by Sibel Hodge
Bella’s death affected everyone badly. All the staff at Kilingi walked around with heavy hearts and red-rimmed eyes. The image of her lifeless, mutilated body was burned into my brain, haunting me when I closed my eyes. What kind of a world were we living in? When had humankind become so ruthless and selfish? I was wrong when I’d told Zach he didn’t know anything about grief. You couldn’t know and see what was happening to these animals out here and not feel it.
Richard called a staff meeting the next day to talk about where Kilingi could go from here.
I squeezed myself in between Dad and Zach, unable to look at anyone, not because of my face this time, but because if I caught the look of devastation mirrored in someone else’s eyes I wouldn’t be able to control myself.
‘You all know by now what happened yesterday to Bella.’ Richard stood in the centre of the room and addressed the rangers and anti-poaching patrols. He pinched the bridge of his nose as his eyes watered. ‘We cannot let it happen again. As long as these animals are walking around they’re in grave danger. And that goes for the elephants, lions, leopards, cheetahs, and many more on the reserve.’
There were solemn nods of agreement.
‘I’ve reported the incident to the police and the Kenyan Wildlife Service, but I don’t hold out much hope of catching these people. We need to increase the anti-poaching patrols and start taking some drastic action to protect our animals.’
‘Should we remove the rhino horns for their own protection?’ one of the rangers asked.
‘There’s been a lot of talk about that in the past, but there are several flaws with that,’ Zach said.
‘I agree,’ Richard said. ‘The rhino would probably be killed by poachers, even if their horns were removed because they’d spend so much time tracking it, they’d kill it just so they didn’t waste time tracking it again in the future.’
‘Plus, even if you dehorn them, there’s still enough horn left under the skin to be worth the poachers killing them anyway,’ Dad said. ‘And the rhinos need their horns to defend their territory and protect them from predators.’
‘There is an extreme idea of injecting the horns with poison so that anyone who consumes them could die,’ Zach offered.
‘I’ve already checked out that option legally,’ Richard said. ‘Even if we advertise the fact that our rhino horns are poisoned, we could still be left wide open for manslaughter charges if someone dies because of it.’
‘That’s just disgusting.’ I shook my head, failing to comprehend the craziness of it. ‘If someone eats poached rhino horn, they could sue Kilingi because we poisoned it to protect the animal?’
‘It’s pretty unbelievable, isn’t it?’ Richard said. ‘But we’re living in a world where the litigation culture is getting out of hand.’
‘There would also be a possible problem with the poison leaching out into the rhino, too,’ Dad said.
‘The only other way to keep them safe is by giving them twenty-four hour guards,’ I said, looking up and meeting Richard’s watery gaze.
‘It looks like that’s the only solution. From now on, I don’t want them walking a step without being watched.’ Richard turned his attention to the anti-poaching patrols. ‘There’s no doubt we’re going to have to hire yet more men, but getting hold of well-trained patrols will be difficult. These are dangerous people we’re dealing with. If they think there’s any chance of being caught, they’ll shoot you first and not even bat an eyelid. There have been cases of poachers even using grenades now. Either they’ll booby-trap the carcass or they’ll use them if they come into confrontation with us. And our men will be out in the bush in the dead of night with the most dangerous animals following the rhinos we have left. We need people with both the courage to handle potential confrontations and the bush skills, and the animals’ protection is only as good as the men guarding them. If we could afford helicopter or drone patrols to regularly scour the reserve, that would help, but we don’t have the money at the moment.’
‘It’s becoming more like running an army camp than a game reserve.’ Zach shook his head slowly.
‘How did they get in?’ one of the rangers asked.
‘They rammed the electric fencing again. We were working overnight to get it repaired before we lost any more animals.’ Richard ran a hand through his hair.
‘She was darted with anaesthetic,’ Dad said.
‘But they’re using all sorts of methods now,’ Zach said. ‘Sometimes they’ll lace vegetation or cabbages with poison and put them out for the rhino. They track them until they collapse and take the horn. Or they poison the waterholes they know rhino use and follow the animals until they die. Sometimes they’ll even dart them from helicopters, so we need to be extra vigilant for any aircraft flying over the reserve, too.’
‘I have a friend who’s ex-army,’ Richard said. ‘I spoke to him last night and let him know the situation. He’s going to provide us with some extra men who will be here in a couple of days, but in the meantime, we still have five rhinos left that need twenty-four hour guards. That’s ten men to take two twelve hour shifts per day, tracking them at a safe distance.’
It was incredible that Kilingi had to resort to this. It was jungle warfare in the middle of the African plains, but the war was being fought for animal parts, not land or tribal disagreements or religion.
‘I’ll volunteer,’ David, one of the anti-poaching patrols said.
‘Me, too,’ Mosi, another of the patrolmen said, shaking his head vehemently.
One by one, rangers and the patrols bravely volunteered to protect the rhino, and they were all assigned a shift and a rhino to cover. As the meeting wrapped up, the heavy air filled with loss and devastation permeated my bones.
We shuffled out of the room, and Zach caught up with me. ‘Come on, we need something to take our minds off things. Asha’s mastered the art of killing prey in the enclosure, so now it’s time to step things up. For the next few months we’ll be spending all day out in the bush with her, trying to get her to hunt for real.’
Asha was seventeen months old now and maturing into a strong, lean leopardess. She’d even started trying to defend her kills. If I went near her after she’d taken down an animal in the enclosure she dragged it away, either up into one of the trees or to the edge of the enclosure. It was encouraging behaviour. In the wild, she’d have to do the same if she wanted to stop lions, hyenas, or jackals trying to scavenge from her. Increasingly, she didn’t want to return home from our walks or outings in the bush, and it was getting more and more difficult to try and coax her back to the enclosure as she wanted to investigate new sounds and smells and sights. I could see the anguish in her face as she was torn between wanting to stay with me and wanting to go off into her new world alone as an adult leopard and do her own thing. Sometimes, when we got back to her enclosure, she’d go off into a corner and sulk for a while. It wouldn’t be long before my beautiful little girl was ready to fly the nest, but I couldn’t even think about that now. We’d lost enough for one day with Bella. For now, I just had to try and make the most of the time we still had left.
‘I’ve found a spot on the other side of the reserve that I think would be perfect to finally release her,’ Zach said. ‘It’s got enough trees and the river swings into it so she’ll have plenty of hiding places and water. If we start taking her there every day, she can get used to it and think of it as her territory. There are no other female leopards on that part of the reserve, so she should be OK there.’
I took her out of the enclosure and she bounded up to me as usual with excitement, nuzzling her head into my legs and wanting me to stroke her until she spotted her football and nudged it towards me to play.
After a few rounds of me and Zach trying to kick it to each other while she darted after us, batting at our legs with a playful smack and trying to tackle us, we gave up, and piled into the Land Rover.
‘What do you think?’ he asked as I surveyed the area of Asha’s prospective new
territory.
It was a beautiful part of the reserve. The river gently wound its way along one side, giving her the water she loved to play in so much, and its banks were covered with thick bush and undergrowth that would provide good cover. The area was bursting with woodland and trees for her to sleep in and stash her kills.
I swallowed back the lump in my throat. One day the little leopard who changed my world would be out here on her own. ‘It looks perfect.’
‘Good.’ He jumped out with his video camera and rifle slung over each shoulder. ‘Let’s walk around and get her used to it. She hasn’t been fed for a couple of days so she should be hungry. Hopefully it will allow her hunting instinct to kick in.’
We walked around for half an hour and spotted herds of impala, zebra, and a few waterbuck. Vultures circled in the distance.
‘The vultures are interested in something, so there’s probably a carcass down there. I think we should avoid it. There could be lions or hyenas on a fresh kill,’ Zach said.
We headed off in another direction as Asha sniffed at the ground and scratched at the tree trunks along the way. When we came upon a couple of giraffes, Asha stalked them for a while but got bored when they took no notice of her. Then off to the side, something caught her eye. A warthog.
She froze, every muscle taut against her skin, staring at it snuffling on the ground. She’d killed plenty of warthogs before but always babies. The adults had large tusks that could seriously injure another animal, and this was a pretty big male.
‘She’s spotted the warthog,’ I whispered. ‘Maybe we should take her away. I don’t want her to get injured on her first day out.’
Zach nodded and we managed to distract her attention by pointing out some zebra ahead of us. She stalked a few of them for a while until they spotted her and stared over. Knowing her cover had been blown, she sat down and licked her front paw nonchalantly, as if to give them the message that she wasn’t the least bit interested in them and was only out for a leisurely stroll.
When we came across a large tortoise, things got interesting. As it retracted its head and legs into its body, Asha sniffed around it, pawing at the shell, trying to get it to do something. Since the tortoise wasn’t playing, she quickly got bored of that and looked around to see what else was going on.
A couple of ostriches caught her attention as they wandered majestically through the plains. With her body in a low crouched position, she watched them for a while, inching forward under the cover of the bush. She managed to get pretty close, but they spotted her before she was close enough to pounce and they galloped off. Although leopards can run about forty miles an hour, ostriches can top fifty, so unless she concealed herself well enough in the thicker bush to get really close to them before striking, she was pretty much going to be out of luck.
She sat down on the floor and watched them go, the fur around her forehead crinkling up and her tail flicking with annoyance, then she looked back at us, stretched out her front legs and got to her paws.
I stroked her head. ‘Don’t worry, girl. There’s always a next time.’
We sat under the dappled shade of some woodland to eat our lunch of ham sandwiches and water, which Asha looked at hungrily and tried to steal, swatting at them with her huge paws. I jumped up and swung my arm in the air, trying to keep the sandwich out of reach, but she was a big girl by then, and standing on her hind legs she was taller than me. I tapped her on the nose. ‘No! You have to get your own lunch.’
She landed back on all fours, swiped me on the side of my knee with one paw and padded off a little way from us, plonking herself down in a huff as she stared at the sandwiches and licked her lips.
Just as we finished eating she sat up, eyes alert, ears twitching, listening to the bush sounds. Her gaze fixed on a group of topi about two hundred metres away, grazing contentedly. One of the females was limping and straggled behind the herd.
Asha went into her stalking position while we watched quietly. There were no bushes nearby she could use to cover her, but she crept stealthily towards them, her belly almost skimming the ground, her powerful legs silent as she slunk forward through the grassy cover. If any of the topi looked up for danger she froze. With her perfectly camouflaged fur, she blended into the background and they didn’t spot a thing.
She got to within twenty metres and still hadn’t been noticed. The limping topi was now further back from the herd, engrossed in feeding.
Then Asha was off in a powerful explosion of speed and grace, and in seconds she’d launched onto the topi, bringing it to the ground. She pinned it down and administered a bite to the neck as the rest of the herd bolted, sounding out warning cries.
The topi’s legs writhed in the air for a few minutes, struggling to get away, and I was filled with a mixture of revulsion and pride. But this was the life of a predator, and she’d done exactly what she needed to do.
It wasn’t a clean kill, and the cries of the struggling topi filled the air. I pressed my hands over my ears, trying to drown out the sound as Asha lay on the ground, her jaws still clamped around its neck, looking at us. When the topi stopped struggling and she sensed it was dead, she sat up, panting while she tried to get her breath back from the exertion. She’d killed it successfully, but now what would she do?
On the horizon, I saw a group of hyenas appear, attracted by the sounds of the topi.
‘Uh oh,’ I said. ‘She’s going to have company.’ I watched with trepidation to see how Asha would respond.
Asha hadn’t noticed the hyenas yet, and although I wanted to scream out a warning to her, I kept quiet. I was torn between wanting to get her away from them and seeing how she dealt with it. This would be a test she’d come across all too often in the future, and she’d be faced with losing a kill to lions or scavengers like hyenas.
Zach nodded to a nearby tree, indicating for us to climb it so we’d be out of the way of the hyenas if anything happened.
Asha sank her jaws into the soft underbelly to start feeding, oblivious to the hyenas creeping closer.
I chewed on my thumbnail and watched the hyenas get within about fifteen metres of her. She looked up at them, teeth still in the topi, and growled a low rumbling sound.
The hyenas stopped for a second, their beady eyes assessing the situation before they split the pack. Three went round to the back of Asha while four remained in front. Asha turned her head to check out the ones behind and the hyenas at the front moved forward, jaws snapping as they tried to take hold of the topi’s legs and drag it away.
Asha lunged forward and snapped back at them, which left the way clear for the hyenas at the back to jump onto the kill and start feeding. Seeing what was happening Asha turned around and growled at them. They scattered and then regrouped as the hyenas at the front advanced. Poor Asha was turning her head back and forth and trying to defend her kill, but there was no hope. The hyenas wouldn’t leave her alone, and rather than risk a nasty bite she slunk off and left them to feed with one last look over her shoulder at them.
‘Leopards only get to eat about one out of five kills,’ Zach said. ‘She’ll have to learn to be quicker than that to get it up in the trees to safety.’
‘She did a good job, though. At least she managed a kill.’
Seeing us, Asha climbed up the tree and draped herself in the branches next to us, staring out at the hyenas forlornly.
‘You need to bring it up here, next time, Asha,’ I said. ‘They won’t be able to get it in the trees.’
Every day we repeated the process, driving out to what would be her territory and encouraging her to hunt for herself. Some days she managed a kill, some days she didn’t, but I was pleased that she seemed like a natural hunter. She’d remembered that to keep her food away from the scavengers, she needed to stash it in a tree as soon as possible or risk losing it. She had a few near brushes with lions, hyenas, and jackals, but every day there was a new lesson learned.
One day she was lying in a tree, lazily surve
ying the area with her bird’s-eye view when a herd of impala wandered up underneath her, gently nibbling on the shoots below. Silently, Asha got to her paws and leaped onto the back end of one of them. Crumbling under Asha’s weight, the impala dropped to the ground, and in a flash Asha’s jaws were clamped around its neck as the rest of the herd darted away to safety. A job well done without Asha expending too much energy, and it was a tactic I saw her use time and time again. Her stealth and cunning never ceased to amaze me, often waiting in ambush in the trees for her dinner to come to her.
Gradually, we moved further and further away from her as she investigated her new territory, letting her out of the Land Rover and driving to places where we could watch her with binoculars, hoping she’d get more used to being out in the bush on her own. At first she would watch us driving off and chase after us, but as soon as she knew we weren’t going away completely, she seemed to enjoy having more freedom and swaggered through the bush with the arrogance of knowing that she was truly aware of her own power as a predator.
On one occasion she began sniffing around some bushes and flushed out a baby warthog. It shot out, squealing and running for dear life. On hearing its cries, the warthog’s mother came charging after it towards Asha. As Asha caught the baby in a chokehold, the mother tried to ram Asha with her tusks, missing her by an inch.
I scrunched up my face with worry, watching Asha leap into the air in an amazing display of agile acrobatics. She just managed to get out of the way of its long tusks before running off with the squealing baby warthog in her mouth. She straddled it and dragged the animal up into the nearest tree. The mother chased close behind, and unfortunately, Asha was in such a hurry to get away that as she climbed the branches, she lost her grip on the animal and it fell back down to the ground with a thud. Surprisingly, it didn’t seem to be injured, only dazed, but Asha wasn’t giving up her prize that easily and she leaped down after it, even though the mother was trying to shoo it away to safety. As Asha ran after them, the mother warthog turned and faced her, ramming its tusks into her with blind fury.
