A Rhino in my Garden

by Conita Walker

  On a daily basis your sensory faculties will come under assault, you’ll see, touch, hear and especially smell things you’d much rather not. But wince and wrinkle your nose as you may, that animal will get under your skin. Your capacity to care for it will be stretched until there is no limit to what you’ll attempt and endure for its welfare. After more than a decade of rearing wild animals I knew this, but nothing had prepared me for Moêng.

  When she was off-loaded at Melkrivier I had the distinct impression of an animal that had held on only long enough to have reached the end of her journey. Now that she’d arrived, anything more was beyond her. There was not enough strength or spirit left in her to investigate her new surroundings. On that beautiful spring day she just stood there, fully taken up with the effort of breathing and remaining on her feet.

  It was only when I got closer that I heard her groaning. A weak, unprotesting confession of her misery. Her hide felt dehydrated. Under my hands the ridges of her ribs and hipbones were sharp and felt fragile. She was small for her age, emaciated and incontinent. Constant diarrhoea had left her with a raw and bleeding backside. But her poor physical condition was not the only problem. She seemed unbearably sad. I didn’t know if she had sufficient will to survive.

  By rights I should have been able to do what I had done with Munyane: stay with her, sleep next to her, and if I could, will her back to life. But that wasn’t possible. Clive and I were still living at Doornleegte, and so was Bwana. Until such time as my responsibilities had consolidated to Melkrivier, I had to leave Moêng in what I hoped would be capable and trustworthy hands. I will always be grateful for the fact that they were.

  Anton and René had been running a project for gap students from the UK, and since their focus was on environmental conservation work, Moêng’s basic care fitted right into their programme, and it must be said, their hearts. These young women had already assisted conservation officers in the construction of Bwana’s new enclosure at Melkrivier, and now cheerfully pitched into the unglamorous tasks of cleaning and caring for Moêng.

  I could guide and advise over the phone, but it was soon clear that they couldn’t devote all their time to Moêng, and equally clear that she needed more intensive care than the situation allowed. I rushed through my packing at Doornleegte. Our new home, the former Melkrivier Primary School headmaster’s house, was just about ready for us. Since I had already taken care of rodent-proofing the floors and skirting-boards, all it still needed was a crisp new coat of white paint to brighten the interior. A modicum of emotional blackmail, judiciously wielded, cornered Clive into volunteering for the job. The result was delightful: the little house sparkled as with a new lease of life. So did Clive, with his paint-bespattered overalls, shoes, hair and glasses, as he threw open the doors for my inspection.

  Our move, in typical bushveld fashion, involved an open truck, friends rallying around with farm bakkies and labourers and endless cups of tea. For a while my sense of order was severely challenged, but then came the moment when Clive handed me my sundowner, and I looked around and there were our homely worn-in easy-chairs, their seats and backs moulded to ours; there were our family pictures, Keith Calder’s bronze rhinos, our collection of art works and antique maps and ceramics, Persian rugs on the floors.

  We went outside to look west. A different skyline and around me a different garden. But there were Clive’s favourite stones, accumulated through many wilderness years, and the gigantic leopard orchid he’d rescued from certain destruction under bulldozer tyres during the construction of a powerline. From the fever trees over to our left came a cascade of descending notes. A few seconds’ silence, and then another one. Du-du-du-du-du … du-du-du … Wine poured into a glass, then into another. It was a Burchell’s coucal. Our African rainbird.

  It had been nine years since I first saw the derelict site of the old Melkrivier Primary School. Then too a coucal was calling. Like Clive with the Tambuti baboons, I took comfort where I found it. It was a good omen.

  The journey Moêng and I were to take together began the next morning. She was standing at her feeding area. I cannot say she was waiting there, not the way my other animals waited for attention or food, with eager anticipation and bright eyes and vocalisations the moment they knew I was approaching. She was just standing, apparently staring at nothing. I began calling to her when I was still some distance away, knowing that her eyesight might well be too poor to spot me. Her ears moved, focusing the sound. So I knew she had at least that much instinct and interest left. And she was still on her feet.

  She didn’t move when I opened the gate and, still talking to her, entered her enclosure. Her eyes followed my movements until I was right next to her and stooped to be able to look into her face. I rubbed the wrinkly folds around the base of her ears. After a moment she leaned closer, then more and more, until she had her head pushed into my lap. When I tried to move, she leaned even more. She didn’t move her feet, just leaned into me until she was about to topple over. I melted: a toddler, two years and nine months old, needing to be held. A very sick little toddler, occasionally uttering muted groans, very softly as if she was trying not to complain. Every idea I might have had about not crossing the line between wild-care and domesticating an animal was gone. I hugged her and told her she was my little girl and Mother would make it all right. I could have put it more dispassionately. I could have said she was my responsibility, bought and paid for, and I would employ rhino care of the highest standards to give her the best chance of healing. But I didn’t. This was the first rhino calf I actually owned myself. Damaged and desperate and only mine perhaps because no one else wanted the bother of her, but she was mine and for her recovery I would fight as I’d never fought before. I would make it all right, and so I told her.

  I sat down next to her, and from that vantage point, that of an undersized little rhino calf, looked around. Everything was in order, except that the railing of her enclosure appeared unnecessarily serious and solid for the pathetic little creature it had to confine. But it was, in a way, a last gift from Dale Parker.

  In the early years of Lapalala’s formation there was an enormous amount of rubbish to be removed, buried, burnt, or otherwise disposed of. There were other items too, not rubbish, but also not suitable for a wilderness reserve in the making. The iron railings of the bridges over the Blocklands and the Palala fitted into this category. Clive and Dale agreed that they spoilt the wilderness atmosphere; they had to go. The railings were dismantled, carted away and stored in a heap well out of sight, with the vague expectation that they might come in useful someday. When, in the midst of moving to Melkrivier, we needed to construct an enclosure for our newest rescue-rhino in record time, that day had arrived. The vintage iron bridge railings went up quickly and securely, and in no time at all and with far less expense than might otherwise have been the case, the enclosure was ready. Since Moêng was, by birth, a Lapalala rhino, injured and rescued there, it seemed fitting that something so helpful should have come from her old home to contribute to what was in fact only the continuation of the process of rescuing her.

  As unlikely as it might have seemed at that point I was determined that Moêng would, in a manner of speaking, grow into her railings. Like a proper black rhino she would get large and powerful enough to convince anyone of the need for such a formidable barrier. Looking back now I realise that the determined woman in Moêng’s enclosure was not the same one who, more than a decade earlier, had waited with her stomach in an anxious knot to receive Bwana at Doornleegte. With Moêng much of the insecurity was gone. Experience being the best teacher, I had a far better idea of what I was doing. I was not above needing approval, but it was that of the animal that looked to me for her recovery and would show her disapproval by dying, and my own conscience. That was quite enough: my conscience had always been a sufficiently merciless slave-driver. So although I was not prey to the same fears anymore, it would be incorrect to assume that I was brimming with arrogant assurance. I was o
ld enough to have had many reminders of my own fallibility, and had accepted long ago that humility was my lot. But I will confess now, as I was too embarrassed to do then, that as I sat there in the dust with my arm draped over the shoulders of my sorry charge, I just knew that Moêng and I were meant to find each other. In a way I will not even attempt to explain to myself, let alone to others, we were destined to travel that road.

  I ran my fingers along her too-knobbly spine. Why was she still so underweight? Why was she still incontinent? Why had the diarrhoea not been arrested? When she arrived at Melkrivier I immediately changed her diet from the one she’d been fed at ARC. There they had to rely on what was available to them in their peri-urban environs, but in her Melkrivier enclosure she was in black rhino country, surrounded by the kind of vegetation on which her digestive system should thrive. I firmly believed that the secret to her healing, or a good part of it, lay there. So, no more lucerne, just natural black rhino browse, amplified with some game feed pellets. The gap students were instructed to cut fresh browse every day, and as far as I could gather, they did. What was the problem then?

  On my way over from the museum grounds I crossed a gravel road. Along both sides the riotous vegetation was smothered in red-brown dust. A few months earlier it had looked worse: underneath the dust just the desiccated remains of the previous summer. The jeep track that led on to the rhino enclosures had been less dusty, but also surrounded by mostly brown. Not the rich mahogany, tawny or sienna of the Waterberg’s autumn or the coppery tan of seed capsules waiting through the winter for the next rain to spur them into new life. It had been the barren, lifeless brown of drought. Just Moêng’s kind of luck, I had thought at the time, to have returned to the Waterberg in such a tough season. The students would have had to scour the entire 90-hectare site to obtain enough healthy browse. They’d have had to venture into difficult terrain, gullies in the foothills some distance away. Perhaps that was the problem. Without someone dedicated specifically to the task, it wasn’t possible for enough high-quality browse to be cut. And maybe there just wasn’t enough of a supply on the site in the first place.

  A neighbour, Jannie Nel, and his parents, Louis and Ansa (the same Nels who had sold the Melkrivier property to us) came to our rescue. They generously threw open the doors, as it were, of their adjoining 1000 hectares of prime bushveld. We could come and go as we pleased and take whatever we needed. So that was the supply taken care of and with the late rainy season well underway nutritional quality was no longer a problem. Labour, though, remained a stumbling block. The gap students, with my thanks and my blessing, had moved on to their next project. I urgently needed an extra pair of hands. Ideally it would be a replacement Titus Mamashela, someone with his ready understanding of the animals and their needs, his diligence and his meticulous attention to detail. But he was now a field ranger in Lapalala, and very good at it, everything he’d learnt at Doornleegte put to excellent use. I was wishing for the moon: people like Titus were not readily available. They were fully occupied professionals, engaged by employers who valued their services, they were not sitting at home waiting for a job to arrive. Well then, I thought, I’ll give up on all the other requirements, just grant me a willing pair of hands.

  Early one morning while I was busy with Moêng, Button suddenly let out a volley of threatening barks and streaked off. I yelled her back and she reluctantly obeyed, still barking and bristling with protective zeal. A lanky figure, neatly dressed, came into sight. He walked fast, a man with a purpose. I kept Button clamped between my boots and waited for my visitor to approach. He lifted a hand in greeting, ducked his head and we exchanged the customary Sotho Good Mornings. The smile, which had been firmly fixed since he first caught sight of me, was still in place, but it was a nervous one. He seemed dreadfully anxious.

  Lazarus Mamashela had been a gardener on a neighbouring property. He’d heard that there was a job going at the Melkrivier Museum and had come to apply for the position. In addition to his own language he could speak both English and Afrikaans. He had been to school and had learnt to read and write in English. He was a hard worker. He never touched alcohol – never have, never will. I asked if he had ever worked with animals. He nodded while ducking his head. I realised that Lazarus’s head always said yes before his voice did. Oh yes, he’d worked with horses before, and before that he’d been a cattle herder. Would he like to learn to work with rhinos? Several nods and ducks of the head: Oh yes, he’d like very much to work with rhinos, if Magog will teach him. More nods and affirmative ducks of the head while his eyes remained apprehensively fixed on mine. I asked if he knew Titus – with the same surname, they might be related? He shook his head. No, no relation. Sorry Magog, sorry, sorry. He looked so dejected that I hastened to reassure him: a family-bond with Titus was not a job requirement. I held out my hand to him: “Come, I want you to meet Moêng.”

  My extra pair of hands had found me. Lazarus brought that same earnestness with which he’d come to apply for a job to every task he was given. And since some of those tasks were really not very pleasant, it goes to his credit that he never complained or took shortcuts. As it happened the least pleasant tasks were often the most important ones.

  When I had taken over from the students I was relieved to find that the hygiene routines they’d kept were really quite high. But Moêng was still ill, so we had to aim higher. Every excretion had to be examined, buried and the area all around her ablutions cleaned and sanitised. Often this was her mudpool, but we still had to gather what she produced, gauge her state of health from it, bury it so that there could be no risk of re-infection, drain the pool, clean and refill it, and then scrape in enough fresh soil to stir it into the kind of muddy mess beloved by rhino. I’d had those challenges before: animals with acute diarrhoea and the resultant necessity of sanitising their environment. It was exhausting. But with Moêng it went on for much longer and her incontinence added yet another layer of trouble, for her and for us.

  That little rhino’s damaged, dirty, bleeding behind was my constant preoccupation. I knew she had to heal from the inside out and put my faith in an increased allocation of game feed pellets and her now excellent supply of the best browse, but in the meantime we had to prevent more damage to her rectal area, and guard against infection. That meant washing the sore, raw, eroded skin and coating it with a healing spray. Wash and spray, wash and spray, day after day. I shall refrain from describing in greater detail the consequences of spending so much time with your face in close proximity to the rear of a sick animal. Suffice to say that when Moêng finally produced a normal bowel movement it was a happy day for all three of us.

  Lazarus took our good news home, and I hoped that his family received it with as much understanding and support as Clive did when he came to meet me en route home at the end of the afternoon. He waited for me near the other rhino enclosure, Bwana’s. My first black rhino orphan presented about as big a contrast with my latest one as could be imagined. Bwana had grown into an impressive 12-year-old in superb condition. If ever one wanted an ambassador for this flagship species for wildlife conservation, it was him. New visitors had already come to meet and admire him since we resumed our sessions after moving to Melkrivier. I had not an instant’s regret about bringing him from Lapalala. He couldn’t have stayed there anyway, no one had a plan for him; and as the prized, living exhibit of our Rhino Museum he was in effect serving the cause of preserving his own species.

  We’d taken trouble with his new home. It took six weeks for a builder and his team, plus the gap students and their education officer, to construct and equip the large, secure enclosure – sturdy wooden poles sunk and cemented in, wooden railings, a pool for bathing and his favourite muddy relaxation, a drinking trough and a covered feeding station, situated in such a way that it facilitated lecturing to visitors while also allowing them to get close enough, in safety, to be able to hand-feed Bwana. Lazarus was invaluable in keeping it all neat and tidy, and I quietly formed the intention
to gradually groom him into a more prominent role. It was a little plot of my own, hatched one day when I was observing him with Moêng.

  Lazarus was a blessing, but perhaps not an unmixed one. He performed best under supervision, and I’d made my peace with investing the necessary time and patience for him to master all his responsibilities. He took his work seriously and I had no doubt at all that he tried as hard as he could. But on that day I saw something more. Both he and Moêng had their backs towards me as I approached up the jeep track. It was too far for me to hear what he was saying, but he was clearly talking to her while he was busy cleaning out her pool. Every so often she’d get in his way and he would calmly work around her or gently and patiently encourage her to make room for him. It was so exactly how I’d always wanted my helpers to treat my animals. Then, finished with the pool, the stringy figure in his blue overalls bent down and hugged the small rhino. She followed him to her feeding area where again he was telling her something and then, before beginning to cut up her browse, he gave her another quick hug.

  Animals sense a whole lot more about people than we sometimes give them credit for. Bwana accepted the introduction into his world of this new keeper with less trouble than I had anticipated. Moêng with even less. When the time was right, I thought, I would ask him how he felt about sharing what he already knew about rhino care, and his evident affection for them, with visitors. If he liked the idea, he could share the sessions with me and, in time, conduct his own.

  As Bwana’s attitude towards Lazarus pleased me, so his attitude towards Clive concerned me. The relationship they had had at Doornleegte did not transfer to Melkrivier. The comfort, I would even say friendship, they’d shared was simply gone. Clive’s presence invariably caused a dramatic transformation in the relaxed, trusting, friendly animal Bwana still was with me. Even when Clive approached the enclosure hidden, as we thought, in the middle of a large group of people, Bwana’s switch to hostility was instant and unmistakable.