Man Eater

by Justin D'Ath

  Phew!

  My relief only lasted five seconds. That’s how long it took to fight my way back through the reeds. When I came out the other side, dripping, coughing and shivering from my narrow escape, I skidded to a standstill.

  There was another hippo on land.

  This one must have been asleep under a tree when I’d come down the hill. I must have stumbled right past it in my half-blind rush to get to the river. now I could see again and the hippo was wide awake. Even worse, it was rushing towards me at about fifty kilometres an hour! Behind it were six hyenas, spread out in a line, also running. They no longer looked like scavengers, they looked like predators, one hundred percent. It wasn’t clear what they were chasing – the hippo or me – but I didn’t wait to find out. I turned and ran. Back through the reeds. Back to the river.

  This time I wasn’t half out of my mind with pain. And this time I could see clearly enough with my right eye. The river was about twenty metres wide and dotted with hippos from one steep muddy bank to the other. Only their ears, nostrils and backs were visible above the water, giving them the appearance of boulders.

  I took one last look over my shoulder, glimpsed the other hippo and the six hyenas smashing through the reeds behind me, and leapt onto the nearest ‘boulder’.

  8

  TOTALLY OVER THE TOP

  I’d been worried they might be slippery, but the hippos’ skin felt like rubber. My sneakers got a good grip. I jumped from one snoozing animal to the next, skipping from back to back nearly all the way to the other side of the river. Surprise worked in my favour. Most of the hippos were sleeping – they didn’t know I was coming until my sneakers touched down on their backs, and by then it was too late. They awoke with a jerk and snapped at me with their huge jaws, but I was already gone, flying through the air towards the unsuspecting hippo snoozing next to them.

  I should never have tried it. using live hippos as stepping stones – crazy! Three-quarters of the way across, things went wrong. A hippo opened its eyes and saw me just as I launched myself off the back of its neighbour. It swung its barrel-like head around to meet me. I couldn’t stop myself. Already I was halfway across the gap in midair, my legs helplessly back-pedalling. The hippo opened its cavernous mouth, and my leading foot went straight in.

  I thought I was dead. I would have been, too, had the hippo closed its mouth fast enough. My momentum saved me. I’d been skipping across the hippos like a triple jumper, gaining speed with every step. By the time I reached the last one, I was going flat out. A nanosecond after my foot went into the hippo’s mouth, the rest of me slammed, knees-first, into its raised upper jaw. The collision forced its jaw back and spun me over its head in a forward flip. for a moment I was upside down, looking directly into the hippo’s surprised brown eyes, then I completed my somersault and landed with a huge splash in the river behind it.

  Now there was nothing between me and the bank except three metres of water. That mightn’t sound far, but even without looking over my shoulder I knew there were at least six angry hippos closing in. And if it came to a swimming race between me and the hippos, there was no chance that I could win. So I dived.

  Instead of heading straight for the shore, I turned downriver, kicking my way through the murky brown water as fast as I could. I nearly didn’t make it. With a surge of bubbles, a huge dark shape swept past me like a submarine. I went limp for a moment, pretending to be a piece of driftwood, then continued downriver as soon as the coast was clear. At least I hoped it was downriver – I couldn’t see anything.

  It was hard swimming in my sneakers and I was running out of breath. But if I came up for air, the hippos would see me. So I veered to the right, hoping to reach the bank before I had to breathe. Suddenly I found myself tangled in slimy ropes. I was caught in a fishing net!

  Don’t panic, I cautioned myself. If I panicked, I would become even more tangled in the ropes and I’d drown for sure. My first priority was air. I had to get to the surface and breathe. Then I would worry about freeing myself from the net and crawling out of the river – hopefully before the hippos caught up with me. The odds weren’t good, but there wasn’t time to think about it. I only had about three more seconds before my lungs caved in.

  Placing both feet in the soft mud of the river bottom, I pushed myself up through the net. It was easier than I expected. The slippery ropes slid out of the way without any resistance and my head broke through into daylight and sweet, glorious, life-giving air. I greedily filled my lungs, then sank back down to nose-level to take stock of my situation. I was surrounded by reeds, crouching in about a metre and a half of water. It was the reeds that had tangled around me, rather than a net. In reality, they had saved my life. They screened me from the rest of the river, where the angry hippos still splashed and grunted as they continued their search for me. One was only a few metres away. I saw the tops of the reeds jiggling wildly from side to side, then a wash of tall brown ripples came sloshing through the stems towards me. I had to get out of the river. fast!

  But how? Even though I was quite close to shore, the bank looked higher and steeper than it had upstream. Luckily the reeds provided me with cover as I edged away from the nearest hippo. A little further downstream, I found the perfect place to get out – a narrow muddy pathway carved into the bank like a miniature boat ramp. As I pushed my way through the reeds towards it, half-crawling, half-swimming, one of my hands struck something hard in the cool, oozy mud of the river bottom. Something that moved.

  CRUNCH!

  Stifling a yelp of pain, I dragged my hand out of the water. Hooley dooly! A large green freshwater crayfish dangled by one over-sized claw from my right thumb. I whacked it with my other hand, sending the crayfish spinning away. But the claw stayed behind, still latched onto my thumb like a set of spring-loaded pliers. I flicked it off, then crawled out of the river. The crayfish had landed on the shore near the bottom of the miniature boat ramp, and lay on its back, snapping at me with its remaining claw. I edged carefully past it, then scrambled up the narrow pathway that was cut so conveniently into the steep bank of the river. I was nearly at the top when a series of pictures flashed into my mind – memories of similar muddy ramps I’d seen on river banks in the Top End of Australia. I remembered my big bother taking me to see one when I was seven or eight years old.

  ‘Guess what made that, Sam.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘A crocodile,’ Nathan said. ‘It’s where they slide down into the water.’

  Usually it makes me smile when I remember Nathan teaching me about the bush when I was little. But not this time. I couldn’t have felt less like smiling.

  Slowly I raised my head and looked up the wet muddy ramp above me.

  Crikey! At the top, returning my stare, was a crocodile.

  And unlike me, it definitely seemed to be smiling.

  9

  EATING MACHINE

  I didn’t know anything about African crocodiles. In Australia, the freshwater ones aren’t dangerous. But this looked more like an Australian saltwater crocodile, and they are. It was much smaller than a salty, though – no more than two metres long and nearly half of that was tail. Perhaps it was only young. But whether it was fully grown or not made no difference – I was on the crocodile’s slide, directly between it and the river. Not a good place to be.

  Slowly I backed down towards the water. The crocodile watched me. It didn’t move. A couple of flies buzzed around its snout. There was a small grey-and-white feather stuck to one of the pointy teeth in the gap between its jaws – it must have recently eaten a bird. I hoped it was a big bird, and the crocodile was full.

  Stay where you are, crocodile, said a little voice in my head as I slithered slowly back down the slide. I’m way too big for you to eat.

  Then I put my hand on something hard. Something that moved.

  CRUNCH!

  Oooooow! The crayfish was attached to my thumb again – my left thumb, this time. I tried shaking it off, b
ut the pesky thing hung on. I went to grab it with my other hand. As I did, the crocodile woke from its trance. With a guttural hiss, it opened its long toothy mouth and launched itself down its slipway.

  If I’d had my wits about me, I would have rolled sideways – off the crocodile’s slide and out of its way. But there wasn’t time to think. Anyway, I was down to one eye and suffering from a bad case of tunnel vision – and when you’re in a tunnel you can only go forwards or backwards. I was already going backwards, but not fast enough. The crocodile was going to catch me in about two seconds. In desperation, I threw the crayfish.

  Crocodiles are like dinosaurs – compared to their body size, their brains are miniscule. They act on instinct, not brain power. And because they’re at the top of the food chain, most of their instincts revolve around eating. They are eating machines. When the crayfish flew into its mouth, twenty million years of evolution kicked in, and the crocodile snapped its jaws shut.

  CHOMP!

  Half a second. That was the margin between me losing a hand or an arm, or the crayfish losing its life. It died for a good cause. But I wasn’t out of danger yet. The crocodile’s mouth might have been closed, but the reptile kept coming. It slammed into me like a torpedo. Somehow I got on top of it and applied a headlock before it could twist around and bite me, but its momentum carried us both into the river.

  We went under in a cloud of bubbles. I couldn’t see anything. I had one arm wrapped around the crocodile’s head, holding its jaws closed, the other looped under its belly. The angry reptile rolled and twisted and wriggled, its sharp scales grinding like gravel against my bare chest. I had a weight advantage – the crocodile can’t have weighed more than thirty kilos – but it was all muscle. And it was more at home in the water than on land. I was involved in a fight I couldn’t win.

  Several times as we rolled over and over, part of me came out of the water. Once I was even able to take a big gulp of air. And I kept bumping against the river’s muddy bottom, which told me we were still in the shallows. It gave me a spark of hope. next time my head came up, I drove down with both legs, planted my feet in the mud and heaved my body (and the crocodile) upright.

  Success! I found myself knee-deep in the water, facing the river bank. I was holding the crocodile tight against my stomach in a bear hug. It was squirming like an eel and very heavy, but I had no illusions about what would happen if I let go while I was still in the water. I had to drag it ashore before releasing it. On dry land, I had a chance of getting away without being bitten.

  How much of a chance, I’ll never know. Before I had time to take a single step towards the shore, I heard something behind me and turned around.

  Shishkebab! A massive brown-and-pink shape came ploughing through the reeds like a living tsunami.

  There was no escape. It was too late to run, too late to hide, and too late to duck for cover.

  There was only one thing to do.

  Summoning all my strength, I lifted the little crocodile chest-high and heaved it at the charging hippo.

  10

  SEEING RED

  I don’t know who won that contest. Crocodiles and hippos share the river, so maybe their unexpected meeting ended in a truce. Whatever happened, I didn’t stick around long enough to find out. I was up the crocodile slide in a flash and running flat out away from the river.

  I took one look over my shoulder, but the crocodile and the hippo were obscured by the river bank. The rest of the hippos were over near the other bank, eyeing the six hungry hyenas that prowled back and forth along the shore. The hyenas were eyeing me, but they couldn’t cross the river because of the hippos. As long as I stayed on this side, I was safe.

  But the road was on the other side.

  What was that noise? Was I imagining it? I held my breath and listened. It sounded like – it definitely was – a vehicle. A long way off but getting closer. I ran back the way I’d come. But only as far as the river. About twenty hippos and six hyenas watched me. No way was I going back across.

  The noise grew steadily louder. A trail of dust rose through the trees on the other side of the river. When the vehicle finally came into view, roaring along the Marusha road, I waved my arms over my head and yelled at the top of my voice:

  ‘HELP! HELP! HELP!’

  A second later I stopped yelling and lowered my arms. It was a battered grey Land Rover with a brown canvas canopy on the back. The white ivory hunter’s thinly disguised threat came back to me: A boy like you could wind up dead.

  ‘You wish!’ I muttered as the speeding vehicle disappeared round the side of the ridge.

  But I didn’t feel nearly as brave as I sounded. I was stuck on the wrong side of the river and the only people who knew my whereabouts were a bunch of murderous poachers. They must have seen me.

  I looked at my watch. It was 3.30 in the afternoon – two hours before the bus was due to arrive in Marusha. Two hours before anyone would know I was missing. Even if they came looking for me straightaway, there was no chance of them finding me before dark.

  My bung eye had started throbbing again and the other one wasn’t much better. If I didn’t get medical attention soon, I might lose my sight altogether. I couldn’t just sit around and wait until help arrived. I had to help myself.

  I stood there in my wet shorts and sneakers and tried to think what to do. Crossing the river again wasn’t an option. Even if by some miracle I managed to get past the hippos a second time, the hyenas were on the other side.

  Then I had a scary thought: what was on this side?

  I was standing on the edge of a wide, yellow-grassed plain, dotted here and there with skinny, umbrella-shaped trees. A scatter of zebras, antelope and wildebeest grazed in the distance. It looked like a scene from a TV documentary about Africa. All that was missing were the lions. A shiver ran through me. Three large, pink-necked birds perched in one of the trees. Vultures. The heads of two more were visible above the long grass. Some creature lay dead under that tree, and I knew it hadn’t died of old age.

  Then I noticed something that made me forget about lions. The hills on the far side of the plain were shimmery and out of focus. But not so out of focus that I didn’t see red.

  I rubbed my blurry right eye and had a second look. Halfway up one of the hills, just below the edge of the forest, were two tiny red dots. Below them were a number of other dots – black ones, white ones and brown ones. Was it my imagination, or were some of the dots moving?

  Suddenly my heart began beating really fast. The black, white and brown dots were cattle. And the two red dots were people!

  I started running.

  11

  MAN EATER

  On the bus I’d overheard a conversation between two women in front of me. I hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, but when they started talking about a man-eating leopard I couldn’t help listening. for the past year and a half, it had been terrorising villagers in and around the Chui Hills – wherever that was. According to the women, the man eater had killed five people.

  Halfway across the plain I saw something that brought their conversation back to mind. And gave me goose bumps all over. I skidded to a halt.

  Shishkebab!

  The big spotted cat crouched in the yellow grass about a hundred and fifty metres away. Looking straight at me.

  What was I going to do? I was in the middle of the plain, there was absolutely nowhere to hide, and anyway the leopard had already seen me.

  According to my big brother, the first rule in a tight situation is: keep a cool head. But Nathan had never come face to face with a leopard – especially not one that was quite possibly a man eater. My palms were clammy, sweat dribbled down my face, and I was trembling uncontrollably. But I wasn’t running away, which was the closest I could come to keeping a cool head.

  Okay, Nathan, what next?

  Second rule: work out your options and how likely they are to succeed.

  There were two options that I could think of. The first was to turn
around and start walking back towards the river. It was important to walk rather than run. If leopards were anything like dogs (and perhaps hyenas), the very worst thing I could do was run away from it. That would show I was afraid, and might encourage it to give chase.

  My second option was more risky. I could bluff. I could pretend I wasn’t the least bit scared of the leopard and walk right past it towards the hills.

  Neither option seemed very likely to succeed, especially if the leopard was the man eater. But I had to make a choice: the river or the hills?

  The two red dots helped me make my decision.

  It was the longest walk of my life. I felt like a condemned man on the way to the gallows – every step I took brought me that much closer to my doom.

  I didn’t walk directly towards the leopard – I wasn’t that brave (or that stupid). Instead, I veered slightly to the left, so I would pass within fifty metres of it. That way, the leopard would be on my right, the same side as my good eye. Although ‘good’ was hardly an accurate description – my right eye was stinging quite badly now and the lids were beginning to swell closed like my bung eye. My vision was down to about thirty percent.

  That’s probably why, when the leopard jumped up, I thought it was charging.

  When I said there were only two options, I left one out. There were actually three. But the third option was so radical that I’d dismissed it outright.

  It’s a strategy I use on little yappy dogs that come rushing down their owners’ driveways when I’m delivering junk mail. Instead of running away, I run towards them. nine times out of ten it stops them in their tracks.

  And the tenth time? Well, I wear size 10 shoes…

  But does my yappy dog strategy work with leopards? I still don’t know. Because when I started running towards the tall spotted cat, it was already racing off in the other direction. At about one hundred and twenty kilometres per hour. It wasn’t a leopard, it was a cheetah. Cheetahs aren’t nearly as mean as leopards, and they never become man eaters.