David Bradfield, the chief rhino coordinator who was responsible for all of Lapalala’s field rangers had been seriously, perhaps fatally, injured by a black rhino bull. Bwana.
I phoned Clive in Cape Town to give him what information I had, which was little more than that Clive Ravenhill, the reserve manager, was rushing David to hospital. Then I called Titus. When Bwana, as he’d always done after a breakout, returned to Doornleegte I’d need help – this time he might be in a dangerous mood. After that there was nothing to do except sit down, with Button at my feet, and wait, all the time agonising over David’s survival and wondering how on earth it had come to this.
It wasn’t until a couple of weeks later that we were able to unravel the events of that night.
Bwana had wandered out of the Palala valley, up onto the plateau and found his way to Landmanslust, the home of the reserve manager. At around 9 pm Clive Ravenhill heard noises outside and spotted Bwana near the house. He had some bricks at hand and started throwing. Bwana melted away into the dark. A short distance away, at a spot overlooking the river valley, was Driemanslust, and that was where Bwana turned up at around 10 pm. David Bradfield and his partner, Andrea, had just said goodnight to their house-guest and gone to bed when there was a terrific noise outside: something like the clashing of metal drums and the frantic barking of David’s little mongrel dog, Woogsy.
The dining room lights spilled out only far enough to illuminate the garden path, not the cause of the disturbance, so David grabbed a torch and cautiously went outside to investigate. Bwana was rubbing his horn on Andrea’s car, a borrowed vehicle so this was not to be encouraged. When shooed away Bwana headed for the washing line where laundry had been left to dry overnight. Again David tried to intervene, but Bwana had had enough and charged. David was flipped high into the air and flung to land some distance behind Bwana. He knew rhinos and he also knew the wisdom of rhino specialist, Peter Hitchin’s advice: Avoid the human instinct to curl up in a foetal position – you wouldn’t be able to see the rhino, and he could horn you in your back or vital organs without you being able to do anything to protect yourself. No, make sure you get onto your back so you can keep an eye on him, keep swivelling to face him and push yourself away or shove your boots in his face.
But before David could get into position Bwana was already there, and flipped him a second time. David landed hard, tried to swivel, but again Bwana was too fast for him and kept on mauling him. With his front horn he got David pinned against a small tree; David heard and felt his ribs breaking. At this point Andrea was running between the house and David’s Isuzu bakkie looking for his rifle, and shouting for their house-guest, Magnus, an ex-parks ranger, to come and help.
Finally, with a split-second to spare, David managed to turn onto his back, shoved his feet into Bwana’s face and kept pushing until he somehow found himself able to slide in behind a bigger tree and haul himself into a standing position. Bwana hadn’t given up. They dodged right and left around the tree trunk for a few seconds. David then feinted to one side and as Bwana followed he turned and sprinted for his life. He rounded the house, the charging rhino at his heels, and was pulled in through the front door by Andrea and Magnus just as Bwana was about to connect with him again. David, in shock, anger and frustration turned around, shouted and flung his heavy torch at Bwana. To everyone’s immense relief, the enraged rhino bull finally turned away and trotted off.
Andrea, thankful that it was over, felt that David needed something for shock and left to fetch sugar water. She returned to find him sitting in a pool of blood which was rapidly spreading over their khaki-coloured couch cushions. David hadn’t realised that he’d been gored, but now saw his green game-ranger’s shorts in shreds and a deep wound pulsing blood in his lower back, just below his belt. Wrapped in crepe bandages, deathly pale and in intense pain he was collected by Clive Ravenhill who set about breaking all speed records to the hospital in Vaalwater. Upon arrival there the local doctor made short work of assessing the bigger wound at the back and a smaller one in front, and pronounced that he could clean ’em up, stitch ’em up and have David back on his feet the next day. Clive disagreed and insisted on more specialised care. An ambulance was summoned and David, by now in critical condition, was rushed to St Vincent’s Catholic hospital in Warmbaths (Bela-Bela) 150 kilometres away. There, in the Intensive Care Unit, he was stabilised and the full extent of his injuries discovered. Seven fractured ribs, and a horn-stab which entered from the back, pierced the hipbone, and exited in the groin. David had been fortunate in two respects: he was extremely fit and strong, and Bwana’s horn was unusually smooth – the rougher horns of most rhinos could have done considerably more internal damage and almost certainly would have torn the femoral artery.
Waiting at my kitchen table during the long pre-dawn hours of that January night I knew none of this. I kept hoping for a phone call that could tell me that David had survived the goring, but it didn’t come. All I heard were the small sounds of a house at night. The creaks of something cooling as the temperature dropped; the hum of the fridge and freezer; Button’s small twitches and snores. Many cups of tea later, just before sunrise, Button jerked awake, bristling, and I knew Bwana had at last come home. I shut the door on Button’s frenzied yapping and went outside.
Even if I hadn’t known about David, Bwana’s mood would have told me that there’d been some sort of drama. I’d seen enough of his early-morning returns to know when he’d been involved in a scuffle with another black rhino bull, or had been aggressively attacked by one – invariably he’d come off second-best. This time was different, but he was still running on adrenaline – tense, agitated and wild. With as much quiet, calm confidence as we could muster, Titus and I slowly approached and followed the same procedure that Clive and I had perfected. When at last Bwana was securely locked into his enclosure I stayed behind to watch until he’d calmed down.
Bwana wasn’t mine, he belonged to Lapalala Wilderness. I had taken him on because I’d been asked to. But I’d become so used to the responsibility of caring for him and working with him that it was difficult not to assume the responsibility also for his actions. Out there with just the railing between Bwana and me, I felt as if my rhino had gone and attacked a human being, perhaps killed him. I felt responsible, and without Clive there, very alone.
Every time Bwana had broken out and been attacked by Lapalala’s free-roaming black rhino bulls I felt for him, what I imagined must have been his frustration and pent-up anger. I felt for his situation, trapped as he was somewhere between wild and tame, with no realistic prospect of living a free life. I don’t mind admitting now that I had dreaded the prospect of him encountering a human on one of his walkabout nights. Of course one would pity the human, but I pitied Bwana too.
This was a dilemma the tourists did not see. They saw the cute baby rhino that had grown into a magnificent adult. They saw the fortunate woman who loved that animal; they did not see the one who agonised over his fate. Clive did, and when he returned from his Cape Town trip he was able to give me news of David whom he’d seen in hospital. A full recovery seemed miraculously, mercifully possible. And what he could tell me about David’s state of mind astounded me – it seemed hardly credible, but turned out to be true.
As soon as he was well enough David came to Doornleegte. I watched him limp up to Bwana’s substantially reinforced enclosure, and had to bite back my tears. He’d wanted to “make sure that there were no hard feelings” between him and Bwana. I admired the great-heartedness that could make him stand, without aggression or fear, within two feet of the animal that had so very nearly killed him such a short time before. As I watched them, man and rhino in some incomprehensible peaceable communion, I felt my burden of irrational guilt lifting. That was David’s gift to me and I daresay to Clive too. His visit was balm for the soul.
As summer moved into autumn David was back tracking the Lapalala rhinos with Andries Mokwena and the other rangers, delighted to have found
that his connection to rhinos and his passion for tracking them had remained unaffected.
For Christmas 2002 we again had the family at Doornleegte and I was grateful that this time Clive was not preparing for a trip away from home. Boxing Day arrived to find us still obeying the traditional seasonal imperative to take-it-easy. Light meals of Christmas leftovers, time to begin reading a gift book. It wasn’t to last beyond mid-morning. I was in the kitchen preparing Mother’s tea-tray when I heard the radio: a field ranger calling the wildlife manager. A few seconds and I heard Anton responding. The ranger seemed excited: “Come and see the visitor.” It sounded like good news. Anton had told us of their search for an elusive black rhino cow who’d been due to give birth some months earlier. The rangers had clearly succeeded and there was a new baby. He congratulated them on tracking down such a secretive animal in that remote, hilly corner of the 36 000-hectare reserve. The ranger interrupted: “How soon can you get here?” Anton began to answer, but was cut short. “Ae Morena, No! It must be now. Please.”
I took the tea-tray to the verandah and told Mother that I suspected Anton might have a black rhino emergency on his hands, and so it proved. All day we eavesdropped on the drama. Every time I returned from some unavoidable task up at the rhino enclosures Mother filled me in on the episodes I had missed.
Anton arrived on the scene to find the field rangers in a standoff with a highly aggressive black rhino cow. She had been trying to help her calf, perhaps six months old, to stand up. To no avail. It was injured, bleeding from its horn-bed, a gash on one side and a stab-wound to the upper left thigh. Worse: internal organs were bloodily protruding from its rear end. The sounds coming from the little one could only be described as screams. In between charges at the rangers, the mother kept returning to her frantic attempts to lift the calf with her horn.
Anton marshalled the rangers for another attempt to shoo the cow away from her calf, but she was more than a match for them. Anton had to bolt up a tree rather speedily.
Meanwhile, at Doornleegte, I fretted at my inability to do anything to help my son with the biggest crisis he had yet had to handle. I tried to imagine the scene. I knew the area, because we had explored it on foot – there was no road access. In such an emergency though the field rangers would have forced their Land Cruiser through the typical obstructions offered by that kind of rock-strewn open woodland: wild syringa, red bushwillow, peeling plane, sekelbos – every one of them designed to stab and scratch and effectively impede access. A stream further limited their options of approach.
I counted the difficulties: the remote location; extreme physical trauma to the calf; dangerously protective mother; the fact that it was a public holiday. If Anton wanted to attempt a rescue it would be a bold decision and would have to be a quick one.
Whatever you decide, I thought, get permission first. It was one of many occasions when I really felt the loss of Dale. A next generation of his favourite black rhinos – I felt sure I could have predicted his response. But it was a new era. All such decisions were now taken by the Parker family in Cape Town together with the man who had been appointed to the directorship of all the Parker land assets, including Lapalala. I didn’t know Mike Gregor personally. I had no idea how much he might know of the Waterberg, of black rhinos or of what we’d been trying to achieve in the reserve.
The phone calls began. I kept busy, trying to quash my fears of someone opting for the most cost-effective solution, a bullet. After all, what was the worth of a single rhino? True, it’s a member of an endangered species, and Anton had determined that it was a female, which makes it an even more valuable asset, but the kind of rescue required would be very costly. Factor in the absence of a guarantee that she would survive to breed successfully, and it becomes all too clear that her rescue could not be seen as a sound financial investment, at least not in the short term. The calculus of the marketplace is not helpful to a rhino calf that might be mere hours away from death – let nature take its course.
But no, that little one was to be given a chance. I heaped blessings on the heads of the decision makers.
A phone call to Mpatamacha Game Capture struck pure gold. Kutu Venter had a helicopter plus pilot on standby, and he not only knew of a wildlife veterinarian who happened to be holidaying within the Waterberg area, in the Marakele National Park, he would arrange to fetch him.
The hours dragged. Every subsequent walk up to the enclosures was hotter, every return to the house more of a relief. By lunchtime it was sweltering. From the verandah I watched a fiscal shrike, mercilessly nagged into repeated hunting forays by the screeching wing-shivering appetite of its chick, dart in and out of the red-flowered tangle of the bauhinia bush, flower-petals bleached and shrivelled by punishing light. More fortunate were the starlings, sparrows and bulbul that perched open-beaked in the shade of the plumbago. Button, spread-eagled on Clive’s chair, could barely summon up the energy to snap at a horsefly. Not a breath of air to cool down the valley. Chances were that the rescue scene was no different. It would be sweaty and uncomfortable work as wildlife rescues always are; stinging and biting insects drawn by the smells of blood and pungent skin.
Anton’s voice came back on air: they could hear the approach of a helicopter. And then: Yes, Dr André Uys was on board and he had his surgical kit with him. Yes, including the immobilising drug, M99. And wonder of wonders, Dr Uys just happened to be an expert on black rhino. Mother and I cheered.
Clive had lent ground-to-air communications equipment to the team. Heaven only knows how much more difficult that rescue would have been without it. From the air Dr Uys was able to do the first assessments and dart the calf. The mother, enraged as she was, remained a danger. Anton, having been charged one time too many, asked Kutu Venter to herd her out of the area so that the ground crew could move in. I’d watched such scenes before. I could picture the helicopter dropping lower, nose on a downward slant, the noise and flying dust, the big rhino cow trying a charge, then wheeling and running, turning again, blindly jerking her head at the threat which must have been deafening to her acute hearing.
It was frustrating not to be there myself. Not that I would have been able to do much beyond keeping out of the way, but I was rooting for the little calf. However dangerous and upsetting the scene, waiting at the radio for the odd snippet of news was surely more stressful. For no rational reason at all I’d adopted that animal’s crisis as my own. Knowing full well that it was none of my business and that, with all the trauma to which she’d already been subjected, it might be more merciful not to prolong her agony, I found myself imploring her to pull through. While no one was looking Bwana got an extra few handfuls of pellets that afternoon and was told that another of his kin was in trouble.
I returned to the house and to the news that Dr Uys was busy operating: a major surgical procedure to repair and reposition the calf’s internal organs. As soon as he’d finished with that and with stitching up her other wounds, all of which were serious, the patient was to be taken to the Animal Rehabilitation Centre at Onderstepoort – Karen Trendler had agreed to take charge of another of Lapalala’s black rhino babies. This was the best news: if the calf survived the surgery she’d need expert nursing.
From then on both Mother and I stayed within earshot of the radio. I knew how much could still go wrong. At best Dr Uys’s estimation of the calf’s weight could only be an educated guess. M99 was a notoriously twitchy drug – get the ratio of dosage versus weight even slightly wrong, and you lose your patient. Given the extent of the calf’s injuries and blood-loss and her panicked state, there would have been no margin for error. In any case, I wasn’t sure that such a radical operation under make-shift conditions in the field could succeed.
It seemed to take forever, but then came Anton’s voice: It’s done, the calf still hanging on, but remains critical. He would take her to Onderstepoort himself.
Food, I thought, finally something that I could do to help. When Anton arrived he lifted an eyebrow at the
size of his padkos, his ration for the road – a feast assembled out of the choicest of our Christmas Eve leftovers. I was burning to know more about the rescue, but there was no time. I assumed he’d stay over at ARC for the night and only return the next morning. But he shook his head. “I’m coming straight back.” He gestured over his shoulder to the crate on the back. “Just as soon as we’ve settled Moêng.”
The rangers had chosen the name, “Visitor” – she’d arrived only to leave again.
Throughout that late afternoon and evening our widely scattered circle of friends and family came to my rescue. There are benefits to being a dinosaur in a digital age. Pen-and-ink correspondence required sitting down at a desk, more time to reflect, to pick up threads, share and reconnect. A welcome distraction that day. I did not consider myself an anxious type of mother, but my son was rushing with an emergency through Boxing Day traffic, and assuming that all went well he would still be facing the return journey after dark. And Moêng? Terribly hurt and traumatised, disoriented, suddenly without her mother and without her natural environment – shock upon shock for such a young rhino.
Over supper Clive filled me in on what they thought might have caused her injuries. After giving birth the cow would have come into oestrus again. A bull must have tracked her and when the calf somehow got in the way, attacked it. The injuries seemed to suggest a violent head-butt to push the calf away, resulting in her bleeding horn-bed, then a horn-swipe from the side, causing that stab-wound in her upper leg, and then a full-on chase. The bull’s horn would have stabbed into her rear and, as he flung her aside, hooked internal organs which got pulled out as she fell. It’s a miracle she survived.
A Rhino in my Garden Page 19