delia recovered a pot fifty yards from camp and cooked a porridge of oats mixed with sorghum and samp—cracked com. After breakfast we began picking up the pieces. The gasoline drum had been rolled halfway across the valley.

  The storm painted the desert green again, and within a week the valley was full of antelope herds dropping their scrawny, floppy-eared fawns into the new sprouts of velvet. Flying termites swarmed after their queens. Bat-eared foxes scurried here and there with their fluffy kits, fattening themselves on the hordes of insects hopping, flying, and crawling everywhere. Everyone was gearing up to have their young and get them reared during this short and fickle period of abundance. Everywhere there was a sense of life renewed, of rebirth after long trials of heat and fire. Other storms soon followed, and with the beginning of the rainy season, daytime temperatures dipped to the midseventies and eighties and blue skies were filled with balmy breezes and brilliant white clouds.

  Perhaps best of all, the same pride of lions that had trapped Delia in the mess tent months before returned to the valley. Their roars in the night and early morning, together with the calls of the jackals, brought the fossil riverbed to life again. We talked of coming back to the Kalahari one day to make a complete study of lions. But first there were the jackals and brown hyenas to reckon with.

  At sunset several days after that first storm of the rainy season, we were having a hurried meal at the campfire before going out to find Captain and Mate. One of the other jackal pairs, Gimpy and Whinnie, began calling east of the Twin Acacias, their strident, quavering, and strangely melodic cries ringing through the valley. We fell silent, moved, as always, by the mournful sound. It seemed to come from the very heart of the desert—the cry of the Kalahari. The others began to join the chorus: Bonnie and Clyde, Sundance and Skinny Tail, and finally, Captain’s deep, hoarse voice, together with Mate’s clear song, from Cheetah Hill.

  “Wait a minute . . . what’s that?” Delia asked. High-pitched breathless squeals tried earnestly to mimic Captain and Mate.

  “Pups!” We jumped into the Land Rover and drove toward the calls. After parking some distance away from the jackals, we peered this way and that, trying to see through the cover of bush. Then Mate appeared at the den opening and lowered her head. When she stepped aside, two powder puffs of fur with wriggling tails, short, fuzzy faces, and stubby black noses waddled into view.

  Mate began licking the faces, backs, and bellies of “Hansel” and “Gretel,” rolling each one over and over in the sand while the other stumbled beneath her on stumpy, uncertain legs. Captain lay nearby, his head on his paws. Then Bonnie and Clyde began to call from the north again. Before the calls had died away, they began to answer, Hansel and Gretel standing beside Captain and Mate, their tiny muzzles straining toward the sky.

  Both parents participated in raising their pups, but they had no “helpers,” as have black-backed jackals in other areas of Africa. Dr. Patricia Moehlman1 found that some jackal subadults on the Serengeti Plains remain with their parents to assist in providing for the next litter. They help by regurgitating food to their mother and to their younger brothers and sisters, and by guarding the den. Although we did not see this among the jackals we knew, some other Kalahari pairs may have had helpers. This behavior is often difficult to observe and may not be detected until a species has been studied for perhaps several years.

  In the early weeks, either Captain or Mate was always at the den to guard the pups from predators. After sunset each evening, Captain would walk over to Mate, Hansel and Gretel romping around his feet, biting his ears, legs, and the tip of his tail, and he would touch her nose with his. Then, lifting his feet high and stepping over the tumbling pups, he would trot away to hunt, leaving Mate to tend the litter. Once their father was out of the way, Hansel and Gretel would immediately begin pestering their mother, chewing her ears, rolling over her face, tumbling across her back, and pouncing on her tail. Mate was tolerant, but seldom took an active part in the play.

  From the very beginning, adult behavior patterns were apparent in the pups’ activities. They repeatedly practiced the holds, stalks, pounces, and killing bites that would make them successful hunters as adults. If their mother wouldn’t cooperate, they attacked each other, or else the grass clumps and sticks within a few feet of the den.

  The pups were about three weeks old when Captain began bringing them raw meat to eat. Wagging their tails, the youngsters would burst from the entrance and rush to their father, licking his lips hungrily, begging for food. He would open his jaws wide and regurgitate a slimy mass of partially digested mice and birds on the ground before them. As Hansel and Gretel gobbled up the steaming hash, Captain would settle under a nearby bush to rest and babysit while Mate trotted off to hunt.

  As soon as the pups had been partially weaned on fresh meat, their parents began taking them for short excursions away from the den. The adults strolled along while the youngsters romped and played, smelling bushes, grasses, antelope droppings—everything they could get their noses on. They were learning more and more about their fossil river environment. One of the most valuable lessons for the pups on these early morning forays was how to kill and eat insects. This was an important predatory skill, for it allowed them to supplement their diet of milk and regurgitated meat while Mate was weaning them.

  Now that Hansel and Gretel were better able to look after themselves, Captain and Mate began to hunt together again, leaving the pups to forage for insects near the den. One night the parents hunted an area that included the riverbed east of the Cheetah Hill sand tongue, the hill itself, and a slip of bush and woodland behind it. They moved along, each pausing frequently to cock a hind leg and scent-mark a low shrub or woody herb along the boundary of their territory.

  They had just entered the duneslope woodlands when Mate began dancing around something on the ground ahead, her tail waving in the air. Captain rushed to her and found a nine-foot black mamba, one of Africa’s most poisonous snakes, its body reared three feet off the ground and ready to strike. The mamba’s tongue flicked in and out, its sinister coffin-shaped head drawn back like a crossbow ready to fire.

  Captain feinted this way and that, trying to get past the snake’s defenses. But the beady eyes tracked him like a missile. Wherever he moved, the mamba adjusted itself, waiting.

  Mate moved around until she was opposite Captain, with the snake between them. She darted toward it, and for an instant it was distracted. With a motion too quick to follow, Captain lunged for the mamba, but it had recovered its attention and it struck. Several feet of its long ropy body sprang off the ground as Captain dodged away in a shower of sand, the lethal head barely missing his shoulder.

  Instantly he was back on the attack, pouncing again and again, and each time the mamba struck, he jumped away. He would not let up; after each strike, the snake was taking a little longer to rear and prepare for another attack.

  It was when the mamba was trying to recover after a miss that Captain managed to nip it hard on the back. Tired and injured, it tried to crawl away. But Mate blocked the retreat, and it raised itself and made another thrust, just missing Captain when he charged forward. Before it could escape, he bit it h
ard about three feet back from the head, and then again. It was writhing now. Finally, after several more bites, he held it for a split second and shook it violently, its coils squirming about his legs. Then he dropped it, and grabbing the dangerous head, crushed it in his jaws.

  At that point the perilous hunt became a comedy. As soon as Captain seized the mamba’s head, Mate grabbed its tail. In contrast to their supreme cooperation of just seconds before, they now began yanking at either end of the snake in a tug of war, each trying to run off with the prize. They glared, eyes blazing and ears laid back, along several feet of reptile. Their hackles bristled and their tails slashed as they seesawed back and forth, until finally the snake was yanked into two equal lengths of stringy white meat. Each began feeding feverishly; it took them nearly ten minutes to finish. Then they rolled in the grass, sniffed noses, nibbed faces, and trotted off together on a border patrol of their territory, their bellies round and bouncing.

  Before we thought to tape a tiny calendar inside the cover of one of our field journals, we had lost track of the date. Judging from the time of our last supply trip to Maun, we guessed that Christmas 1974 must be near. Without the money or time to go to the village for the holiday, we picked a day and began preparations for celebrating it at camp.

  One morning, after great deliberation, we selected and cut a half-dead broad-leafed Lonchocarpus nelsii tree from the dune woodlands and hauled it back to camp on top of the Land Rover. We decorated the tree with the thermometer, some red collaring material, a few syringes, and the dissection scalpels, scissors, and forceps, adding the hand scales, a lantern, a springbok jawbone, the defective fire extinguisher, and various paraphernalia from around camp. Once we had tied these onto the branches of the tree, we began to plan our Christmas dinner.