How to Walk a Puma

by Peter Allison

  ‘He gets a bit more unpredictable when there are new guys,’ Roy Boy Mick warned me the morning after the briefing, as I stumbled along behind him on the steep trail up to Roy’s enclosure, already feeling a burn in my thigh muscles.

  Yet another Australian, Mick had been at Parque Machia for three months, well beyond the average length of stay for a volunteer. (Mick was an example to me of a theory I have that Australians often stay in places a long time in dread of the flight home.) He had already spent four weeks of his three months with Roy, and despite frequent abuse at the paws and teeth of the puma (if a bun had been placed on either side of his knee it would have made a convincing hamburger) he was clearly in love with the big cat. With us was Adrian, the Norwegian, who had been training to work with Roy only a few days.

  ‘What do you mean by “unpredictable”?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, usually he’ll only run in certain places, downhill mainly, and he runs after he takes a dump,’ explained Mick. ‘But when there’s a new guy he might drag us around all morning. He also gets jumpier.’

  ‘Jumpy, like nervous?’

  ‘Nah, mate—jumpy like he jumps on you and bites your knee. It’ll happen to you, don’t worry.’

  Don’t worry? The idea of a puma jumping on me seemed a perfectly reasonable thing to be concerned about.

  Roy wasn’t a huge animal, about the size of a German shepherd, but beneath his red fur he was much more heavily muscled than any dog. His fur was smooth and horse-like in texture, and he had patches of an impossibly brilliant white around the nose and mouth, counterpointed by eye markings of deep ebony. His facial features were surprisingly delicate; most male cats have squared-off muzzles and a certain tightness around the eyes, but Roy had the softer, smoother features of a female.

  It was a thrill to touch Roy the first time, and remained so every time after that. This was a puma! I watched Mick clip a ten-metre rope around his waist with a sturdy carabiner, before connecting the other end of the rope to Roy’s collar.

  ‘He usually runs a bit up this first slope,’ Mick warned over his shoulder, his eyes sticking resolutely to Roy’s muscular shoulders.

  ‘How far he runs gives you an idea what sort of morning you’ll have,’ added Adrian.

  Known in the park as the ‘Nordic Giant’, Adrian had recently completed two years’ military service in the Norwegian army, and was used to marching, but he laughed at me when I suggested that his military service had probably prepared him for the trails we were about to use.

  ‘No way,’ he said. ‘The army had nothing like this.’

  That morning Mick took the lead and Adrian was in the position called, without derogatory intent, ‘number two’. I was told that I had one task only—to keep up.

  As soon as we set off Roy ran up the slope from his enclosure, but instead of pausing at the top he kept on running, racing through narrow gaps in jauntily flowered bushes with grabby thorns, then dashing along a creek bed over slimy mossy rocks before sprinting up yet another muddy bank, while I grasped at branches and ferns, trying to stay close behind them. After running for what felt like a very long time, I wanted to ask how normal this pace was and how long Roy could be expected to keep it up. Unfortunately, someone had let a swarm of scorpions loose in my lungs and I couldn’t speak, so I just grimly sprinted on, wondering if it would be considered rude to vomit.

  By the end of the morning session I noticed Mick and Adrian shooting surreptitious glances at each other and began to suspect that Roy’s behaviour was even more extreme than what he usually put a new wrangler through. They probably didn’t want me to know this, and were seeing if I could tough it out.

  At lunchtime, Adrian waited with Roy, who had the run of an exercise area during our break, while Mick and I staggered back to the main area. We sat side by side and ate a disappointingly vegetarian meal (my body was demanding protein after such abuse), no one else apparently wanting to sit next to such conspicuously perspiring men. I had come to Parque Machia hoping to do some good and have some fun at the same time, but doubts filled my mind as I ate. I was still sure that I could do something positive here, but wondered if I would ever come to enjoy running with Roy.

  •

  That night I slept a bone-weary sleep in the rudimentary accommodation offered at the park, my exhaustion overpowering a disturbing ache in my right knee. One of the symptoms of my ill-suitedness for suburban life had been an aversion to refrigerator ownership (something as big as a fridge felt like too much of a shackle to one place and while I had eventually caved in and got one, I’d never really reconciled myself to its presence); that night, however, I yearned for the ice that would normally be found in such an appliance. Why, at thirty-four, would I choose to put myself through this? I wondered. Who the hell is afraid of a fridge but ties themselves to a puma? My safari years were far enough behind me that I had reverted to my natural state—weak-kneed, soft-handed and fearful. I loved the philosophy of Inti Wara Yassi, but wasn’t sure I had been very clever when I raised my hand to work with Roy. Then again, I’m a firm believer that the worst decisions often lead to the best adventures.

  I got up at six am and dragged myself down the short stretch of road to the café where the volunteers gathered each morning before starting their day. Most of them were far younger than me, and bustled around with an energy I couldn’t hope to muster at that hour of the morning without snorting instant coffee (something that should never be tried, even for a dare).

  Some of the volunteers tended to capuchins, spider monkeys and squirrel monkeys that had been rehabilitated and released into the reserve but still needed some care and observation. Others looked after the monkeys that had only recently arrived and still required time in quarantine.

  Some of the volunteers sitting around the breakfast table shouted like artillerymen, deafened perhaps by the parrots in their care. Then there were those who worked with the innocuous-sounding ‘small animals’, which included coatis, a relative of the raccoon with a short prehensile snout, and a badger-sized relative of the weasel called a tayra. While both these species are capable of displaying great affection to their carers, they are just as well known for turning savage and using their sharp teeth to inflict painful injuries.

  By volunteering to spend time with Roy, I’d joined the last group at the table, the cat people. Oddly enough, my compatriots were openly envious of some of the wounds sported by the ‘small animals’ group: while no one was keen on pain, a scar did seem a great souvenir of this experience. The cats rarely bit hard enough to draw blood—not even Roy, who was the wildest of the four pumas at Machia. Mick’s knee may have looked awful but his wounds were superficial and he had never needed a needle and thread to patch them up.

  Despite this assurance, within two days I was able to show off some marks on my left knee, and I’d still not taken the cord, or lead, position. For reasons never explained, Roy liked to select just one knee on each of the volunteers who worked with him, and stuck to assaulting that knee alone, regardless of which was closest. Roy fancied my left.

  When at last I took the cord position with Roy, I tried to hide my nerves while sweat that had naught to do with heat poured from my torso and brow. Despite knowing that Roy had never had a trainer he hadn’t jumped, I thought I might become one of the people he jumped less often, for two reasons. Since I’d spent plenty of time with wild lions, leopards and cheetahs I felt sure I wouldn’t be scared of him; I reasoned that Roy would pick up on my lack of fear and we’d become great friends. Also, I’d had a cat—called Tyson—during my previous few years in Australia. Tyson had died soon after my engagement ended, which was almost as big a blow as the loss of my human relationship. Foolishly, I was sure my understanding of a house cat would be at least partly transferable to a puma. I missed Tyson, and wanted that sort of relationship again. We’d be friends, Roy and me, just like Tyse and I had been, I was sure.

  Sure.

  Roy jumped me three times that first morning. Being t
ied to him naturally made me an easier target. No matter how many times I’d seen it happen to Mick and Adrian, there was nothing that could prepare me for the moment the puma stopped running then turned and faced me, pupils contracted, and launched himself lightning-fast at my left leg.

  Pumas can bite much harder than Roy did, and inflict much more pain; nonetheless a primal part of me protested that what I was doing was silly and illogical. Some ancestral lizard inside me uncurled and squeaked at me to undo the rope, climb a tree, and stay away from anything large with fur and fangs. Let the puma run free!

  But Roy could not be set free because, like many of the animals at Parque Machia and the three other parks run by Inti Wara Yassi, he was too young when he arrived to ever be able to survive in the wild. His mother had been killed, most likely for her skin, when Roy and his brother were far too young to fend for themselves. The strain of capture, confiscation and relocation had proved too much for Roy’s brother and he had died soon after arriving at Parque Machia. Roy had thrived, though, and was renowned among the organisation’s volunteers as the most demanding puma in any of Inti’s parks. Demanding or not, he needed daily runs to maintain his health, and to give him a better quality of life than he would have if he was locked in a cage day after day.

  ‘You have to keep him on the rope at all costs,’ Mick had explained to me. ‘He got off once, nobody will ever say how. Roy’s a racist, hates Bolivians, and when he escaped, the first person he saw was a local guy. He took out the guy’s spleen with a single swipe. If something like that ever happens again the place will be shut down and all these animals will just get sold off to zoos by the local council.’

  ‘Right,’ I thought now, determined to quash the impulse to release Roy. ‘Keep him on the rope at all costs.’

  Roy’s Big Day Out

  The strain of running sixteen to twenty-five kilometres a day on difficult jungle terrain soon took its toll on my body. When Bondy had said Roy’s handlers needed to be fit I’d believed I already was. Now I knew that was because I’d never been to a gym where the trainer bit you for running too slowly. Roy’s handlers were perpetually soaked in sweat, a result of humidity so intense that breathing felt more like drowning. The closed-canopy rainforest under which we ran was stifling, yet in the rare moments we paused, it was quite beautiful. The air rang with the chatter of monkeys and clatter of woodpeckers, while crystal-clear streams ran off the peaks we tackled as part of Roy’s daily routine.

  ‘See that twitch?’ said Mick one day after I’d been there about a week.

  Roy’s right foreleg had a definite quiver in it during one of his rare moments of inactivity; however, as predators are hardwired not to show weakness he did his best to hide it, even putting his full weight onto it to slow the tremor, in spite of the pain it obviously caused him.

  ‘It’s gonna need to be checked by one of the vets,’ said Mick.

  Roy wasn’t due for his annual veterinary check-up for another month, but it had to be rescheduled for the following week so his leg could be examined properly.

  Inti Wara Yassi, founded out of nothing by goodwill and run in the same way, is still a young organisation. It was founded and initially run by a man named Juan Carlos, a philanthropist who had already spent years taking in orphans and streetkids. These days its principal manager is a generous woman named Nina, whose colourful background includes a father who rode with Che Guevara. The only revolution Nina seeks though is a better life for Bolivia’s animals. The whole organisation is held together by hope, a strong desire to do good, and bananas (lots of bananas), but very little money. An X-ray machine was as far out of Inti Wara Yassi’s budget as a space shuttle, so Roy had to go to hospital. Without any veterinary hospitals within reasonable distance, there was only one place for him to go, a human hospital more than twenty kilometres away.

  Unfortunately, another tool Inti Wara Yassi lacks is a vehicle.

  •

  ‘So, we’re going in a taxi?’ I asked, smiling, on the day of Roy’s X-ray.

  ‘Si,’ replied one of the few permanent staff, a hard-working vet named Luis.

  ‘Does the driver know that not all his passengers are human?’ I asked.

  ‘Si,’ Luis said again, keeping to his pattern of not speaking English unless he had had a few drinks, then showing remarkable fluency.

  So it was that Roy was anaesthetised and painstakingly manhandled down near-vertical drops and slippery-sloped trails on a stretcher. Along with two vets, plus Mick and Bondy (who’d decided it was too good a sight to miss), I clambered into the back of a station wagon taxi, its seats folded down to take the stretcher and its cargo. A small crowd drew around us, hoping to catch a glimpse of the famous Roy before we set off. (As well as the public, even other volunteers at Parque Machia are barred from visiting animals not in their care, so as to reduce the animals’ exposure to humans.) The only person seemingly not impressed by Roy was the taxi driver, who acted as if this was nothing out of the ordinary and soon had us rumbling along the rutted road until we left the tar and hit an even janglier stretch of cobblestone, flanked by dank jungle.

  After half an hour we came to a roadblock where teenaged soldiers were wielding machine guns—a fine incentive to stop. I wasn’t sure what they were after—drugs, bribes, a hug?—but doubted we had the papers to prove we were legitimately permitted to transport a puma via taxi.

  ‘Drug checkpoint,’ Bondy said flatly.

  I looked at Luis, who held a loaded syringe of anaesthetic low in his hand in case it should be needed, a bead of moisture glistening at its tip. ‘Well, that doesn’t look at all suspicious,’ I thought. The soldiers approached with grim expressions, one holding something that looked a little like a corkscrew.

  ‘They stick that thing into people’s luggage and get a sample of what’s inside,’ Mick explained.

  As they drew closer, the soldiers had a good look at the four people in the back of the taxi, but remained unaware of Roy, who was almost completely covered by a blanket. Only the tip of his tail was visible, occasionally twitching as he dreamt of chasing knees through a field.

  As the soldiers stood beside the car with their sampling tool, Mick said calmly, ‘Dare you to use it,’ and whipped back the blanket. Roy’s eyes were frozen open in the very same stare he used when about to attack, and both soldiers jumped back.

  ‘Puma!’ one of them exclaimed, quite unnecessarily.

  In rapid-fire, urgent-sounding Spanish, Luis quickly explained our mission, and that we had to hurry as the puma could wake up at any moment and might become dangerous; he held up the syringe to emphasise his point.

  The soldiers quickly waved us on. The look of mingled glee and excitement on their faces highlighted how young they were and how magnificent even a sleeping puma can be.

  Finally arriving at the hospital after another half hour, we rushed Roy through the swinging doors, mindful as ever of his tail, then around a corner into a windowless corridor whose light fixtures had more blown bulbs than live ones.

  We were met by a man wearing a beanie. He had a pair of glasses perched on his nose with lenses of such remarkable thickness that his neck must have felt the strain of the weight of them.

  ‘Radioliga,’ Luis said, and even with my limited Spanish I could guess at the man’s profession.

  We carefully lifted Roy off the stretcher, and laid him on the radiologist’s table. His eyes were still wide open, and every now and then he would rumble through rubbery lips. The radiologist backed away, probably afraid, I thought, and wondered if he’d heard of Roy’s reputation for de-spleening Bolivians. But then I heard a switch being flicked, followed by an indistinct buzzing. Glancing over, I was appalled to see the radiologist behind a screen, presumably lead, accompanied by a nurse. Surely they had heard of Marie Curie? Surely they should have warned us before releasing radioactive waves? The radiologist spoke to the vets, who repositioned Roy, and again with no preamble he flicked the switch. I was sure I felt hair growing on pa
rts of my body where it had never grown before.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Mick said. ‘I think my nuts just shrank!’

  It was only then that I noticed the radiologist was missing an arm from the elbow down. I nudged Bondy. ‘Do you think he’s met Roy before?’

  We laughed, then the machine fired yet again and we left the room in a hurry, shooting spiteful glances at the one-armed man and covering our most delicate jewels as we went.

  Once the plates were taken, the vets (who had stoically stayed in the room during the procedure) ushered us back in and we stretchered Roy out. News of his presence in the hospital had spread and a small crowd had gathered once again. Visitors, nurses, local children, and patients in vomit-green robes clustered in the hall. It was easy, if unfair, to be angry with Bolivians in general for what had been done to the animals that had ended up at the park, but these people showed a real awe at seeing Roy and I wondered if this was a small incidental opportunity to raise awareness of the need for puma preservation. It was impossible to know, but I was glad to be there, and waved as we all climbed into the back of the waiting taxi.

  ‘Ciao!’ a small child shouted cheerily, and soon the gathered crowd all started waving, calling ‘ciao’ to the big cat they’d just seen.

  As the taxi began to pull away I waved and called, ‘Ciao!’

  ‘Ciao!’ echoed Bondy. ‘Meow!’ shouted Mick.

  Roy showed signs of waking on the ride back and was given another sedative. Though he was drugged the drive may still have been traumatic for him, but it was even more stressful for those of us wedged into a confined space with a puma who might wake at any time.

  With slightly jangled nerves we arrived at the drug checkpoint again. There were more soldiers than before, and we were waved away from the other cars towards a sinister-looking section out of sight of the road. A soldier with more stripes than the others approached the taxi, followed by his minions. ‘Bugger,’ I thought, ‘we’re in trouble.’ Paperwork could take hours in a place like this— hours and perhaps bribes that none of us had.