Predators I Have Known (22 page)

Patrick’s favorite spot turned out to be a place where the Chobe River bends lazily to the north before swinging southeast, narrowing afresh, picking up speed, and resuming its churning rush toward the Zambezi River and
Mosi-oa-tunya
, the Tswana words for “The-Smoke-That-Thunders” (better known but not better enunciated as Victoria Falls). Below Patrick’s bend, the water spreads out to give birth to numerous shallow sandbars that provide ideal habitat for wading birds and effortless haul-outs for basking crocodiles. Both were much in evidence when we arrived.

Parking as close to the shifting, car-trapping sands as we dared, we climbed out of the jeep and walked down to the water’s edge. So shallow were the mirrorlike pools and shimmering capillaries of river that there was no place for a croc, much less an idling hippo, to hide. My knowledge of Botswanan ornithology being woefully defunct, I could only stare and marvel at the hundreds of shorebirds and other more infrequent avian visitors that flocked to the shallow plain to hunt and drink. Without having to ask, I immediately understood the reasons for my guide’s affection for the place.

Setting directly behind the Chobe and somewhere over Namibia, the sun was dusting the water with tincture of sulfur and cinnabar. Walking farther out onto the crocodile-visited sands than I was willing to risk, Patrick stood with his hands on his hips silently admiring this small, secret corner of his homeland. For long moments, he forgot about me, and I was pleased to see him privately enjoying what so few others had the opportunity to share. I stood in silence on a slightly higher sandbar, my gaze shifting from the gold-suffused water to the wealth of animal life that was wholly intent on its sunset activity.

On another bank just in front of us, a small herd of impala was inspecting a solitary croc. One at a time, they would approach, sniff the motionless reptile, then apprehensively dart back out of reach. I thought their actions reckless and ignorant. But the cold-blooded croc was far more interested in soaking up the last warming rays of the setting sun than in helping itself to a dim-witted hors d’oeuvre.

Several puku, or Chobe bushbuck, wandered out of the woods to drink, their movements as delicate and coordinated as those of a string quartet playing Mozart. Chobe National Park is the only place in the world to see them, and I was conscious of the privilege. Perhaps it was the overriding tranquillity of the locale, but the animals and birds acted as if we were not present. Had we arrived in a growling dinosaurian Unimog sporting twenty chattering tourists, I suspect the unperturbed wildlife would have acted differently.

As he rejoined me, it was evident that Patrick had thoroughly enjoyed the respite from a day of having to explain to wide-eyed visitors why hippos are the most dangerous animals in Africa and that a water monitor is a spectacularly large lizard and not a gruff Afrikaner whose job it is to ensure the working of the lodge’s hydraulic systems.

He glanced speculatively at the descending sun. “We’re already late. We’ll get back after dark.”

I smiled. I had enjoyed every moment of the day, every second. “Like I told you, blame me. It’s all my fault.”

He nodded, smiling anew, as we climbed back into the jeep.

So used are most of us to city life that we have forgotten what real night is like. The all-encompassing darkness is accompanied by a multiplicity of sounds and noises that our ancestors made studious efforts to avoid. As we headed back toward the lodge, Patrick driving as fast as he dared along the dark dirt road, I could hear some of those primeval night noises even over the dogged grinding of the jeep’s engine.

I was not worried about getting lost. Patrick had been a guide in the park for some time and knew all the dirt tracks intimately. Besides, with a major river always on our immediate left, it would be difficult to lose the way. His only real concern, other than the prospect of receiving a mild chewing-out from his supervisor for returning a guest well after dark, was the always-present chance of encountering elephants.

We were fifteen minutes from the lodge when he hung a sharp left at an intersection and followed it with a startled oath. I was thrown forward by the impact but managed to catch myself before my upper body could slam into the jeep’s metal dash. My eyes fought to focus in the darkness.

In turning the corner, the jeep had not caught the couple in the twin beams of its headlights until it was too late. More than a little nonplussed, the female trotted hurriedly off to the right while her outraged mate nearly fell as he stumbled off in the opposite direction. I will never forget the look on that lion’s face, so closely did his confusion, uncertainty, distress, and annoyance mimic that of a human male surprised in the same circumstance. Plainly, he was at that moment torn between a desire to slink off into the bush with his tail and everything else slunk between his legs and one that would see him leaping for the jeep with an eye toward ripping both of us to shreds.

To this day, I am not sure who was the more startled by the inadvertent collision, but I do know who was the most disappointed.

Giving the pair no time to decide what to do next, Patrick floored the accelerator and the jeep leaped forward, careening down the dirt road. Looking back, I could see only faint signs of the couple we had so rudely interrupted in the midst of their business. In another moment, they had been swallowed up by the African night.

I looked at Patrick. He looked at me. Then, despite ourselves, we both began to laugh. The jokes lasted all the way back to the lodge. Partly because such an encounter could not avoid engendering a certain amount of humor and partly because had any number of things gone wrong at the critical moment (the jeep overturning in the brush, or stalling out, or the lions reacting more quickly and antagonistically to our interruption) what had turned out to be merely amusing could have become deadly serious.

Back at the lodge, the two of us examined the front of the jeep. The glass over the left front headlight was cracked, and there was a small dent in the metal. Nothing major. I wondered if the lodge’s insurance would cover it. Had the lions been humans, I have no doubt they would have filed suit. After bidding Patrick good night with a heartfelt “
Ke a leboga
or “thank you” (the only words I knew in Tswana), I retired to my room having acquired another bit of animal lore not generally to be found in the available handbooks.

Lions are especially aggressive at night, but if you happen to (literally) run into them when they are mating, I can say that their embarrassment seems equal to that of any human couple surprised under similar circumstances.

That’s one day in the African bush. Travel agents will tell you that in order to see animals and experience a place you have to spend days there, or weeks. I have to disagree. As with anything else in life, quality trumps quantity. If you really want to experience the herd, blend with the herd, you have to find a way to get away from your own herd. The species people on a package tour end up seeing and hearing more than any other are the other people on the same package tour.

On that one day in Botswana, I saw common animals and rare animals, cooperation in drinking and bathing and cooperation in feeding. Life ending and life beginning. The circle of life is not a neat, perfect circle, but one that’s cracked and distorted; frequently beautiful, sometimes ugly. But no matter what you’re fortunate enough to see, whether the Dante-esque bacchanalia of a recent kill or the placid birdsong-scored tranquillity of an African sunset, it sure beats sitting in an office—or watching the same thing on TV.

South Africa, June 2002

THE SKY OVER WESTERN CAPE
had opened, and it was pouring down rain enough to sink a galleon. Except my friend Ron and I were not at sea. It only felt that way. Having left Augrabies Falls National Park in the province of Northern Cape, we had been driving all day in hopes of reaching Cape Town before dark. Heralded by mountainous dark clouds rolling up from Antarctica that concealed much of the region from sight, we had been driving through torrential rain for nearly an hour.

While I struggled to negotiate the alien streets in the dark and the rain, Ron poured over the map of the city and the instructions we had been sent. Either the hotel we had been told to stay at was not where it was supposed to be, we had been given inadequate directions, or the rain had swept us halfway to Durban. Nearly overcome by darkness and fatigue, we were ready to credit any of these possibilities.

“This is crazy,” I finally muttered. “Forget the reservation. We know the boat leaves from Simon’s Town. Lets go there and find a room.”

Ron eyed me uncertainly. “Are you sure? You look pretty tired.”

“I’m not tired; I’m exhausted. But I can find Simon’s Town.” As I was talking, I was trying to follow the highway signs. “We angle east around the main part of the city and then follow the roads south. If we reach the end of the continent, we’ve gone too far.”

We eventually did arrive in Simon’s Town, a quaint historical suburb of Cape Town that occupies part of a spaghettilike strip of land squeezed tightly between False Bay and the great hulking monolith that is Table Mountain. We also found, as we tried motel after motel, that there were no rooms to be had at the height of the storm. When we eventually did find a vacancy, it turned out to be nicer as well as more reasonably priced than any from which we had earlier been turned away. The fact that the South African Rand was about eleven to the U.S. dollar at that time boosted our spirits as well. Oblivious to hunger, the storm raging around us, and with poor prospects of seeing much of anything else that night, we collapsed gratefully onto our beds.

A cloud-streaked morning brought breakfast, conversation with the hotel’s amiable and informative owner, gorgeous views out over the harbor and the bay, and the ironic news that by sheer fortuitous coincidence the boat on which we were to go out that morning just happened to leave from the dock at the base of the hotel. If we had found and stayed at the hotel back in Cape Town where a room had been reserved for us, we would have had to get back in our car and drive clear across town in order to embark on the next part of our journey. Having crapped out all the previous night, we had at the last moment and wholly through good luck inadvertently rolled a winner.

Maybe you’ve heard of Air Jaws
,
or seen the shows of that name on the Discovery Channel. In South Africa’s False Bay, on the other side of the continental spine from the city of Cape Town, it was discovered some years ago that great white sharks regularly leap out of the water in pursuit of Cape fur seals, their favorite prey. It was there that Ron and I had decided to conclude our monthlong trek across the country in hopes of glimpsing this extraordinary predatory display.

Arrangements had been made in advance with Chris Fallows, the naturalist and photographer who had made the first serious studies of this remarkable behavior, to spend a couple of days with him and his fiancée (now wife) Monique as they pursued their efforts to document the sharks’ activities. As with any animal behavior, we knew there was no guarantee we would see anything, even though it was the appropriate season for the sharks to be feeding.

I was prepared to be disappointed. In New Guinea, I once spent time at one of the world’s foremost shore-diving facilities and saw practically nothing. Back in Port Moresby days later, my friend Dik Knight who owns Loloata Island Resort out in Bootless Bay informed me casually, “I know you had a bad time at Walindi. I just talked to them. This morning, their divers saw orcas and a sperm whale.”

I believe my precise and carefully considered response to this was, “
Agghhh
!” Not an especially scientific reaction, but a sincere one.

If you go anywhere in the world
expecting
to see something and do not, it is understandable to be disappointed, but you must also be accepting. The natural world is not Disneyland, and the animals do not run on tracks.

The initial assessment we received was less than encouraging. Recent shark action at Chris’s favored site, Seal Island, had been as sporadic and unpredictable as the weather. The second morning following our arrival at Simon’s Town dawned chilly and damp, but by the time we set out, the worst of the weather had broken. The intermittent clouds suggested we might make it to the island without encountering any rain. In any event, Ron and I had come too far to be put off by the prospect of a little inclement weather. There was, however, one aspect of our incipient adventure I had not thought to discuss in advance.

I saw that Ron was eyeing Fallows’s boat uncertainly. “You OK?” I asked him.

He nodded. “It’s just that I get seasick sometimes.”

Now he tells me. “I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I lied. “We’ll be inside the bay at all times. It’s not like we’re going out on the open sea.”

But, of course, we were. False Bay is huge, and completely open to the heaving, throbbing, great Southern Ocean.

The compact white cabin cruiser began to bounce and roll as Chris pulled away from the dock and gunned the engine. Ron immediately turned queasy and lurched toward a seat, but he handled his condition manfully. I’m not sure if he threw up on the way out to Seal Island or not. Having spent time around seasickness sufferers, I knew that the best one could do was leave them alone. It is of little use to ask someone who has turned green and is leaning over the side of a boat puking their guts out, “How are you feeling?” No matter how well intentioned, the attention is invariably not welcomed by the afflicted.