Children peppered me with questions, some of them so ingenious and unexpected that I had a hard time keeping a straight face and treating them with the serious consideration they deserved. On numerous occasions I saw fear or indifference turned to wonderment. And as young people, with all their vigour and appetite for life still un-jaded, do so easily they progressed to caring passionately. I received drawings and poems dedicated to Bwana. They wrote me letters to enquire about his wellbeing and to tell me about their own efforts to support conservation.
Once a teacher, always a teacher – this was work after my own heart. But I wasn’t just sharing information about the behaviour of black rhino, their nature, their food and habitat requirements. I believe that an attempt to open someone’s eyes to the wonders of the natural world is much more than teaching, or a recruitment drive for the cause of conservation. Volumes of feedback have strengthened my belief that a wider awareness of the natural world enhances our own life experience. Our need of the natural world is as great as its need of our care and protection. If we have no access to wilderness we are, in a deep and profound sense, homeless.
This was the theme of Clive’s 1982 publication, Twilight of the Giants. He documented what he’d seen in northern Namibia, Botswana, and Tongaland: free-roaming herds of elephants were making a last stand, and so were the people who for centuries had lived with them. For the Ovahimba, the Bayé and the Tonga, the life they used to know was passing. Rituals and routines of a life with the wild were no longer possible. Wisdoms, which had been passed on for generations, lost their frame of reference, and with it, their meaning and purpose. In a world of diminishing freedom and unravelling biodiverse integrity, the elephants were not the only losers. A fight for wildlife conservation is ultimately also a fight for people, not against them. We lose such fights at our peril.
More than 30 years later I have to wonder if it’s too late now. Has too much been lost already? I don’t know. There are people far more qualified than I to answer such questions. All I know is that I have seen many of the wild areas we still have left needing to become “managed” environments because natural regulating systems have been compromised.
In nature and game reserves we have to install artificial waterholes to counteract the depredations suffered by wildlife populations no longer able to follow ancient migration routes between water and food sources; we have to manage their population sizes according to the carrying capacity of the areas in which we allow them to exist; we have to inoculate and vaccinate to contain disease outbreaks. It becomes harder and harder to simply let nature take its course: we rescue injured and orphaned animals – like Bwana and Mothlo.
On Monday 12 February 1996 this was the discussion on our Doornleegte verandah: to rescue or to leave be. Dale and Elizabeth Parker were about to depart after staying with us for a few days and now, at the breakfast table, we’d all agreed that, even if for no other reason, the enormous amount of extra work generated by adopting a wild animal was sufficient argument against taking on anymore. Enough was enough. No more rescues, no more orphans.
I poured another round of coffee and tried to ignore the sounds of a radio call coming from inside the house. I could feel Clive looking at me, but refused to look up. I fussed with coffee cups and biscuits and thought: No more orphans, you all agreed – no more orphans.
Rangers had called in an emergency; the reserve manager was on his way to the scene. On the verandah all conversation ceased. I drank my coffee and wondered who was going to be the first one to say it. Dale and Elizabeth looked at each other: perhaps they should at least go and see for themselves. With that I accepted the inevitable. Elizabeth was a mother; Dale was Dale – if he could not have resisted fully grown rhino, what were the chances that he’d be able to steel his heart against a white rhino calf, a little female, attempting to suckle from her dead mother?
They left with Clive and I shouted out the back door for Titus. Rosina stared at me.
“We’re getting another one, Rosina. Tshukudu. White rhino.”
She rolled her eyes and started rummaging through the store cupboards for the leftovers of our milk powder supply. While I waited for Titus I heard the radio updates. The calf’s predicament had actually been discovered the previous afternoon when the standby rangers, while checking all watering points as part of their weekend duties, saw the tracks of a rhino calf leading away from a waterhole. There was no sign of the mother’s tracks and that was a cause for concern. They followed the tracks to the spot where the forlorn little calf was desperately trying to obtain nourishment from the decomposing carcass of a large rhino cow. Unfortunately, with the field rangers away on weekend leave, the standby rangers’ report had to wait.
Early on Monday morning the field rangers were horrified at what they saw. The mother must have been dead for days. The cause of death they’d investigate later, but first they had to make a plan with the starving and traumatised calf. The plan was Conita at Doornleegte. So much for the resolve on the verandah that morning. Dale and Elizabeth had to be on their way. They wished me luck and left me to my search for something for which I’d never had the least need before, glucose.
The remainder of Bwana’s fat-free milk powder was fortunately not yet expired, but the white rhino calf would need 100 grams of glucose added to every litre of that formula. I phoned Vaalwater. While I held on for the pharmacy to check on their supply I tried to keep an eye on what was going on outside. We had moved Bwana to his larger enclosure so that his sleeping quarters and feeding enclosure could be re-customised to accommodate the new arrival. We weren’t quite sure what was coming. Beyond the fact that she was a hungry white rhino calf of undetermined age I had no idea what special preparations might be required. The basics, however, kept us busy enough: everything had to be thoroughly cleaned and scrubbed and a new mud pool created in record time. There was a lot of running and shouting, and as on all occasions when Magog was in a hurry, much hilarity.
The pharmacy came back on the line. They had a small quantity of glucose, but they never kept more than 500 grams in stock. My heart sank. That would not do for even a single feed. But there was no time for any more searching: the radio call had come through – they were on their way. It was Clive’s voice on the radio and while I urged the workers to hurry up I was thinking about that voice. Clive isn’t given to dramatising. If anything, he errs on the opposite side, making light of situations that might cause many others to fall down in a faint. He takes things in his stride.
“We’re moving. 30 minutes.” There were no jokes, none of the light mood of the morning.
At first all I saw was that the ranger’s vehicle had an awful lot of people on the back. There were in fact ten of them. Ten strong men only just managing to hold onto a rhino calf, hip-height to them and obviously extremely powerful.
Clutching my bottle of unsweetened milk formula I scrambled up onto the vehicle and into that crush of sweating muscle and noise. Close to the calf it was clear that she was in a shocking state of exhaustion and distress. She was only a few months old, but she was already strong enough and at that moment out of control enough to do serious damage to anything or anybody within reach. In an attempt to reduce her anxiety a cloth had been put over her eyes. When it was removed her look of terror was pitiful.
Try as we might, we couldn’t get any milk into her and all the commotion of our attempts to force open her mouth resulted in nothing except a worsening of the situation. I jumped down and told the rangers to get her into her new sleeping quarters. Easier said than done. Everyone had to pitch in, pick her up and carry her. She resisted, furiously, and didn’t stop even after she’d been put down and the heavy steel-barred gate slammed shut between her and us. Her repeated aggressive charges into the walls and gate soon resulted in her little horn shearing off. Her mouth and horn-bed bled profusely. I thought it best to get everyone out of sight so that she could calm down.
Several phone calls later I was a little reassured. She could survive
without milk and water, I was told, for a maximum of ten days. Plenty of time to settle and get to know me. I was hopeful of being able to get her to drink long before her life was in danger. I kept checking on her. Her aggression was not letting up. The moment she sensed my presence she instantly went into attack. As the day wore on, my confidence, fragile at best, was eroding. By sunset it was gone.
Dinner was a gloomy affair. I tried to be positive and told Clive about my ten-day window in which to win her over. He didn’t look up from his food.
“She’s already very dehydrated,” he said.
“Still full of fight.”
“Pure adrenaline, that’s all.”
“We have time.”
He looked up. “When do you think that rhino cow died?”
“I don’t know. You were there, you tell me.”
“That calf has not had milk for many days. You don’t have ten days any more. Nothing like it.”
“So how much time…”
He shook his head and looked down. We finished our meal in silence. He got up to help me clear the table. “Munyane,” he said. “The rangers named her Munyane – Little One.”
Of all the things that happened in Lapalala and in the world outside that next week I remember only one: Munyane’s struggle. She fought for her life the only way she knew how and that was to fight against everything.
It was so different from my experience with Bwana. To some extent it was attributable to the fact that she had already spent a considerable amount of time with her natural mother in their natural environment. She’d already learnt something of being a wild rhino, with her instincts and behaviour attuned to her survival within that environment, not the one in which she found herself at Doornleegte. That was already a double trauma: the loss of her mother at far too young an age for independence, and the loss too of the only world she knew.
There was another factor. Black rhino calves grow up in black rhino habitat: typically, dense bush. When they find themselves in enclosed spaces, they calm down more easily than white rhino calves that had been raised in what was their natural habitat, open grasslands. Whereas a black rhino calf follows behind its mother, a white rhino calf goes in front, enabling the mother to keep an eye on her calf and on any threat that might be approaching. Such a calf is accustomed to feeling safe in open spaces, habituated to an infinitely wider horizon than that of a Doornleegte enclosure.
Munyane refused to drink. Bottle-feeding, even with the correct sweetened formula, was a lost cause and so was everything else I tried both in her sleeping quarters and in her feeding enclosure. A water trough, a variety of pots and basins, even the two heavy iron ploughshares I half-buried in an attempt to simulate a natural waterhole. Everything got flung around and the ploughshares kicked full of sand. Her dehydration was worrying, but even more so her continued aggression. She was losing blood and hurting herself with her unabated charges, but no matter how quietly I approached she immediately hurled herself at the gate between us. Her strength, even in a weakened state, was tremendous. On the other side of that buckling, lifting, steel-barred gate I stood my ground, but the power of her assault scared me.
In my desperation, I made a bad decision. At that point I felt that getting liquid into her was so urgent it was worth any price. I was haunted for days afterwards by the memory of the rangers whose help I’d enlisted forcing open her mouth so I could pour some milk into it. Her screams were ear-shattering. She was resisting as aggressively as ever, and in her eyes I only saw that same terror with which she had arrived. Some milk went down, perhaps not even enough to make a difference. It didn’t seem worth the additional stress inflicted on her, further depleting her remaining reserves. The rangers left and I alone remained outside the gate to be charged over and over again by an animal that seemed beyond my help.
There was more stress coming for her. We called in a veterinarian. Munyane had now gone for seven days at Doornleegte without taking in any nourishment and the wounds on her face urgently needed to be treated. It took gritted teeth, a heavy table top and a great deal of patience, but at long last Titus and I managed to back her into a corner of her enclosure. Dr Walter Eschenburg had a tough time with his enraged patient but when he left Doornleegte, I took what comfort I could from the fact that Munyane’s wounds had been treated and she’d been injected with a vitamin booster and a broad-spectrum antibiotic.
There was a Johannesburg trip waiting for Clive. When he couldn’t put it off any longer I helped him pack and nagged him to get going. Usually a man of quick and decisive action, he now dawdled and debated reasons for trying to delay the trip even more.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I know you. That’s an extremely dangerous animal, but all you see is that she’s a baby. You’ll do something stupid.”
I closed his overnight case and shoved it towards him. “I won’t.”
At the front door he stopped and glared at me. “You won’t open her gate?”
“No.”
At the garden gate: “You won’t try to go in with her?”
“No.”
“She can kill you. You have to promise.”
“Yes, yes, I promise.”
Through the driver’s window with the engine running: “You’ll get some rest? You can’t go on like this. You need to sleep.”
“As soon as you’re out of sight I’ll be in my deck chair.”
I got a frown and a finger shaken at me. I waved him down the driveway and within half an hour was, as promised, in the deck chair, though not in the usual location on the verandah. Around me were my sleeping bag, a notebook, a novel, bottles of water and five litres of prepared milk formula. A few inches away the steel bars shuddered under Munyane’s furious charges. I took a deep breath and started to talk to her.
I knew I was being sentimental and unscientific. I didn’t care. We were at last resorts.
She kept charging, I kept talking. With my stomach in a knot I tried not to flinch as the gate protested, just talked and talked in as soft and calm a voice as I could manage, calling her name while she was storming at me.
I dipped into the novel, but against the intermittent shuddering and clanging of the gate it failed to grip. It got dark. Eventually the little rhino was so worn out that she had to rest. It was my opportunity to sneak away for a bathroom break and to refuel my flask for the next shift. No sooner was I back in the chair than the gate gave a little bit more as a solid body slammed into it. I moved my chair a fraction closer, “Munyane, Munyane …”
It felt as if my entire world consisted of just the three of us: that raging young rhino, the gate, and me. I fervently hoped that the one to give in first wouldn’t be the gate.
The night of 18 into 19 February was New Moon, the stars over Doornleegte glittering and glorious. A sky like a benediction.
There have been other such skies, none more spectacular than a night in February 1986.
It began when Clive walked in on our EWT Ladies’ Committee meeting one morning, helped himself to tea and biscuits, and declared, “I’ve been thinking…” If he’d come prepared with arguments against our objections to what he had to propose, he didn’t need them. More often than not the task of the Ladies’ Committee is a thankless one, performed in urban exile far from the wild that is the focus of their efforts. So the chairman’s offer to treat us to our own wilderness trail received a most enthusiastic response. The Ivory Trail was an EWE flagship product, drawing trailists from all over the world to experience the pristine wilderness of areas like Botswana’s Mashatu Game Reserve. Base camp was on the banks of the Limpopo River – an ideal spot for post-trail dinners under the stars while listening to the sounds of the bush. This was prime elephant country, with lion and hyena around too, so when daylight faded one was particularly grateful for the perhaps illusory protection of a tented trails camp with its comforting campfire. On one occasion, though, we broke with tradition and drove out of camp after dinner. In the headlights we saw the jeep trac
k winding through stands of acacia tortillis and heavily browsed mopani – evidence of a healthy presence of Clive’s beloved Tuli elephants. I had reason to trust my husband’s skill among elephants at night, but it’s one thing to do so on my own behalf and quite another to trust it on behalf of the seven other women with us. However, they seemed to have no qualms and when we arrived at our destination, the crown of a prominent koppie near the Majale River, cheerfully shared out sleeping bags, blankets, pillows, torches, coffee and sherry. Mindful of the area’s hyenas we bedded down in a closely spaced row in the lee of the vehicle, and watched our familiar southern stars – so bright in that deep African night – and right overhead, Halley’s Comet.
None of us spoke, but there were sounds enough. Among the smaller and more distant calls of nocturnal wildlife, there were lions roaring; close-by – terrifyingly close-by – the tearing and snapping of branches marked the passage of feeding elephant. Most beautiful of all for me were the nightjars, more than one pair, calling all around our little encampment. Halley’s sank below the horizon and Clive lit a fire to take the first watch. We took turns to watch until dawn and had our coffee as the light lifted that wide expanse of bush into the day.
Such a night deserved a fitting conclusion, so we set off on foot, down the hill and along the Majale for several hours until, in the thick croton bush, we tracked down the herd of elephants that had shared our night. It was a scene of such peace – great grey backs appearing here and there among the lush summer vegetation, magnificent heads lifting above the green as trunks reached for higher branches. Their leisurely feeding took them through a clearing and we could see the juveniles and little ones. We watched until the elephants’ unhurried, silent footfalls had taken them back into the bush and then also took our silent leave of that magical place.
A Rhino in my Garden Page 11