by Sibel Hodge
As the thoughts tumbled around in my brain, I heard a noise and jerked my head up, suddenly hearing Richard’s warning come into my head. I was out here alone, in the middle of Africa with wild animals and snakes.
I strained my ears, listening to the noise. It sounded like a cry. A high-pitched squeaky cry, like an animal in distress. I stood up and walked to the edge of the rocks, looking down. At the bottom I saw a tiny leopard cub with huge blue eyes, looking up at me and mewing as its little legs tried to get a foothold at the bottom of the rocks.
It was so thin its shoulder blades were almost poking through the skin. The desperation in its pitiful wail seemed to permeate right through to my bones, and my first thought was to climb down and soothe it. My second thought was that wherever there was a baby leopard, there would be a mother leopard, and even though I didn’t particularly value my own life anymore, I didn’t really want to die painfully by being mauled and scratched to death.
I willed it to shut up so it wouldn’t attract its mother’s attention, or maybe the attention of scavenging hyenas that Dad had said could crack bone with their jaws. I didn’t know if hyenas could climb rocks, but the mother leopard definitely could. I moved away from the edge so the cub was out of my sight and pressed my hands over my ears, trying to drown out the helpless sound.
When it didn’t work, I leaned over the edge of the rocks again and flapped my hands in the air. ‘Go away!’ I yelled down.
That didn’t work, either. In fact, my voice, or the sight of me, seemed to make it worse, and the distressed sounds got louder.
I looked up at the sky and exhaled. What was I supposed to do?
I looked down into the cub’s big blue eyes and it stared back. No, maybe that was wrong. It seemed like it was actually seeing through me. Right into my soul, like it knew me, the real Jazz. Not the ugly, scarred Jazz. And since the accident, no one had ever done that.
I felt something strange happening. I can’t explain it, really, and it sounds stupid to even try, but I felt an overwhelming connection with this helpless creature sweep over me, right through my heart. You know how, when you listen to a meaningful song that grips at your core and gives you goosebumps, it’s like that song was written only for you? That’s how it was with the cub. There had to be a reason it was here at these rocks.
I thought back to Mum’s firm belief that everything happened for a reason. Had she just answered my cries? Does that sound pathetic, like I was grasping at straws? Maybe it was pathetic, but for the first time since the accident I was actually feeling something other than pain and fear and sadness, and I couldn’t explain it.
For some reason, this cub needed me, and when I peered over the opposite side of the rocks I thought I knew the reason why.
Blood. There were lots of dark brownish-red stains on the ground with flies buzzing around and drag marks leading away into the trees beyond. And that’s when it hit me in the chest with the force of a punch.
This cub had lost her mother. This cub was just like me.
Chapter 6
I climbed quickly down the rocks, all fear of being attacked by animals vanishing from my thoughts. I wondered how long the cub had been left on its own. It must’ve been a while since it was obviously starving and practically skin and bone. If I didn’t get it back to Dad as quickly as possible it could die.
When I got to the bottom, the cub reached up and let me scoop it into my arms. It stopped crying and sucked on my fingertips urgently, searching for milk, abandoning one and moving onto the next one when it realised it couldn’t get what it wanted. I held the cub close to me as I hurried through the bush, stroking its soft fur and talking in a gentle voice to try and reassure it. All the way back it kept my fingertip in its mouth and fixed its huge eyes on my face.
There was a radio in our quarters. I had to try and get hold of Dad. He’d know what to do. Bursting in through the front door, I grabbed the radio from its charger unit and sat at the kitchen table with the cub on my lap.
I pressed a button on the side and called out, ‘Dad! Dad, are you there?’
Crackly static came over the air.
‘Dad! Dad, answer me.’
‘Jazz?’ Dad said. ‘Is that you?’
‘I need you back at the house,’ I cried.
‘What’s happened? Are you all right?’
‘Yes, but I’ve found an injured animal and I need you to come back right away.’
‘What? The reception’s not very good here. What have you found?’
‘Just come back to the house! There’s an animal that needs your help.’
‘I’m leaving now. I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes. Stay there.’
I put the radio on the table and stared at the cub lying on its back in my lap, showing me its soft belly. I stroked its head as it stared back.
What had I just done? What if its mum wasn’t dead? Was I just being stupid, imagining that it needed me? I didn’t know hardly anything about wild animals. I’d never been really interested before, not like Mum and Dad. But then what about the blood? There was loads of it. Surely a leopard couldn’t have survived that much blood loss. Hadn’t Richard been talking about poachers who were after leopards the day before? I wracked my brains, trying to think of what he’d said, but I hadn’t been listening at the time and couldn’t remember much.
By the time I heard Dad pull up in the Land Rover the cub was in a peaceful sleep with one of my fingertips in its mouth.
He rushed through the front door calling out, ‘Jazz? Are you OK?’ He flew into the kitchen and stopped abruptly, staring at the baby leopard.
His jaw dropped, anger and worry mixed into one written all over his face. ‘How on earth did you get hold of a leopard cub?’ He picked it up from my lap and put it on the table, going into vet mode and giving it a thorough examination. The instant it was removed from my lap, the cub started mewing again, turning its head towards me and wriggling to get back.
‘Jazz, where did you find it?’ he asked sternly, his hands feeling over the bones and muscles, his fingertips prising its eyelids open, and looking in its mouth.
‘It was at the bottom of those big rocks we drove past yesterday.’
He stopped his examination and his head snapped up, eyes flashing. ‘What did Richard and I tell you about not going off on your own? Anything could’ve happened. What if its mother had come back? You wouldn’t have stood a chance with an angry mother leopard.’
I told him about the blood and the drag marks.
‘You don’t know the blood came from its mother. It could’ve been from an animal its mother had killed and eaten. It could’ve been prey killed by a lion. What were you thinking?’ His voice rose.
He was right. I didn’t know. It just felt like the right thing to do.
The cub’s mewing grew stronger as it struggled to get back to me. I reached out my hand and stroked its head, which instantly quietened it down.
‘Why were you even out there? You’re supposed to be working at the lodge.’
‘I’m not going back there, Dad, I can’t. I can’t face people being mean to me. One of the guests called me a weirdo.’
His eyebrows furrowed in surprise. ‘Why would they do that?’
I pointed to my face. ‘Look at me! I am a weirdo.’ I carried on stroking the cub and changed the subject. ‘Is it OK?’
‘It’s a she, and yes, she’s OK. Dehydrated and starving, but she looks OK.’ He shook his head. ‘You’re sure there was blood?’
I nodded firmly. ‘I may be a weirdo freak, but I know blood when I see it.’
He grabbed the radio on his belt and pressed the button. ‘Richard, come in, Richard.’
‘Receiving,’ Richard replied. ‘Go ahead.’
‘Jazz has found a leopard cub near the outcrop and apparently there’s a lot of blood and some drag marks nearby. Can you meet me there? I’m going to check it out. We may have an injured mother out there, or possible poachers.’
‘I’ll
see you there in five,’ he replied.
Dad pointed his finger at me. ‘I’ll mix up some milk formula for her when I get back, if we don’t find her mother. Do not move!’
I picked up the cub and she wasted no time getting settled in my lap, gently sucking on my fingertips again before falling into a twitchy sleep.
I studied her carefully. The dark rosette spots on her coat, her fine eyelashes and whiskers. She had huge paws and a gangly body with a tiny head and ears, but she was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen. No matter what Dad said, I just knew her mother was dead, and I wanted to keep her. She’d been prised away from all the safety and love she’d ever known, and I had to do everything I could to protect her, to give her the life her mother couldn’t anymore.
An hour later, Dad returned. Seeing me in the same position as when he’d left, he sat down wearily at the kitchen table and looked between me and the cub.
‘Well?’ I prompted. ‘Did you find the mum?’
He exhaled a deep breath and shook his head. ‘Richard and his trackers have been scouring the area. They found the markings of an adult female leopard interspersed with the blood and tracks of poachers. They’re following the poachers’ trail now to see if they can catch them, but it’s pretty certain that her mother has been killed.’
The cub whimpered in her sleep, as if somehow realising what Dad had said. I looked down at her and then back to Dad.
‘I want to keep her,’ I said firmly.
He stood up again. ‘I’m going to mix her some milk formula from the office and I’ll be back in about ten minutes. We’ll talk then.’
As Dad left, she stretched her paws in the air and blinked her eyes open, looking deep into mine as if to say, Thank you for saving me.
‘I don’t care what he says, I’m keeping you.’ I smiled at her, my facial muscles stretching in an unfamiliar expression.
She nudged her head against my hand in reply and turned over, padding her front paws on my knees like she’d do to her mum to stimulate milk.
‘I’ll give you some in a minute when Dad gets back.’ I giggled as her paws tickled my skin.
‘Well, I haven’t heard that sound in a long time.’ Dad stood, observing me carefully from the doorway with a half-smile on his face and a baby’s bottle full of milk in one hand.
He approached us and knelt down in front of the cub, tipping up the bottle and squeezing a couple of drips onto his finger. He slowly reached his finger towards her so she could smell the milk. Even though she must’ve been dying to drink, she pulled her head away from him. He tried repeatedly to coax her to lick his finger but she wasn’t having any of it, moving closer to me and burying her head in the crook of my arm.
‘If she doesn’t take it, she’s not going to last very long.’ He held the bottle out. ‘You try.’
I dripped some of the formula onto my finger and held it close to her face.
Please take it.
She slowly looked up at me, then looked at my finger.
Come on, take it, little girl.
Carefully, she licked off the few drops then looked around for more. I tipped the bottle upside down and she licked that, too, then sucked hard, her front paws clutching around my fingers as I held the bottle for her. She fed hungrily, gazing into my eyes all the time.
‘She likes you,’ Dad said, sitting down at the table next to me.
‘I want to keep her.’ I stroked her back with my other hand while she suckled.
‘You can’t keep a leopard as a pet. She’s a wild animal.’
‘But she’s lost her mum. I know how that feels. She needs someone to look after her. At least until she’s old enough to look after herself. Please, Dad.’
Dad’s forehead pinched into a frown and he stared at the table, thinking. ‘And then what? Release her into the wild? It wouldn’t work. She wouldn’t have any of the attributes she’d need to survive on her own that she’d normally learn from her mother. A cat’s behaviour depends on genetics, intuition, and individual learning. She may have natural instincts to hunt but she needs the skill taught by her mother. Plus, she’d be so used to humans it would be dangerous for her.’
‘They did it with the lion Elsa from Born Free. I saw the film,’ I said stubbornly.
‘Elsa died,’ he said flatly.
‘That wasn’t their fault. There must be a way,’ I pleaded.
‘It’s only ever been done a few times before with a leopard cub,’ Zach’s voice interrupted us as he stood in the doorway to the kitchen, arms folded, leaning against the door frame.
I’d been so intent on trying to convince Dad that I hadn’t even heard him come in.
I looked up at him and our eyes locked for a second before he swept his gaze to the cub.
‘It’s not easy to re-wild a big cat like this to release back into the wild,’ Zach said, sitting down opposite me.
‘But if it’s been done before, even a couple of times, it could work, couldn’t it?’ I said to Zach. If I could convince him, maybe I could convince Dad to let me try, too.
‘Your dad’s right, though,’ Zach replied. ‘If she gets too friendly with humans, she could be in danger from poachers. Or the opposite, which sometimes happens with cats who’ve gone through re-wilding, is that they don’t fear humans anymore, so if they approach a human who then runs, it triggers their hunting instinct and they attack them.’ He tilted his head, looking slowly between me and the cub.
I looked down at the little bundle of fur contentedly sucking and dismissed the idea she’d ever do anything like that.
‘Exactly,’ Dad agreed.
‘So what do you want to do? Kill her now? Send her to a zoo?’ My eyes blazed at them both as I thought of her pacing in front of a cage with glazed, vacant eyes, having retreated so deep into herself to try and survive the desolation of captivity. ‘Don’t you want to even give her a chance?’
‘There’s a lot of controversy trying to train these types of animals for release into the wild.’ Dad rested his elbows on the table and rubbed his fingertips over his forehead.
‘I could do it,’ I said to them both. ‘I’ll learn.’
‘It’s not like you can just start something like this and then give up when things go wrong.’ Zach leaned back in the chair and folded his arms, eyes coolly appraising me. ‘There are hundreds of things that could affect her chances.’
I held on to his gaze with determination. ‘I’ll do whatever it takes. She deserves to grow up and be out there where she belongs.’ I jerked my head towards the window.
Dad studied me for a while and then said to Zach, ‘Can I have a word with you outside?’
That’s right, just talk about me behind my back.
I glared at their backs as they disappeared outside onto the veranda.
I heard snippets of conversation through the open window…
Dad: ‘…the first time I’ve seen a spark of interest in her since the accident…’
Zach: ‘…endangered animals. We need more leopards in the wild to prevent them becoming wiped out…’
Dad: ‘…don’t think it can be done…’
Zach: ‘…low success rate…’
Dad: ‘…I’ve tried everything I can think of with her…’
Zach: ‘…maybe it will help her move on…’
Dad: ‘…it trusts her…’
Eventually, they returned and sat down at the table. Zach tilted his head to the ceiling and avoided my questioning look. Dad looked at the cub that had finished the whole bottle and was now sucking my finger and hiccupping after guzzling her milk so hard. My heart just melted at her vulnerability, and I could feel my throat constricting with the fear that they were going to say no.
‘You’re going to have to work closely with Zach on this,’ Dad said to me. ‘It’s going to take a lot of effort and determination if there’s even going to be a chance of this thing working.’
‘I think she’s about eight weeks old,’ Zach said. ‘It will take
nearly two years before she’s ready to be released, and that’s a huge commitment. You can’t bail out at the first sign of any problems. This is an animal’s life we’re talking about here, and it’s not something to take on lightly.’
I sat upright in my chair. ‘I don’t care. I’ll do it. I’ll do whatever it takes.’
‘And there’s one condition.’ Zach’s cool topaz gaze met mine from across the table.
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
‘We should film it for a documentary.’
I furrowed my eyebrows together. ‘A documentary?’
He nodded.
‘Didn’t you know Richard’s a wildlife filmmaker?’ Dad said.
I shook my head.
‘He’s filmed lots of pieces for National Geographic. Even worked with David Attenborough,’ Zach told me. ‘But he wouldn’t be filming it. I would.’ He glanced down at the cub. ‘She obviously trusts you, and I think it would be dangerous to the outcome if she got too close to too many people, so you would have the primary role in re-wilding her.’ He leaned forward, making sure I was taking it in. ‘It would involve filming you working with the cub. It would make a great documentary and would have a conservation message about anti-poaching.’
‘S…so I’d have to be on film, too?’ I looked to Dad for help.
Dad nodded.
‘But…I…I…’ I couldn’t get the words out. I felt like they’d given me the greatest gift and taken it away again in the same breath. How could I be on film for the whole world to see and laugh at? It would be my worst nightmare.
Zach stood up to leave. ‘That’s the deal. These cats are poached for their fur and bones. They’re used in tribal ceremonies, fashion, and medicine. If we don’t do something to stop the killing, they’ll become extinct. A documentary is one way we can get the message out there.’
I looked down at the cub and had that overwhelming feeling again that this was supposed to happen, that she’d purposely found me on that rock. As if to show her agreement, she stretched up on her hind legs, lifted her front paws up to me and gently placed them on either side of my face. This was about something far bigger than my feelings.
