How to Walk a Puma

by Peter Allison

  The officer pulled back the blanket that covered Roy, gave a ‘hmmph’ of triumph, then turned and spoke in Spanish to his assembled men. One of the soldiers whipped a small camera out of his pocket, and the officer quickly struck a pose beside Roy’s form, had his portrait taken, said ‘Gracias,’ and signalled us to drive on.

  I learnt later that the region of Bolivia where Parque Machia is located is, after Ecuador and Peru, the third-largest coca-growing area in the world. The drug checkpoint we’d encountered on the way to and from the hospital was a permanent fixture, required if the country was to continue receiving US aid dollars. However, since it was known to everyone in the area and beyond, it was about as effective as fish-scented deodorant.

  Unfortunately, the local coca growers, supported by the mayor, had started to build an illegal road around the checkpoint, bulldozing a swathe through the jungle, even toppling trees onto an enclosure where monkeys were being rehabilitated. If completed, the road had the potential to shut down Parque Machia altogether. By law, the mayor would then be in a position to dictate which animals were moved to other reserves and which stayed. As the tourists who came to the area often expressed dismay that they were not allowed near the pumas or ocelots, undoubtedly the mayor would want to keep some of these animals. Without the Inti Wara Yassi volunteers to walk them every day, they would need to be kept in cages. Ominously, only the rainy season was holding back the completion of the coca growers’ road.

  •

  The results of the X-ray revealed that Roy was suffering from a serious calcium deficiency, most likely congenital.

  ‘Man, his bones looked like a bird’s,’ said Rob, a Californian animal lover who donated several months of each year to Inti Wara Yassi, and who had known Roy for years. He’d become something of an expert on captive big cats. Rob and the vets devised a plan to supplement Roy’s daily diet of chicken and beef with calcium powder. This had to be smeared all over Roy’s food each day, a revolting job for me, Adrian, Mick and any future Roy Boys.

  ‘I’m not sure I want him getting any stronger,’ I said to Adrian as we trudged up the trail to Roy’s enclosure one morning. The path still left me panting, despite the fitness I was gaining daily.

  ‘Me neither, but you know something?’ said Adrian. ‘Now that I know Roy isn’t well I feel a bit differently towards him. I’m not so angry with him when he’s being a bastard.’

  I wished I felt the same way. But contrary to my hope of forming a special connection with the puma, it had become apparent that I was a target for Roy’s aggression. He was known to jump some people more than others—and I had turned out to be one of those people. I held no dislike for Roy, but no affection either. I just wanted to make it through each day, getting jumped on as little as possible.

  When I first arrived there I’d considered staying longer than four weeks at Parque Machia, maybe even settling in this patch of Bolivian jungle for a few months. But after dealing with Roy for a while I just wanted to get through the time I’d signed on for, to prove to myself that I couldn’t be beaten by a girly-faced, chicken-boned, racist cat.

  Don’t Eat My Hero

  Parque Machia was in a state of nervous anticipation, the entire place humming with activity. We were expecting a famous visitor, someone well known to anyone with more than a passing interest in wildlife: Dame Jane Goodall, whose research into chimpanzees has changed the way we think about apes, ourselves, and how wildlife research is conducted, was visiting the reserve for a night. Accompanying her would be the founder of Inti Wara Yassi, Juan Carlos, and some of the orphans and homeless children in his charge.

  While others did their best to buff and polish surfaces—which the monkeys immediately befouled—Mick and I took Roy out for his morning round. Mick was leaving the park in the next few days, and wanted to spend as much time with Roy as possible. Adrian was thrilled to have a day off the trail which he could spend lazing at the tourist aviary, a dull job but one that involved no hills or bites—unless you were outwitted by a macaw.

  I was in lead position, which meant the rope went directly from Roy’s collar to my waist, with sturdy carabiners holding it in place at both ends. Though the rope was ten metres long, it was never willingly fed out to full length, and my aim was to keep it coiled in my left hand with a little over a metre granted to Roy for most of the walk, more when we went down steep hills, much less as we approached his ‘hot zones’, as we called his regular, inexplicable-to-all-but-him places of attack. Mick stayed as close to my heels as he could without tripping me, close enough that if Roy did jump me he would be there straightaway to lead him off once I had dislodged his claws.

  The walk started well; I even thought that after two weeks maybe Roy was getting used to me, and perhaps I was getting better at judging his moods and reading his body language, anticipating his jumps and sliding my hand down the rope close to the collar to block his turns. My knee still suffered regular abuse, but not as often as at the start of my tenure. So it was with confidence that I tackled one of the toughest parts of the trail, which involved dropping a full body length onto a narrow ledge, then immediately leaping onto a well-polished log that traversed a sheer rock face, using the momentum to jump again onto moderately firmer ground. This was followed directly by a run and jump onto a rock, requiring a well-timed grab at a tree to stop sliding down a ledge. Three paces later came a tight squeeze between two vertical rock faces, made worse by the slippery surface underfoot where water pooled. This was one of the first times I remembered to get close to Roy straight after the gap: this was important as he always attempted a left turn at that point, even though the trail went right.

  ‘Pete? Mick?’ came a voice ahead of us.

  Roy instantly froze, his ears swinging forward and locking. The voice belonged to Bec, who worked with a puma named Sonko. Sonko was fat, and Roy Boys delighted in pointing out his bulk, not so subtly hinting that Roy was the real puma. As well as being fat, Sonko squeaked like a baby alligator. People who worked with Sonko invariably claimed Roy was a bit soft. Which he wasn’t. He was just pretty. Nevertheless, a rivalry existed between Sonko’s handlers and the Roy Boys, and insults were often exchanged.

  ‘Yep?’ Mick shouted back.

  ‘Sonko is lying down, hasn’t moved for half an hour,’ Bec called to us now.

  ‘Kick him!’ shouted Mick.

  Sonko’s volunteers treated Mick’s suggestion with the disdain it deserved, and we were at an impasse. Pumas are solitary by nature and two male pumas never get together casually to discuss sport or girls. They only come together to fight for land. The two pumas’ trails overlapped in many places, and the points where they crossed almost flowed with the urine unleashed by these two alpha males as they felt the need to counter the territorial markings of the other. For Roy and Sonko to meet could be catastrophic, so we needed to do something—fast.

  Roy, Mick and I stood at the top of a steep gully with smooth river rocks at its base. The other river bank had more vegetation, but not too far up it linked with our trail again. If we cut down the bank then scrambled up the other side, somehow coaxing Roy ahead of us, we would overtake Sonko without the pumas coming face to face.

  I turned Roy back in the very direction I’d just denied him, and his pace immediately picked up. Every day he aimed for this route, and every day he was refused. As we reached the river bank he moved even faster, and my boots scrabbled for purchase on the moss-covered, rounded rocks. Roy’s four points on the ground made him far more sure-footed than me, not to mention that he had evolved for such terrain and I have a noted lack of coordination.

  ‘Try to steer him up the bank here,’ called Mick, but the rope had played out, and swinging my arm to the right barely influenced Roy’s path.

  Roy continued on faster still, and with no way of slowing him down I was forced to let out more rope, even though over half of its length had already slid painfully through my palm. To this point the river bed was level, but ahead was a downward slope
, and a trail used by some of Inti’s other animals.

  Then, over the sounds of jungle insects and the ever-present, strangely electronic burbling of a type of bird called an oropendola, came a sound I hadn’t imagined hearing here. It was children singing. It was the orphans singing to Jane Goodall! I realised, struck by a sudden horrifying vision of meeting the woman who’d been my hero since I was a boy, and Roy biting her or some child that fate had already mistreated. I upped my pace considerably, trying to catch up to Roy so I could grab his collar, Mick still right behind me even though the going was now just as tough for him.

  But Roy was faster, and hit the slope at a sprint, his intent ominous. The rope pulled tight, and even though Roy weighed less than me I was pulled clean off my feet, landing face down and head first before being dragged sideways, injuriously to both pride and skin. By now, Roy was already over the crest of the hill, and as I reached it I clutched at a wrist-thick tree, gripping with all the strength of my left hand and yanking us to a halt.

  I looked down the slope at Roy, who glanced back, his face set in the expression that meant he was about to cause mayhem. He jerked his body sideways with such incredible strength that the tree, still in my grip, was torn from the ground, and then he started dragging me along again. The sensation was like being dumped by a wave, but without the cushioning softness of water. I was smashed against rocks, bounced over stumps, and burnt by the friction of dirt and sharp grass tussocks. My body was soon so battered that I had no idea which part of it suddenly connected with a rock and somehow, mercifully, bounced me upright for a brief moment.

  I took a running step but immediately lost my balance again, the rope at my waist yanking me at an odd angle. To my right was a tree, this one far larger than the one I’d grabbed previously, probably about the thickness of a telegraph pole. Grabbing it one-handed was out of the question, so with the last iota of strength available to me I launched at it bodily, hoping to plaster myself like a skydiving koala against its rough bark. As with many of my athletic endeavours, I missed the mark and sailed wide. However, this left the rope bent around the trunk in a U, with Roy’s momentum on one side and mine on the other. For once my weight counted, and Roy’s advance was brought to a crashing halt as the rope pulled tight, while I was slammed against the tree, causing sharp and sudden pain to my wrist and other areas. I fell to the ground again, using the tree and my heft as a brake, and watched Mick run past me to calm and collect Roy.

  Before I could decide not to, I stood up. Wincing, spitting out dirt, I joined Mick and the still wide-eyed Roy.

  ‘You can walk?’ Mick asked, genuinely incredulous.

  ‘Since I was about a year old, actually,’ I replied, most likely in shock.

  ‘I was sure you must have broken something.’

  ‘Not sure that I haven’t.’

  In fact, I thought it might just be adrenalin keeping me upright, but I wanted to get Roy away from the orphans before that could be confirmed.

  It turned out that my misadventure had resulted in only bruises, abrasions and welts, and I was well enough to attend the dinner in honour of Jane that evening. I put on a now unaccustomed shirt so Jane wouldn’t have to see the damage I’d incurred in attempting to protect her, but she seemed grateful when I told her, in as offhand a tone as I could manage, of the day’s events. She appeared tired, not surprising considering she is in her seventies and still travels three hundred days of the year to promote conservation.

  Right then and there, talking to Jane, I decided that complaining about bumps and bruises was fine, but that it was time to stop worrying about my age. In fact, if I’d learnt anything it was that getting older was great. I had enough experience to put what I’d learnt from life into practice, could laugh at myself more comfortably than ever before, and had as much fun as when I was a teen. It was ageing that was a bastard, but while my knees held out and my lungs drew air I would make sure to enjoy every moment I spent being beaten up by a half-wild puma, because it was so much better than being beaten down by a desk.

  Dressed for a Kill

  The next day was Mick’s last with Roy, and he took the cord for the whole day. I filmed much of it, hoping to give him a memento of one of Roy’s jumps besides the light scarring on his mangled right knee. But Roy behaved like a kitten, not even attempting an attack, just trotting mellowly and politely along the trails, responding with affection whenever Mick drew close. (Roy, like all cats, showed he liked you by bumping his head against yours—not fun if it’s an English soccer fan, only marginally more so with a puma.)

  At the end of the afternoon walk, Mick said goodbye to Roy, ending his heroically long six-week stint with him. Mick’s eyes were watery as he walked away, but I didn’t feel like even gently mocking him. In truth, I was perplexed by his apparent love for this ill-tempered animal.

  I had loved many animals in the past, more than I could count, but apart from the benign contact of pets (none of them larger than Bunty the sheep) it had always been at a distance. I knew that the lions and elephants I’d observed daily in Botswana might kill me if I approached them, but they would never hurt you out of malice; they don’t recognise that we feel, so they can’t intentionally inflict pain or fear. In fact, it was their wildness that appealed to me. Roy was different—not a pet, but nor was he exactly wild. I couldn’t shake the feeling that his aggression was deliberate, vindictive even. Learning to enjoy it would not be easy.

  With Mick gone, Adrian and I kept running with Roy, hoping a suitable candidate would soon appear to help us out. Meanwhile, with no one to give us a rest, we had to slog through day after day, a punishing ordeal, made worse by the foul mood Roy seemed to have fallen into since Mick left. He was jumping us at every hot zone, and quite often in areas outside them as well. Each morning Adrian and I would sit at breakfast shooting shifty glances at the clock that seemed to be moving too fast towards the hour when we would have to face the walk to Roy’s cage, braced for violence and pain. One day Roy bit me a record four times, and made another six attempts I was able to block, making me seriously wonder why I ever signed up for this. The notion of doing good seemed faint, and I wondered whether all those who’d called me a fool might not be correct.

  •

  ‘This place sucks,’ said Jodie, an American girl who worked in the monkey quarantine area, across the lunch table one day. ‘They have too many animals, and hardly any get released. It sucks,’ she said again, taking an aggressive drag of her cigarette.

  Characteristically, even though she was giving voice to some of my own feelings, as soon as I heard them I felt the need to argue.

  ‘It does if you think that the sole aim is to release animals,’ I replied. ‘But most injured wild animals die. And most of the ones brought here to Inti have injuries too severe for the animal to ever be released again, or they have no habitat to return to. If they’re not going to be locked in a cage or euthanased, giving them the best possible life they can have is the only option.’

  Jodie nodded, reluctantly agreeing, and I continued on enthusiastically, inspiring myself. ‘If at the end of the day you can believe that one animal’s life is better, even if just for that day, because of what you have done, then why not be happy with that?’

  She nodded again, and so did I, having managed to convince myself as much as her. We both knew that Inti would never refuse an animal care, and that we were doing everything we could for every one. Roy wasn’t to blame for the way he behaved. Inti Wara Yassi couldn’t afford trainers for the animals; their only aim was for Roy, the monkeys, Baloo the bear, the birds and the nasty small animals to be as wild as they could be given that they couldn’t be wild. It was flawed, but noble.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ I thought suddenly, ‘flawed but noble pretty much describes Roy too.’

  This epiphany made me feel renewed somewhat, and that afternoon I approached Roy with a different attitude. It wasn’t his fault that his mother had been killed, and I couldn’t blame him for wanting to be
wild and puma-like. I should embrace it, embrace it all—the charging, the bites, the rolling around to gain more rope so he could jump me, and the awkward moments when he stared into my eyes while defecating. Roy’s behaviour often felt malicious to me, but I knew better, knew enough not to anthropomorphise him, knew enough now to appreciate him as a puma. I just had to try to remember this each time he latched onto my leg.

  The afternoon’s walk went well, with only a few half-hearted jump attempts. It was most likely a coincidence, but I felt as though Roy and I had made a breakthrough.

  Things seemed to be looking up even more when Adrian and I were granted a trainee. Once we’d trained the new Roy Boy—which would take at least four days—we could start having the occasional day off. My mood was heading towards buoyant. With a day’s break I might just make it through the remaining two weeks of my stay.

  That night there was a party for the volunteers, and I let myself go more than a little with a nasty local brew called Singani, made primarily of cane sugar and Satan’s urine (at least that was the theory I developed in my throbbing head the next day).

  I hoped it was just my alcohol-addled ears deceiving me when I heard what sounded like an auction starting, but next thing I knew the item being bid for was me.

  ‘Wha …?’ I said eloquently.

  Bondy, who was acting as auctioneer, kindly explained: the Roy Boys’ services were for sale to the other volunteers. Being stupid or macho enough to volunteer to run with Roy made us the perfect victims. The money raised would be put towards caring for the animals.

  I mumbled something about my discomfort at being sold as a slave when I already suffered daily indignities at the paws of Roy and the trail itself, but had no real recourse.