As might be expected, since the influx of sportsmen into Africa, there have been plenty of people who had no better luck with rhinos than those slaves. A chap named Eastwood, who was associated with the Uganda Railways at the same time Patterson was, knocked over a rhino with a shot and made the old goof of thinking him dead. The rhino lurched to its feet and squashed the man, breaking several ribs and his right arm. When Eastwood got up again, the rhino shoved his horn through the man’s thigh and tossed him a couple of stories straight up. When he came back down, the rhino stuck him a few times again and meandered off. Fortunately for Eastwood, some of his men saw the vultures gathering to finish up what the rhino had started and found him. As it was, he was damned lucky to lose no more than his arm, which had to be removed.
I doubt that any student of African hunting would contest that a man called J. A. Hunter, one of the finest professional safari operators and government hunters of East Africa, had more experience with rhinos, particularly the black rhino (Diceros bicornis) than anyone else. All in all, especially during the biologically tragic “Great Makueni Rhino Hunt,” Hunter killed more than 1,000 personally, mostly on orders from the government. The Makueni Hunt was forced by the decision to open up large tracts of new land for resettlement of the Wakamba tribe in the Machakos District of Kenya about the middle of this century. Since the bush area was practically crawling with rhinos, many of whom had killed women gathering firewood, Hunter was ordered to clean them out so the bush could be cut. A basic reason for cutting the bush was to deprive tsetse flies of breeding grounds. More’s the shame that after the rhino were slaughtered, the scheme never came to fruition, the great animals wasted.
Now nobody, not even a man like Hunter, goes off into very thick bush to kill 1,000 bull butterflies let alone rhinos without a consequent number of hairy encounters. Hunter himself was never caught, but some of his native hunters or scouts had some stories to tell their grandchildren. In one case, during a triple charge in very dense cover, Hunter had killed a bull and a cow when a third, another bull, whipped past him with one of his scouts hanging on the animal’s horns for dear life. J. A. risked a shot and collapsed the bull, the young man’s body shooting forward from the momentum. Convinced that he had killed both the scout and the rhino, Hunter was overjoyed to see the boy move. The bullet had missed him by fractions of an inch. When the rhino, surprising the scout, had lowered his head for the toss, the boy had desperately grabbed the front horn and held himself clear while the rhino bulled off with him clinging like a tickbird.
Many men, unable to avoid a charge, are caught between the legs by the horns or gored in the lower belly. Hunter records one native in Kenya who had been completely castrated by a rhino’s toss and healed perfectly. I have heard of elephant carcasses being found with perforations that were almost certainly caused by rhino horns, and there’s no question that an elephant will back off when confronted by old Dimwit.
Although various forms of rhinoceros existed in Europe and North America as contemporaries of the mammoth and cave bear, besides the two African species, there are now only three other Asian types. The Indian rhino, which, if you can believe reports, is even dumber than the African, is much more segmented in appearance than other rhinos. His skin is deeply creased into “compartments” and he has but a single horn. Considered very aggressive, he has developed a strange habit of biting his victims more than goring with the horn. The other members of the Oriental family are the Sumatran rhino, which has two horns, and the Javanese rhinos, which have only one. Both are just about finished as viable species, outside zoos.
The black rhino is constantly accompanied by several breeds of sentinel birds, both oxpeckers and tickbirds, as well as cattle egrets, which catch the insects stirred out of the grass by rhino and other large herbivores. I have read that tickbirds will nip meat out of the suppurating sores that rhino all have at their “armpits,” where the thick skin rubs against itself. In examining these wounds, though, I have not seen any evidence that the birds do any more than eat the vermin from the deep, seamy folds of skin. Although rhinos are almost blind, the birds are very sharp-eyed and will alert a rhino instantly with their cries of alarm.
Black rhino have an interesting habit of scattering their droppings with their feet, scuffling up the bush quite a bit. I don’t know the reason for their behavior but suspect it is some form of territory-marking device. During mating season bull rhinos can be tracked across open ground by following the snaky line left by their pizzles dragging in the dirt. It sounds somewhat uncomfortable to me but doesn’t bother them in the least. Incidentally, a short, swordlike whip is made from this organ when dried and stretched. It’s called a sjambok, and a blow from one can lay a man open like a straight razor.
Since rhinos are quite individual looking, one can often recognize the same one time and again. One such animal that I particularly remember was a big bull that lived alone near my camp on the Munyamadzi River, often wallowing and drinking within sight while we ate breakfast. Except for one burst of bad temper, in which he tried to eviscerate a Game Department vehicle, he was quite tame and was known locally as “Ralph” or “Lalph” by the Chenyanja-speaking tribesmen, who could not pronounce the letter r. One day, driving by, I pulled the Rover over in surprise. Ralph stood by the roadside looking like he’d been recycled. His front horn was ripped half off and hung over his nose like a nightcap, his flanks and legs tatters of flesh. Obviously, he was in horrible pain and dying. From his rear end hung a large piece of intestine, ripped free by a pack of hyenas. I would have given anything to have put him down, out of his misery, but the law strictly forbade dispatching any wounded animal found. It was inhumane, but would have given poachers an excuse to murder wholesale, then claim their prey was hurt and killed for humanitarian reasons. As it was, Ralph had to suffer another two hours until I could drive over and pick up a game guard who shot him. The Munyamadzi never seemed right without him. He had apparently tangled with another bull rhino, or for all I know, an elephant. Maybe he’d even fallen off one of the cliffs along the river. It was hard to tell. Weakened and sick, he hadn’t been able to do much about the hyena pack that had chewed away most of his lower rear belly and equipment, then left him still alive. Africa has little compassion in such matters.
The white rhino is in a very odd ecological position these days. Although badly shot up because of its relative docility a century ago, there are some areas where the species is quite numerous, especially in South Africa. Despite the overall rarity of these beasts, some are cropped annually because of overpopulation, or exported. A friend of mine in Rhodesia recently obtained several from, I believe, the Natal Parks Department and they are doing very well on his ranch, where they once roamed naturally.
Today, one of the most deplorable mockeries of sport involves the white rhino and that fringe group of screwballs and chestbeaters that are sadly lumped in with sportsmen on the basis that they also use firearms. I’ll tell you about it because it’s true and it’s only fair that I give you the bad with the good, even though it is the complete antithesis of sport hunting. If you have enough money, you can still shoot a white rhino today. I said shoot, not hunt. One will be driven into a large enclosure for you by official personnel. You may then walk up to the condemned beast and kill him, nice and neat, no walking, no risk. You can spend the air trip back home thinking up a nice, scary story of how you stopped his charge from mere inches when your white hunter lost his nerve and you had to save his life. The presence of a recently shot white rhino on anybody’s wall is, to me, tantamount to mounting a red banner inscribed “FRAUD.” Sure, there have been some honestly taken white rhinos, but I know of no place where they are available today on a real sporting basis.
There are only a few places left in Africa where one may hunt black rhino. No matter where you go, you had best be prepared to spend the equivalent of a down payment on a Spanish castle to hang Old Dimwit on your wall. In Kenya, for example, let’s take a look at the costs invol
ved, a major portion of which are ploughed back into wildlife management.
First off, you can’t get a rhino license unless you have contracted a safari for a minimum of thirty-five days. At a bare minimum of $450 per day for a single client and one professional hunter, not counting about $2,000 in airfares to get there, your basic investment will be $15,750. Add to that your general license of about $250, then the rhino license itself of 2,500/- (shillings) at 14¢ and that’s an additional $350. Then, when you do kill the rhino, it will cost you another $700 in Controlled Area Fees. Figure another $2,000 for shipping, taxidermy (don’t bother if you live in the United States since rhino trophies may not be imported), and you have a rough cost, without airfare, mileage, booze, rental guns, ammo, tips, packing, dipping, and so forth, of a touch under $20,000. I wonder how much that is per pound? By the by, these are 1975 prices, and Africa has been marching right along with the rest of us in inflation, so I would honestly guess that the cost of a rhino would be, in current values, closer to $28,000 to $30,000.
Although man, more than any other factor, has been responsible for the downfall of the rhino, a large percentage of the dead were a result of the animal’s simple inability to cope with natural conditions of existence. In time of drought, the elephant packs his trunk and heads off to greener pastures; failing that, he digs and tusks his way to water in dry riverbeds. Not the rhino. He stands around wondering what the hell’s going on, then eventually falls over. Some enterprising chap whacks off his horns and retires for a six-month beer drink with the money he gets for it. He breeds slowly, and the very size of the critter precludes short generations. When you think about him, the wonder is that he’s still around at all. And that’s more than a shame. Thickets just don’t have the same adventurous allure without the possibility of a snoozing rhino hammering down on you at any time. He ain’t much, but I’ll sure miss him. We’ve had some good times together.
8
Snakes
October in south-central Africa is like a coy woman, a tease full of empty promise. From the first week the heat builds up like a kiln, the smooth daytime breeze of August and September a memory but for the dust-devils, those rude, insulting fingers that probe obscenely at the parched earth in whirling columns of airborne filth and ashes. As the spring days pass, even the scant shade offers little respite from the swelter of midday, which turns bush jackets alternately into muddy maps of moisture and stiff, crackling salt patches. It is very different from the winter, when the sun is warm and the shadows actually cold in the arid air. Now, the humidity grows slowly from the tie-dyed dawn, building like a filling bowl until your brain feels squeezed by the hot band of your skull.
No longer do the dozens of daily cuts and thorn scratches of bush living and hunting heal in the dry air under clean scabs, but even the smallest nick festers and turns septic as the newly active bacteria in the barber-towel air feed upon your wounds. Truly, October is a flirt. Great, sterile thunderheads build like puffy, lumpy fortresses on the horizon only to evaporate into wispy mares’ tails, disappearing into the flat incandescence of colorless sky. At night, sudden gasps of hot wind howl through the hunting camps, whipping canvas and straining tent ropes, but the promised slash of rain never seems to come.
October is the month of madness. The water in the pans is down, foul with alkali and muddy with the stirrings of thousands of hooves. Elephant are evil tempered, tortured by flies and heat even under their armor of caked slime, and the mutual admiration societies of bull buffalo are not seen even at dusk or dawn. Lions seem to call more, often complaining in the heat of day. In the villages fights, murder, and suicide are far more common than at any other time of year, spearings and head cleavings practically nightly occurrences.
But, October is notable for more than heat rash and rasped tempers. You see, October is the first month of snakes.
One of the most common questions of people who have not been on safari is, “But, what about all the snakes?” Well, that depends. In most areas of reasonable elevation, snakes are not too much of a problem during the usual safari period of the May through September dry season. The reason is that it’s just too cold for most species to be active. Snakes are, of course, cold-blooded and take their body temperatures from their surroundings. In many parts of Botswana and Rhodesia a bucket of water left out over night will freeze solid by morning, although daylight hours in winter are a delight of low humidity and warm sun. Because of this low moisture content of the air, the variations of temperatures between places very close to each other can be astounding, dry air not holding heat the way moist air does. A classic example was that difference between the vlei along the Mongu River in the Matetsi District of northwestern Rhodesia I hunted, and the hill on which headquarters was located, not 200 yards away and perhaps 250 feet higher. Returning from a day’s hunting in the evening in an open Land Rover through this low spot was like being locked in a cryogenics chamber with a fan on you. By six o’clock the temperature was well below freezing, yet as you drove up the hill, it would magically warm to about 70 degrees Fahrenheit. As a consequence, one never saw a snake in the vlei during the dry season, but an eye had to be kept peeled around the headquarters building.
To tell you the truth, if anybody had any idea of how many dangerous snakes there really are in most parts of Africa, nobody would dream of going on safari, including Your Obedient Servant. If you want to look for them, though, they are certainly there. One man who did a lot of looking in an area just a few miles square in Tanzania actually caught over 3,000 green mambas in a matter of a few years. From October through May most of my safari range is literally crawling with snakes, and it is a happy chance that they are not so much in evidence during winter. There are enough “requiem” snakes to give a herpetologist the creepy-crawlies, including black and green mambas,
Boomslangs, regiments of adders and boxcar lots of cobras, not to mention a leg-long list of less poisonous types. To suggest that a visiting hunter doesn’t take a risk of snakebite in the colder season would be irresponsible; yet to say that snakes are a full-blown menace blocking every path and festooned from every third branch would be an equal overstatement. Even though I have conducted many safaris where no snake was ever seen, one must also bear constantly in mind that just one bite from a black mamba or large cobra, let alone a small adder, can transform you into a neat, italicized statistic in one hell of a hurry. If you spend much time in Africa, sooner or later you will bump into dangerous snakes. Such confrontations are not much fun.
* * *
Peter Seymour-Smith, a pal of mine, has a very nice house, built from concrete reinforced with poachers’ snares, on his Iwaba ranch in central Rhodesia. In the living room, behind the sofa at about neck level of a sitting person, there is a large gouge in the woodwork that looks like a point-blank shotgun blast. A closer look will confirm it to be just that. Peter was sitting in an armchair across the room when he noticed movement near his wife Jane’s hair as they were having sun-downers one evening. A further glance showed it to be a dullish-colored snake lying along the top edge of the couch, a foot or so from Jane’s neck. Used to the bush life, she did not ask questions when Peter told her to freeze as he edged across the room for his shotgun, propped in a corner. At his command, she hit the floor while he unstuffed the sofa, redecorated the wall, and killed the snake. Black mamba, about six feet long.
The following summer, in December, Peter was driving with Jane and the baby in an open, doorless Land Rover late one warm afternoon on an inspection tour of the cattle ranch. Watching some impala off in the bush at the roadside, he was surprised to hear his wife shout for him to stop the car quickly. He braked to a halt and was shocked nearly witless to see a huge black mamba rear up right along side the English-drive left fender with a hiss colder than Freon. The snake struck immediately at Jane as she snatched the baby out of reach, the slender head somehow stopping a foot from her face. Peter grabbed her and the baby and bailed out the driver’s side of the car as the big m
amba kept striking the windshield and car body in a series of heavy jabs, flecking them with amber venom. When he was free of the car, Peter saw that by the weirdest quirk of luck, he had stopped the Rover with the tire over the snake’s tail, pinning it to the ground and preventing it from reaching Jane or the child. Jane had seen the snake in the road when she shouted, but Peter hadn’t since he was watching the impala. If he’d stopped a couple of inches either way, probably his wife and baby, if not himself, would be dead by now. He whistled up a Matabele herdsman, who killed the snake by spearing it. It was a bit over thirteen feet, packing enough poison to kill a football team.
That the black mamba is a fascinating snake in sort of a queasy way is obvious when you consider that he has probably been the subject of more legend than any other African snake. The very sight of a black mamba, Dendroaspis polylepis, is enough to send a shiver through anybody but a congenital idiot, and if you haven’t seen one before, you’ll still probably recognize the species at a glance. Mambas really look deadly, probably because of the sharp canthus, or angle, between the flat plane of the head and the cheek. Set into this head are a pair of glimmering black eyes that look into your soul like a fluoroscope. One of the most dangerous aspects of mambas, especially black ones who are not so prone to living in trees as are their green cousins, is their extreme aggression. If disturbed even at a distance while mating, or just sunning for that matter, they are inclined to attack, approaching with scary swiftness and rearing to a very impressive height. A high proportion of mamba bites are high on the body, often the face. Inside the black mouth (which is really the basis for the name “black” mamba), normally held agape, is as much lethalness as a hand grenade. Mambas swell their necks in threat display, although not as much as the cobras.
Death in the Long Grass Page 23