Tales from a Young Vet

by Jo Hardy

  After processing the BAL and blood samples in the on-site lab we were finished for the night. By the time I got into bed it was almost two in the morning. The hyena capture had been amazing, and as I drifted off to sleep I began to think that wildlife work could be something I would really consider as a career.

  After several more nights spent capturing hyenas, in week two we turned our attention to rhinos. The clinic does a lot of conservation work, and they hoped, over the following couple of weeks, to move sixty rhinos out of this section of the park, where they were regularly being poached, to a much safer area a day’s drive away. This meant capturing the rhinos and transporting them on trucks, so they also planned to take blood from each rhino and do a basic health screening at the same time.

  Rhino poaching is a very serious problem in South Africa. Over the previous year 1,200 rhinos had been killed by poachers who hunt them for their horns, which are sold on the black market for as much as gold. This is a 21 per cent increase on the previous year, and a horrifying 9,300 per cent increase from 2007. Asian countries, Vietnam and China in particular, prize the horns for their medicinal and aphrodisiac purposes.

  There are two species of rhino, black and white. All are in fact exactly the same dark grey-brown, with a thick skin that looks like armour. The key difference between them is lip shape; the term ‘white’ is believed to have come from the Afrikaans word wyd, which refers to the rhino’s square upper lip. They are grazers and live in open areas. Black rhinos have hooked lips to pick leaves off bushes, and they are more rarely seen as they’re often hidden among the vegetation. Enormous creatures, weighing up to a tonne each, they are vegetarian and roam the grasslands of just four African countries: South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Kenya. Eighty per cent of all rhinos are found in South Africa, and half of these, around 10,000, are in Kruger National Park, a park about the same size as Israel. Huge efforts are made by the government and wildlife services to combat poaching, but the poachers are clever and determined, so staying ahead of them is a challenge.

  Moving a rhino is not easy. It needs to be done in the cool of the morning, because once under anaesthetic animals can’t regulate their body heat, and in the scorching midday sun the rhinos could overheat and die. So we set off each morning at three, a couple of hours before sunrise, a convoy of bakkies with about a dozen of us crammed into the back of each, along with ropes and vast crates. At that time in the morning it was really cold, but we knew that by 10am it would be baking hot, so we had to dress in layers, shedding them as the sun came up.

  We looked for the rhino close to the perimeter of the park, where they were most vulnerable to poachers. It was about an hour’s drive for us to get there, and once we’d found them a helicopter with a vet on board would come and join us, and the vet would dart the rhino from the helicopter. The rhino, shocked by the noise and the dart, began to run and we’d follow it until it came to a halt about three minutes later. It’s vital to find the rhino once they’ve been darted as unconscious they’re completely defenceless and can easily be attacked by lions or hyenas. So if the rhino headed for bush that was too dense to drive through, the helicopter would fly low, trying to push them towards the road.

  By the time we caught up with the rhino it would still be attempting to run, lifting one leg after the other but staying on the spot, unable to move forward. At that point everyone on the trucks sprang into action. One of the team would throw a blindfold over the rhino and the whole team would push it over onto its side. That was the cue for Tina, Natalia and me to grab our equipment trays and sample bottles and get going. We needed to take ten different tubes of blood for various tests. By the end of the week we were really good at hitting rhino veins. You can try an ear, but often the blood pressure there isn’t very good, so it’s better to try a vein deep in the leg. You have to do it completely blind by feeling a dip in between two bones on the inside of the leg, below its knee, and then plunging in the needle.

  We also had to get faecal samples, which meant putting a gloved hand in the rectum to get out some matter and filling a sample pot. Then we’d take a tissue sample, by cutting off a tiny slither of skin on the ear and sprinkling cauterizing powder over it to stop it bleeding. And finally we had to take a hair sample, by plucking some hairs from the tail.

  While the three of us were taking all the samples, another team was drilling holes in the horns and putting in microchips, and a third team was putting on ropes so that once the samples were taken we could wake the rhino enough to get it back onto its feet and walk it into a large metal crate that a fourth team would have waiting.

  All of this took place in under two minutes, with the vets yelling at us to hurry up and our fingers slipping on the syringes as we raced against the clock. It is vital that rhinos don’t stay under too long; they are so heavy that their weight can stop the blood supply to their legs and if that happens, you can’t get them up again.

  We’d divide the jobs between us – ‘You get the faecal sample, you do the ear, I’ll do the blood’ – but sometimes two rhinos were darted at once, perhaps a mother and calf or two sister rhinos grazing together, and we’d have to split up, one of us taking one rhino, the other two taking the second. While we took all the samples, the vets and technicians would be monitoring the anaesthetic and drilling holes in the horns to insert microchips into them in case the rhinos were poached for that part of their body.

  If we got everything done in time the vets would allow us to administer the reversal drug to wake the rhino. Ropes and pulleys would be thrown around it, and it would take at least ten or twelve of us to get it upright and then push and pull it into the crate. Once in, the rhino would be given the remainder of the antidote to fully wake it, and then a small crane would lift the crate onto a lorry.

  At one point, when we’d darted two rhinos at once, the team had a problem getting the first into the crate, which meant that the second lay unconscious on its side for an extra five minutes. To keep the blood supply to the legs going, Dr Jenny and I had to take a back leg each and pump them up and down. The legs were incredibly heavy and it was hard work moving them at all, let alone pumping, but knowing the damage that would happen if we didn’t, we heaved and pushed until it was time to wake the rhino.

  We went through this routine every day for a week and caught thirty-five rhinos; an excellent tally. It was a wonderful thing to work so closely with these extraordinary creatures who look prehistoric and whose history goes back fourteen million years.

  Our adventures in the bush were not without incident. At one point, as I sat on the side of a bakkie, trying desperately not to fall off while we were off-roading through the bush, a tree branch swiped my back, cutting my strappy top in half and slicing right across my skin. It hurt, but we had nothing to put on it, so I just had to put up with it. And as I didn’t have another top with me I spent the rest of the morning in half a top. I found it quite embarrassing as we had some investors with us who had been allowed to come and experience the work the clinic did, and so we had our guests around us, photographing what the team were doing, and there was I, trying to stay out of shot with my battered top and bleeding back.

  The second incident was a little more alarming. The drug used to dart the rhinos, called M99, was opioid-based and fatal to humans, so we were told never to touch the dart or the site of the dart; all of this had to be done by experienced people. The technicians would often be the ones to pull the dart out of the animal using a Leatherman, a metal multi-tool a bit like a Swiss army knife, and put it in a sealed container for the vets to dispose of later.

  On the third day I was taking faecal samples from a rhino, with one hand on the rhino’s back, when a technician pulled the dart out of the rhino’s side, accidentally grazing the back of my hand with it. Dr Pretorius was jumping in and out of the helicopter at that point, so I ran to Gale, the head technician. There was a red mark on the back of my hand and I didn’t know whether any of the drug might have been left on the dart, so I
felt very scared. Gale was calm and collected. He told me to wash my hand and then let him know if I felt strange in any way, sleepy or dizzy. There was a reversal drug, called M5050, but to give it without having absorbed any M99 would have nasty side effects.

  Gale was experienced, I trusted him, and in any case there wasn’t much else I could do. I felt nervous for the next couple of hours, but despite my close shave I was fine. I phoned Jacques that evening to tell him what had happened. He was well aware of the dangers of wildlife work, having spent a year in a game capture team before I met him. He was fuming at the technician who had grazed my hand, and for once I was glad he wasn’t with me as he could be fiercely protective and a little hot-headed.

  The second week sped by and suddenly it was time to go. On our last night we went for drinks beside a beautiful dam just outside the staff village. It was a breathtaking spot, well away from the tourist track. As we sat under a tree, watching the sun go down and sipping our sundowners with a few of the staff, Natalia, Tina and I toasted an unforgettable two weeks.

  The next day we drove back to Johannesburg and said our goodbyes. Natalia and Tina headed home and I flew to Port Elizabeth for a long-anticipated reunion with Jacques. After almost five months apart, seeing him again was very emotional. And this time we would have a whole month together.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Between Two Worlds

  My month with Jacques, working, lazing and finishing off my research, had been blissful. Now, though, the wide-open plains and the colours and scents of Africa seemed so far away. I wouldn’t be going back again until after my finals, the following summer. I sighed. I had so much work to get through before then that the thought of it made my head spin.

  As yet another apparently lame horse was paraded in front of us, my thoughts drifted back to Africa. It had been lovely to be back at Madolos, where Michael and the ladies – Helezin, Patricia and Valencia – greeted me warmly. Jacques and I planned to spend a week or so there before taking a road trip to Johannesburg, to see his family and attend his friend’s wedding.

  A couple of days after I arrived I felt tired and all my muscles hurt. Jacques, recognising the symptoms, made me go to a doctor. I had my second dose of tick-bite fever, this time from a minute pepper tick bite on my foot, no doubt picked up in the bush while working on my wildlife placement. Tick-bite fever can be really nasty, as I knew from my previous encounter four years earlier, but I was lucky and after a few days on antibiotics I felt much better, if still pretty tired.

  Before we set off on the fifteen-hour drive to Johannesburg, Jacques suggested we stop on the way to camp for a couple of nights in Mountain Zebra National Park and I jumped at the idea. I loved going to new places and Jacques, with his detailed knowledge of animals and plants, was the perfect guide.

  Named after the Cape Mountain zebra, the park at first appears a little disappointing; vast, open and flat, a valley between two mountains, with very little wildlife. It’s only when you drive to the top that you discover a huge plain there, with stunning views all around and a wealth of animal life.

  We pitched our tent in time to watch the sunset with a glass of wine, just as two zebra stallions started a fight. Jacques whipped out his camera to capture the tussle, etched against the setting sun. It was so beautifully romantic that I hoped Jacques might think it was the perfect spot in which to propose. He’d already missed so many opportunities to go down on one knee in some gorgeous, romantic spot over the past year, surely he was going to get around to it soon? Goodness knows I’d been dropping enough hints. But once again he missed his chance, and I had to settle for the sunset and the wine.

  On to Johannesburg and a warm welcome from Jacques’ parents, Elna and Johan. I’ve known them since my first summer in South Africa when he and I were just friends, so I never had to go through the toe-curling ‘this is my girlfriend’ introduction. They live in a suburb of the city, in a house that is pristine. Elna is an interior designer, and like Jacques’ younger sister Sonia, she’s chatty and affectionate and has always treated me like one of the family. Johan, who works for a company that manufactures cranes, is more reserved, but he’s actually very kind and very protective of his family.

  I always enjoy spending time with Sonia. She lives in the city, works in the legal world and she brings out my girly side. She wears lovely clothes, does her nails beautifully and always looks good, while I spend most of my time with hair pulled back and nails clipped short. Being a vet and looking elegant just don’t go together. But within an hour or two of getting together with Sonia, I’m talking fashion and hair, and loving it.

  That weekend Jacques’ friend Jason was getting married to his long-time girlfriend, Laura. It was going to be a big do and I was looking forward to my first South African wedding, which turned out to be just like an English wedding in some ways, but completely different in others.

  Take the traditional heckling of the groom by his closest friends, including Jacques, of course.

  When the time came for his speech, Jason stood up and began a romantic and emotional speech about the bride. Praising her beauty, describing how he fell in love with her, moving the guests almost to tears. Until his friends pulled up their chairs in a semicircle in front of him and began whistling, heckling and cat-calling.

  He struggled on, doing his best to ignore the cacophony, and eventually, to cheers and stamps, he got to the end of his speech. After which the whole room leaped to their feet and began to whirl and spin in a sokkie, the dance that all Afrikaners love – a mix of ballroom and jive that’s fast, fun and furious.

  Most Afrikaner men can dance sokkie and know how to lead their partners, and Jacques is no exception. In fact, his dancing is one of the things that made me fall for him; I love to dance with someone who can lead me effortlessly through a series of spins, turns and lifts. And because he’s tall, I can wear my highest heels (which make me over six foot, since I’m five-eight in my socks) and he still towers over me.

  We danced until we dropped, and then spent another couple of days with Jacques’ family, relaxing and catching up with the rugby – a national obsession that Jacques and his dad share with most of the South African population.

  We drove back to Madolos in a day and while Jacques got back to work I spent a few days writing up my research project. Jacques was also working on some research for his Masters, a study of the way rodent populations differ according to the varied plant life in game reserves, so we were able to talk it over and give each other a bit of support and advice.

  The next day I went over to see my old friend Thys. He and Johma welcomed me warmly and sat me down in their kitchen for a coffee and an enormous slab of cake.

  Thys asked me if I wanted to come and dart some buffalo with him, and of course I said yes.

  He told me we were going to test the buffalo for Foot and Mouth Disease. The game reserve’s owners wanted their herds certified free of FMD, which meant they would fetch a much higher price when they were sold. So off we went in his jeep, with Thys, as ever, pondering philosophical puzzles about the origins of life as we headed into the reserve.

  Thys had roped in a team of helpers from the reserve staff, and they rounded up eight buffalo and put them into a livestock enclosure known as a boma. We darted them all and the second they were out cold we began taking blood samples from the jugular vein in the neck. After this, we started reversing the anaesthetics. After the rhino work I had just done I was used to working under pressure, but with my last buffalo I just couldn’t find the vein in its ear to administer the reversal drug. I kept missing and I still hadn’t managed it when the first buffalo began waking up.

  ‘Come on, Englishman, hurry up,’ Thys shouted, as I finally got the needle in. I drew back the plunger to check I was in the vein, and to my relief some blood flashed back into my syringe, so I pressed down the plunger and then sprinted out of the boma.

  ‘Just in time then,’ he said, and roared with laughter. Like so many of the vets working
with wildlife, he thrived on the nail-biting moments.

  Our next task was to move a delinquent adolescent rhino to the other section of the reserve. The rhino was still grazing with his mother, although he was old enough to leave her and, like a typical teenager, he was causing trouble by damaging the various small huts and wooden buildings across the reserve. Once he was darted, Thys shooed the mother off – on foot. How he managed to send her packing without getting flattened I’m not sure; rhino are huge but they can be surprisingly fast, and if one turns on you then you don’t have a lot of time to make your escape. Somehow, Thys persuaded this mum to back off, and although she came back a couple of times Thys and the rest of the team waved her away each time.

  The young rhino was out cold when Thys realised he didn’t have a blindfold to put over the animal’s head. You need to keep the animal in the dark, otherwise the light can wake it if the anaesthetic is not deep. Undaunted, Thys got a towel out of the back of the car and sellotaped it over the rhino’s head, before giving him half the reversal drug. Then the team got him on his feet, threw ropes around him and hauled him onto the trailer while I videoed the scene. Thys loved to film his work and he would often shove his video camera into my hands with the words, ‘Englishman, have the camera.’ He’d expect me to record whatever he was doing, and he would film me when I was at work, too, as in the scenario with the boar castrations.