Bush Vet

by Clay Wilson

  This was all good news, but as I parked the car and took out my binoculars to study the lions in more detail, my initial elation turned to concern. One-Eye’s teats were swollen, a sure indication of mastitis. With her breasts inflamed, she would be in severe pain whenever the cubs tried to suckle and her milk could also turn toxic. This meant that even if she tolerated the pain of a cub suckling, the youngster might be poisoned by her milk.

  Here was a moral and ethical quandary, although I had no doubt in my mind about what I was going to do. Some people would say that such a condition was natural, and that it had not been caused by human interference. So what, a purist would say, if the lioness and/or her cubs died? That was all part of nature’s way.

  I had to balance that against what I knew of the local ecosystem. Chobe National Park needed predators to keep the local ecology in balance and, to be cynical, to keep tourists coming back. I enjoyed seeing all animals in the park, along with the birds and the insects and reptiles and vegetation, but so many first-time and one-time visitors to Africa only wanted to see the big cats, especially lions.

  In truth, a lion is one of the most boring animals to see in the wild, after that first rush of excitement at seeing the so-called king of beasts wears off. They spend 20 out of 24 hours sleeping and generally lazing about, and most of their interesting activity – hunting – goes on at night when the tourists are in bed.

  In any case, lions are important. Not more important than any other animal, but this sighting was significant because I believed humans had played a part in the absence of lions in this area for so long. Human inaction, bureaucratic infighting, turf wars, inflated egos and petty jealousies had delayed the distemper vaccination and, as a result, the area’s hyenas, wild dogs and lions had suffered.

  I owed it to these lions to give One-Eye and her three cubs a chance at establishing themselves in Chobe, but I knew it would be too risky to tranquillise One-Eye and try to treat her while she was under. The whole pride would have scattered as soon as she went down, and anything could happen to the tiny cubs in the process. They were probably no more than a few days old and still incredibly vulnerable. Although lions have a reputation for ferocity, their offspring are constantly at risk of being attacked by other lions and hyenas. Even buffalos have been known to trample lion cubs.

  I drove away from the lions, parked the truck and went to work. I knew they would be going nowhere anytime soon, and would probably spend the day lazing under the same trees where I had just seen them, but I went about my preparations quickly. Nursing lionesses are very protective and it was possible this one could decide it was time to pick up her cubs in her mouth and move them to a hiding place deep in the bush.

  From my vet’s bag I took some penicillin, an anti-inflammatory and a painkiller and mixed them together in one dart. The good thing about animals in this part of Africa, even domestic animals, is that they have never been exposed to antibiotics, so they have not built up a resistance to something as generic as penicillin. Had I been operating on a pet dog or cat in the us, I probably would have had to use some fifth-generation, super-expensive form of antibiotic, but this would do the lioness just fine.

  Laura and I drove back to where the pride was sleeping and the cubs were playing and I parked off in a spot with a clear view of One-Eye. I took careful aim with the dart gun and fired. The dart flew true across the short distance and embedded itself in her shoulder. She leapt up and snarled and growled as she trotted a few paces. She tried to pull the dart out with her mouth, but couldn’t get to it, just as I’d planned. Through my binoculars I could see the plunger inside the dart had depressed fully, meaning the medication that I hoped would help her had been delivered. The dart itself would fall out of her soon enough, as it had no barb on the end.

  A couple of days later Laura and I were back in the park again, following up a sighting of a pride of lions that we hoped would be the same group we had seen. When we found them I could see a lioness with cubs, and when she turned her head to check us out I saw that one golden eye staring at me. Holding my breath, I panned the binoculars lower and when I got a good look at her teats I saw that they had returned to normal size.

  One of the cubs squeaked to his mom, telling her he was hungry, and clawed his way over her tawny back and belly. When he nestled down and fastened on I could see that he was drinking just fine and that One-Eye was as relaxed as you could be with those tiny needle-like teeth gripping hold.

  We had saved her, and I hoped these cubs would grow up to be big and strong one day, not only helping to ensure that lions stayed a part of Chobe National Park but also contributing to a growing population of predators.

  Chapter 11

  The most dangerous animal

  I was glad to be back in what I now considered my real home, Botswana. The country could be maddeningly frustrating to live in at times – the bureaucracy, for example, moved at a glacial pace – but in the heat of December there was no use raising a sweat over anything. It was too damn hot.

  The rains had begun while we were away and grey thunderclouds grumbled above us on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, 2010, as I contemplated summoning the effort required to put on a charcoal braai on our stoep for a late lunch or early dinner. Laura was busy in the kitchen preparing some vegetables. I was content. Then the phone rang.

  I was called to the small village of Pandamatenga on the Botswana–Zimbabwe border, about 100 kilometres from Kasane. This was wild country, where animals crossed the line between the two countries with impunity and the people lived side by side with wildlife. I had bad memories of Pandamatenga. I’d once been called there to check on a lion that had been shot. When I arrived I found a handsome male writhing and groaning on the ground. He had been hit with a shotgun blast to the neck, probably by a cattle farmer, and was paralysed. I was able to walk right up to him, but, to my great sadness and anger, there was nothing I could do for him other than to put him out of his misery. This time some of the locals had come across a tiny zebra foal, whose mother had been killed by the lions that roamed the area. Laura and I found the foal, which was hanging around with the people who had discovered it. There was no way it could be released back into the wild, as zebras have a close bond with their mothers and a herd would not adopt an orphan. When a foal is born the mother shields it from the herd so that the first thing it can learn is the pattern of its mom’s stripes. Each zebra’s black-and-white pattern is unique, like a human fingerprint, and the newborn foal can only survive if it can recognise its mother in the blur of stripes around it.

  The best thing to do, probably, would have been to euthanise the little foal there and then, but both Laura and I took an instant shine to the gangly little guy. What the heck, it was Christmas Eve and I had killed enough animals in the course of my duty as a vet. I sedated him and treated him for shock, worms and fluid loss. As he started to perk up, Laura and I decided to take him home with us. It was a crazy thing to do, but there was some method in our madness. We discussed the future of Zebby, as we had already named him, as we raced the setting sun back to our home. Laura thought that a captive-reared zebra might be a fun way of introducing local school children to wildlife, and teaching them about its importance. If I was able to see my dream fulfilled, of setting up a wildlife rehabilitation centre, then Zebby could be a star attraction there. If not, we might be able to find another wildlife rescue facility that could take him. As we had seen with the injured waterbuck, we needed to introduce local children to the value of wildlife to their heritage and their economic future. After all the snared and shot animals I had put down, I just didn’t have it in my heart to kill Zebby.

  With some effort I convinced Thuto Seema to issue us a permit to keep Zebby, explaining the plans we had for Zebby as a future wildlife ambassador. Laura was feeding Zebby with formula from a bottle. The foal soon captured the hearts of thousands of our Facebook followers from around the world, who hung on our daily reports of his progress.

  Zebby continu
ed to improve, drinking up to 15 litres of skim milk at a cost of P200 a day, until I could have some foals’ milk powder sent up from South Africa. A zebra, I soon learnt, takes a good deal of time and expense to raise. We contacted a small game reserve near the capital, Gaborone, which agreed to take him off our hands once he was old enough to fend for himself. By that time he would have outgrown our small back yard, but for now Zebby was part of the family. Being a male, Zebby would not be accepted by a wild herd, as the dominant male would surely kill him. I also had visions of lions waving milk bottles at him from the bushes, and him running up with his usual smile.

  Zebby may have saved my life – or at least contributed to one of the frights of my life. The night after we brought Zebby home, the evening of Christmas Day, I was in bed when I heard a strange noise in the house, like something breaking. I got up and checked outside – it was Zebby, kicking at the sheets of corrugated iron that form part of his shelter, but it turned out I had more to worry about than a restless orphan animal.

  Groggy with sleep – it was about one-thirty in the morning – I walked back down the passage of the house, on my way back to the bedroom. Minnie, who had recovered from her brush with the leopard, was yapping away. I went into the kitchen and was confronted by a man carrying a knife of Crocodile Dundee proportions. We both shouted in surprise and he fortunately ran outside, but turned to look at me defiantly.

  Barefoot, I sprinted back to the bedroom where Laura was lying. I grabbed the phone by my bedside and pushed the panic button for our local alarm company. Then I grabbed my shotgun and spotlight. I told Laura to sit tight and went looking for the intruder.

  By this stage he had fled and I fired two shots into the air in the general direction where I could hear him running. The alarm company hadn’t arrived so I locked Laura in the house and got in my Land Cruiser. I was incensed that he had violated our home and I wanted to find him. I probably should have stayed in the house, but I wanted to get this bastard. While I was driving the streets of the plateau looking for him, I called the police on my cellphone and they told me they were coming to my house.

  Back home I met the cops – the alarm company never did respond to my panic call – and we found that the man had used his long-bladed knife to jimmy open the kitchen door. I supposed the man was a thief, but when a policeman asked if I had any enemies I almost laughed.

  The truth was there were plenty of people around this small town that I had upset. There were the farmers and my neighbour who shot at anything that moved; the PAC guys, who no doubt resented the new rules they had to operate under; and the local community that had hardly taken me under its wing. I was becoming more and more vocal online and in letters to the authorities on the escalating problem of elephant poaching and National Parks’ seeming inability to do anything about it.

  Like anywhere else in the world, there was crime in Kasane, but the difference here was that the government and some local business people tried to pretend there was no problem, fearing that any bad news would adversely affect the safari trade on which the town depended.

  I had heard that some tourists had been attacked at the Ihaha campsite inside Chobe National Park. The campers were assaulted by a thief wielding a plank of wood, and robbed. From what I learnt, it was not the first case of theft at Ihaha. I suggested we plant undercover rangers as decoys at the camp, posing as tourists, and set an ambush for the thieves, but the idea was never adopted.

  With incidents on the increase, the local community resurrected a 911 neighbourhood watch committee, which had existed previously but had petered out due to apathy. The heat in Kasane had a way of sapping the best of intentions. Our members were in touch with each other now via radio and the idea was that we would support each other in case of an emergency. For a few weeks, daily radio checks were diligently made, but this new version of neighbourhood security also started going off the boil.

  A month later thieves attempted to dig under the perimeter fence at a lodge next to my place. The perimeter alarm went off and the thieves ran away. When I contacted the police they said they were tracking the criminals, who they believed had crossed the river from Namibia.

  A BDF patrol found an abandoned makoro, a traditional canoe made from a hollowed-out tree trunk, near the Marina Lodge on the Chobe riverfront and took it back to their riverside camp. The would-be robbers, however, were still on the loose and at two in the morning they broke into one of the main lodges in town, entering a tourist’s hotel room. The shocked guest, an elderly lady, tried to resist the thieves and in the process of stealing her purse and backpack they stabbed her in the hand.

  On a roll, the criminals – there appeared to be two of them – moved to another lodge, where they blatantly smashed down doors and started breaking into rooms. I later heard from the owner of the lodge that he had locked himself in his room, with a shotgun at the ready. Had the robbers succeeded in knocking down his door, he would have been ready to shoot them. When the thieves backed off, the owner emerged from his room and followed them. He had one of them bailed up, but when tourists started pouring out of their rooms to find out what the commotion was about, the thief pulled a handgun. The owner couldn’t shoot, for risk of hitting a guest, and the robber ran off. Panic gripped the lodge’s patrons, some of whom had been held up at gunpoint by the thieves, who were dressed all in black and wore balaclavas and gloves.

  Undeterred and brazen as a couple of honey badgers on the prowl, the dirty duo moved on to yet another luxury lodge where they let themselves into rooms at will. Apparently they had possession of a master key, which they must have sourced from one of the lodge’s staff. Once they had knocked over a few rooms, they broke in to the pool bar and helped themselves to whiskey and Amarula Cream liqueur as they lounged in the pool chairs. To add insult to injury, when their thieving spree was over they made their way back to their canoe and, finding it gone, tracked it to the BDF camp where they stole it back from the custody of the army and made their escape on the river.

  Four nights later, at 2 am, the radio crackled from the lodge next door to me that they were attempting to dig under the fence again. I drove to the perimeter of the lodge, and was the first on the scene. Ahead of me I saw the headlights of an approaching vehicle. From the information I had picked up from the radio, the intruders had run down toward the river. As I went downhill towards the water I heard a gunshot and pulled over. A bullet whizzed over the roof of my car.

  “Shit.” I hadn’t expected to get into a gunfight. I looked around me and saw a man in plain clothes coming out of the bush towards me, carrying a rifle. From the distinctive banana-shaped magazine I knew the weapon was an AK47.

  I trained my spotlight and shotgun on him. “Who are you?” I yelled.

  “Police.”

  The man said he had fired a shot over my head to get my attention. He had certainly succeeded, even if it was a crazy thing to do. I could have shot back and killed him. I asked him for identification, but he said he wasn’t carrying any. I figured if he really was a bad guy he would have shot me by now, so I told him to go back to his vehicle. I used my spotlight to search the river, and checked the bank for tracks.

  We were near the disused entry gate to the national park, near Chobe Safari Lodge. I drove into the park via the unauthorised entry point (that many safari operators still used and which I had often used when I was caught out late in the park doing veterinary work) to the BDF camp on the river. They knew I was an honorary warden as well as the local vet, and I enlisted three of them to get a boat started so we could chase the thieves.

  The soldiers seemed less than keen to take up the chase in the dark of the night, saying that all they had was a flashlight. I took the spotlight from my car. It runs on 12 volt, from a plug that fits into the car’s cigarette lighter socket. I took out my knife and cut the plug from the end and stripped the wires. “We can attach these to the positive and negative terminals on your boat’s batteries,” I said to the troopers.

  When I
went on patrol with rangers who were younger than me it was paramount that I did not show fatigue or weakness. There is an element of machismo in African culture. Men do not want to be seen as weaker than their peers, or cowardly. I played on that and the soldiers and I took to the water.

  In the dark it was hard to fasten the wires to the battery terminals. Instead of wasting more time I placed a wire on each terminal and then stood on them, holding them down and in contact with my sandals. Perched on the battery, at the back of the boat, I shone the spotlight over the heads of the armed soldiers and we raced up the river. It was an exhilarating ride and it occurred to me that if the invaders started shooting they would probably aim for the man with the light.

  Though we patrolled upstream and downstream we never did catch the armed robbers that night. The soldiers had to get some credibility back from having the thieves steal the makoro a few nights back from right under the spotlight that illuminated the riverfront for 200 metres. They should have set up an ambush by the canoe that night and waited for the perpetrators. I’m certain that if we’d had the armed rapid-response anti-poaching patrol and helicopter that I had long pushed for then we could have easily caught the bandits before they crossed back to whichever country, Namibia or Zambia, they had come from.

  We missed the criminals that night, but a week later a call came in on 911 at 1.30 am from one of the duty staff at Marina Lodge. “Boss, boss they are here with the makoro,” the man said.

  I wasted no time and headed for the BDF camp. After the first time on the boat I had attached clamps to my spotlight so I could also run it directly from a battery. Five soldiers and I bundled into the patrol boat. We zoomed down the river straight to Marina Lodge and heard some gunshots in the distance. We later learnt that one of the police officers also responding to the call had apparently discharged his weapon at a shadow. In the bright cone of the spotlight, we caught a man desperately trying to push his makoro away from shore and across the river. The soldiers stopped the boat, leapt out and arrested him.