Rage of the Rhino

by Bear Grylls

  And so Beck told the story, calmly but passionately.

  But as he finished his first bit of filming, he knew that the real story was only just beginning.

  Chapter 13

  ‘Pull over here, Al,’ Samora said from the back seat.

  The Jeep was bouncing along a track that led along a small ridge. Al obediently turned onto a packed dirt area where it was obvious a lot of other vehicles had stopped before.

  He killed the engine, and Beck saw why Samora had chosen this spot.

  The veld of the Kruger National Park stretched away in front of them. In the far distance, on the horizon, Beck could see the Drakensbergs, the mountain range they had flown over the day before.

  From here he could look down a gentle slope towards a waterhole. It was a darker spot in the grasslands, surrounded by trampled mud from the feet of all the creatures that relied on it to stay alive.

  A small herd of impala were clustered around it now, heads down to drink. They were sleek, graceful creatures, with horns that were thin and curved.

  ‘I guess they’re not endangered,’ Beck said, looking down at the herd.

  ‘No, they’re safe. One and a half million at the last count,’ Athena told him.

  ‘Almost as many as the different camera shots you wanted when we were filming!’ Beck joked.

  Athena smiled. She had always been a perfectionist, and she knew that sometimes it could be a trial for those around her.

  After they had done their initial filming with Beck, Athena had set off with Bongani in a Green Force Jeep to take additional shots for the ad. She had a few ideas for some landscapes and places where she could get close-ups of animals. Meanwhile Al had taken another Jeep to show Beck some more of the park from the ground. Samora had come along to keep them company, which Beck was grateful for.

  Now he scanned the landscape to see what else he could pick out.

  All was quiet for a few ‘African’ minutes, as Al called them. Minutes that had no time to them. Maybe it had been five . . . maybe fifteen. All that mattered was the sense of stillness and calm. This was what Al, and Beck’s parents, had always loved about Africa.

  Beck spotted them first. A herd of elephants, maybe fifteen or twenty of all sizes, was plodding towards the waterhole to drink. He watched in awe. He knew people who lived in houses that were smaller than the herd leader. The impala guessed what the enormous animals wanted and decided to move on.

  When Beck was little, Al had told him that African elephants were called that because their ears were the shape of Africa, and Indian elephants got their name because their ears were shaped like India. Al had enjoyed telling him stories like that, and Beck couldn’t deny it: African elephants had the bigger ears, and they did look like a map of Africa. Sort of.

  Three or four giraffes were wandering gracefully past, a few hundred metres beyond the elephants. Their necks swayed with the rhythm of their movement, and they almost seemed to float across the dry grass.

  And then Samora gasped and clutched Beck’s arm. ‘Look!’

  He followed her outstretched finger, and for a moment couldn’t see what the excitement was.

  And then he saw it, emerging from a group of bushes.

  A magnificent, slow-moving rhino . . .

  Chapter 14

  It approached with total confidence. Steady, methodical, dignified.

  Beck knew that rhinos were peaceful, vegetarian animals that wished no harm to anyone; but he also knew that they had very short tempers and could lash out at anything that irritated them.

  This rhino moved like it knew its own strength. With all its weight behind it, the horn could do a lot of damage, and its body was armour-plated, so it feared nothing. No meat-eating animal would be stupid enough to attack a full-grown adult rhino. Probably the only creature that could have hurt it was an elephant, and why would an elephant want to?

  No wonder this rhino moved along so calmly, at peace with the world.

  Unfortunately, though, Beck knew that the reality was very different.

  This was a world of poachers carrying high-powered rifles – something this magnificent creature would have no defence against. But there was no sign of any poacher today. Beck, Samora and Al were the only three humans around, and they were a hundred metres or so away at the top of a hill. The rhino was too short-sighted to spot them up there.

  ‘It’s a black,’ Samora said reverently. ‘They’re so rare. At the last count there were three hundred and fifty of them in the park. We are very lucky to be seeing it.’

  The rhino was built like a mammalian tank. It was the height of a man and getting on for twice as long – Beck estimated about four metres from nose to tail. Its head moved slowly from side to side as it peered out of tiny eyes set low on either side of its skull.

  When its head moved, the mighty horn – the cause of all its troubles – reminded Beck of a gun-sight. As if the animal was constantly taking aim at anything that might dare to trouble it.

  Nothing did. The rhino continued on its way.

  ‘Doesn’t really look black, does it?’ Beck commented. The rhino was a darkish shade of grey, nothing more.

  ‘It’s just darker than a white rhino, that’s all,’ Samora told him.

  ‘Which aren’t white,’ Al said with a smile.

  Still looking through Al’s binos, Samora added, ‘White rhinos get their name from the Dutch word wijd, which means wide. They’re really wide rhinos.’

  Beck looked at Al.

  ‘It’s their mouths.’ Al tapped his own. ‘Wide and straight, unlike the black.’

  Beck could see that the black rhino’s mouth ended in a pointed snout.

  ‘So beautiful,’ Samora murmured. Beck agreed.

  They watched until the rhino had dwindled to a dot that shimmered in the heat. Then Al fired up the engine again and pulled away.

  The track dipped down into a shallow valley. The ground rose up on either side, and for a moment they no longer had the wonderful views out to the horizon. A herd of grazing zebra broke into a trot to get away from the vehicle. They were just playing it safe and avoiding potential danger.

  They drove on through a group of trees and bushes, curving around a sharp incline so that they couldn’t see more than twenty metres ahead. Al came round the corner and then braked. Hard.

  Standing in the middle of the road, facing them, was another rhino.

  Judging from Samora’s description earlier, this one had to be a white rhino, Beck guessed. Its hide was a pale grey, and its mouth was set in an angry line.

  More importantly, it was massive – about a quarter as long again as the black rhino they had seen earlier, and taller too. It filled the road so that there was no way past it. Its head was close to the ground, ears laid back. The rhino lowered its head and scraped its horn along the ground.

  No one moved for a few seconds, then Al put his hand on the gearstick, saying, ‘I’ll reverse—’

  Samora grabbed his arm. ‘No,’ she said. There was a strange tone in her voice. ‘Just turn the engine off.’

  ‘Off?’

  ‘Off.’

  Al killed the engine with an abrupt twist of the keys.

  In the sudden silence they could hear the rhino’s breath – abrupt puffs of air from a pair of massive bellows.

  ‘This beast can run faster than you can ever accelerate’ – Samora spoke slowly – ‘and it’s showing all the signs of wanting to charge us.’

  Chapter 15

  The rhino lowered its head and rubbed its horn along the ground. Then it looked up again and stared at them. Beck stared back, then quickly looked away. Some animals take a direct stare as a challenge. He wasn’t going to risk provoking it.

  He wondered what it would be like if it charged. Was the Jeep stronger than it looked? Would it stand up to the creature’s massive weight? Or would it just crumple like tin foil?

  He really, really wished Samora had let Al keep the engine running. But he understood that if the
noise of the Jeep was one of the things angering the rhino, then their best chance was to turn it off.

  ‘Lions roar to warn attackers off,’ Samora said quietly. She hadn’t taken her eyes off the rhino. ‘Rhinos use body language.’

  The rhino lowered its head again and let out a massive huff through its nostrils. Its breath blew a small cloud of dust up off the track.

  Samora continued, ‘Like that – they blow out through their noses, they rub their horn . . .’

  ‘Why’s this one angry?’ Beck asked.

  ‘Could be territory – he thinks this road belongs to him. Or it could just be a bad day at the office.’

  Beck smiled weakly at the joke. He was still filing the information away at the back of his mind. His expertise was survival – he knew how to live off the land and stay alive long enough to get from A to B. He knew how to find food, how to build shelters – but sooner or later any survivor was likely to come into contact with wildlife, and it was important to know what to do then too.

  He smiled, thinking to himself, In cases like this, the best answer is to stay away.

  The rhino tossed its head as if trying to shake something off the tip of its horn. Then it slowly turned and ambled away into the bushes. Beck blew out a sigh of relief, almost as strong as the rhino’s final huff.

  ‘Please can I turn the engine on again?’ Al asked.

  ‘Sure.’ Samora smiled weakly. ‘Before it changes its mind.’

  They had been out all day and Beck was looking forward to getting out of the Jeep. There were good roads in the park, but they had stayed off them, and Al’s answer to the potholes was to just keep going and pretend they weren’t there. The majesty of the African landscape was some compensation for the uncomfortable ride, but Beck was looking forward to enjoying the views from the veranda of the lodge.

  The colours of the day were slowly turning to yellow and red. Beck knew it would get dark very fast here. The closer you were to the equator, the more quickly the sun rose and fell. Here, in the corner of South Africa, they were much nearer to the equator than London is. Al estimated that they were maybe half an hour from the lodge.

  And then Beck noticed the vultures.

  It was movement at the corner of his eye. Black specks against the blue sky, wheeling high above the veld.

  He glanced up at them.

  They were ugly, graceless birds and he didn’t think much of them. On the ground, their ragged black feathers and bent necks made them look like old men going to a funeral in tattered old suits. Soaring through the air, they appeared menacing, as if waiting to be beckoned down to earth by the stench of death.

  ‘Remember what you said about vultures being the first sign that something is wrong . . .?’ Beck spoke over the noise of the bumping Jeep. ‘Well, look up there . . .’

  Chapter 16

  Samora and Al didn’t need to say anything. Al turned the wheel and the Jeep bounced off the track and across the grass towards the spot where the vultures were circling.

  ‘Did I mention that vultures have their own problems with the poachers?’ Samora asked.

  ‘Go on . . .’ said Beck.

  ‘Poacher kills rhino, vultures start to circle, rangers detect dead rhino – so some poachers are now planting poison in the rhino carcasses to kill the vultures, so they won’t circle, so no one will see them. During the breeding season, one dead rhino might be eaten by six hundred vultures. But if you kill the adults, then their chicks will die too because there is no one to feed them – which means one dead rhino equals twelve hundred dead birds.’

  Beck shook his head. ‘It makes you feel sick, doesn’t it? It’s just such a waste.’ He looked back up to the sky.

  Five or six vultures were circling above a group of bushes. They soared on wide, dark wings, comfortably riding the currents of hot air. One of them dropped down amongst the vegetation, which meant there must be clear ground in there somewhere.

  Al drove three-quarters of the way round the scrub before he found a way in. The Jeep nosed its way through, and stopped.

  A rhino was lying on its side and Beck’s heart plummeted. Then he saw the horn on its nose. It was still intact. This rhino hadn’t fallen victim to the poachers.

  As they drew closer, Beck could see its sides moving up and down. It was alive, so the vultures hadn’t plucked up the courage to start eating it yet. They weren’t killer birds – they preferred to wait until a dead meal was provided for them.

  Three or four of them had landed nearby and were quietly waiting. They spread their wings and flapped clumsily up and away as the Jeep came closer.

  Al reached for the keys.

  ‘Wait a moment . . .’ Beck said. He climbed up on his seat and peered around. ‘It’s always worth making sure there’s no other rhino nearby that might get mad. It only takes a second to check, but it can cost you your backside if you rush in and get caught out!’ He gave a wry smile as Al turned off the engine and they climbed out.

  The rhino was a female. The one eye they could see was half open and her ears twitched to shake the flies off. A thick river of drool ran down her leathery lips to the ground. The whoosh of breath in her nostrils, one at either end of her wide, straight mouth, sounded like it came from a machine rather than a living creature.

  They approached cautiously, eyes peeled for anything that might be amiss.

  Samora gently laid a hand on the rhino, but she didn’t move. ‘I don’t think she’s been shot,’ she said. ‘She’s just ill.’

  Beck remembered what poachers had started doing to the vultures. ‘Has she been poisoned?’

  ‘I don’t think so. They tend to do that to the bodies after they’re dead. She needs a vet. Is there a radio in the Jeep?’

  ‘I didn’t see one,’ Al said grimly, but he hurried back to check. It only took a few moments. ‘No, there isn’t,’ he confirmed.

  ‘There’ll be someone at the lodge who will know what to do,’ Samora told him.

  ‘Then that’s where we’ll go now. Back in, you two—’

  ‘I’d like to stay.’

  Al raised his eyebrows. ‘No offence, Samora, you know this land better than we do – but is it safe? I’m thinking lions, hyenas . . .’

  ‘Then you’d better hurry,’ she said simply.

  Al didn’t argue. The bush was like Samora’s second home. ‘OK. Beck, let’s get going—’

  ‘No,’ Beck said. ‘I’m staying too.’

  He and Al locked eyes. Beck knew that this time his uncle was thinking of deadlier predators than lions and hyenas.

  He wasn’t quite sure what Samora could do for the rhino, but if there was any chance of helping, he wanted to be there too.

  ‘They can’t know we’re here, Al,’ he said quietly. Only Al would have known who ‘they’ were. ‘And you don’t want to leave Samora alone, do you?’ he went on quickly. ‘You could stay, only I can’t drive,’ he added cheekily.

  Finally Al nodded and climbed into the driver’s seat. ‘I’ll be about an hour, depending on how quickly they react at the lodge.’

  The Jeep reversed out of the bushes, and Beck and Samora were left alone with the dying animal.

  Chapter 17

  Beck reached out to touch the rhino for the first time.

  He did it reverently, because who would want any old stranger just coming up and pawing them? The hide under his fingertips felt like warm, dry mud. It was hard to believe it belonged to a living animal.

  ‘Rub under her throat,’ Samora said. ‘They like that.’

  Beck did as he was told. Unlike the armour-plated hide, the thin skin of the throat felt as soft as a baby’s. He had a feeling of awed privilege at being allowed to bring some kind of comfort, however small, to this massive creature. Stupidly, he and Samora had left their water bottles in the Jeep; otherwise they could have given some to the rhino.

  ‘Can you tell what’s wrong with her?’

  Samora was moving slowly along the rhino’s side, peering and pokin
g her fingers into every nook and cranny in the skin.

  ‘There are no wounds. She hasn’t been shot. And they have no real predators apart from humans. It could be a bacterial infection – I don’t like all that dribble coming out of her mouth.’

  Beck thought back to a headline he had caught on the plane to Johannesburg. Al had been reading the in-flight magazine. ‘Isn’t there something called “rhinovirus”?’

  Samora bit back a laugh, but couldn’t hide a smile. ‘Beck, that’s just another name for the common cold in humans. Rhinos can’t catch it!’

  ‘Yeah, well. Figure that . . .’ Beck felt himself blush, and they both chuckled.

  He rubbed the rhino’s throat again while Samora continued with her inspection. She drew back the thick lids and peered into the eyes.

  ‘There’s a few ticks here, but that’s usual. Sometimes they can get trypanosomiasis from tsetse flies – it means they just slowly waste away. But we’d need a blood test to confirm that.’

  Samora squatted back and gazed at the rhino with moist eyes. ‘Or it could just be colic. A twisted bowel – her food can’t travel through her properly, so it rots inside and poisons her.’

  ‘What will the vet be able to do?’

  ‘See if I’m right. If it’s the trypanosomiasis, then we could clear it up with antibiotics. Or if it’s the twisted bowel’ – a corner of her mouth twitched – ‘untwist it. That means you put your hand inside, and feel about, and remove the blockage – and everything comes right out, under pressure. And you know all about it then!’

  She was trying to make light of it, and Beck smiled back, wincing. Then Samora’s face was sad again. Beck knew that it was horrible for her: one of her beloved rhinos was slowly dying in front of her eyes and there was nothing she could do to help.

  So as they waited for the vet, they did whatever they could to alleviate the rhino’s sufferings. Beck kept rubbing the rhino’s throat. Samora scratched the folds of skin around her ears. If these were the rhino’s last hours, at least they could make them slightly more comfortable. The light was fading; the sun had already sunk down behind the surrounding bushes. Beck was pretty certain that this rhino wouldn’t be seeing it come up again.