Open Writing

Early one morning during our winter visit to the game reserve, I crunched down the gravelled pathway from our chalet and entered the main lodge building through the kitchen door. A black-faced vervet monkey sat on the kitchen counter, eating a plum. She looked up, then leapt to the floor in the dining-room and scuttled out of the open door onto the deck. Her entire family – about forty, including mothers, fathers, teenagers and tiny babies – looked up to see the cause of her consternation. I closed the door between us then we examined each other, the more inquisitive among them pressing their little faces against the glass to watch every move of this large, clothed monkey inside the lodge.

The other members of my human family arrived and we went out onto the deck. Monkeys scattered to the surrounding trees from where they kept us under surveillance: if we turned our backs or went inside to make tea, they pounced – cheese rolls vanished, to be seen in tiny monkey hands; nibbling monkeys grinned at us, flaunting their spoils and dropping crumbs to the ground to be retrieved later. While we sat around the table after breakfast, the little beasties played games with us, young ones climbing onto the railings around the deck, dancing and distracting us, while older animals crept behind us to try to invade the lodge and steal the fruit! It took all our wits to be aware of them all, not to frighten them too much, but to keep our food supplies safe.

Throughout our visit, we kept all food in the cupboards and closed and locked doors and windows when we were out on game drives. These petty ‘criminals’ of the bush were pretty, but aside from the nuisance value, must not be allowed to steal food as this is against all conservation principles and can result in nuisance animals having to be destroyed.

On our first game drive, we arrived at a deep, sun-scorched borrow-pit, a place where soil had been excavated to build roads. Here we found a family of rhinoceros – two adults and two ‘teenagers’. Herbert, our game ranger, stopped the vehicle under a tree at a safe distance and switched off the engine; he said the adults were a male and female. This prehistoric family seemed to be in the throes of a domestic disagreement. Father hounded Mother, poking his long, sharp horn into the tough and resistant skin of throat, belly and rump, depending on which way she was facing. Herbert suggested this was foreplay – and very uncomfortable it looked for both parties, as Mother retaliated with her own horn. It certainly gave a whole new meaning to the term “feeling horny”.

One of the youngsters came between his parents a few times, to be shoved aside, not too gently, by long, sharp horns. The argument became rather heated: Mother and Father thundered across the ground, ploughed over bushes, pirouetted, backed and advanced, horns crossed and clacking loudly against each other; the whole group came dangerously close to our vehicle. Herbert started the engine and all four animals froze in the billowing dust, turning their ears, like trumpet-shaped antennae, towards us. Tiny, short-sighted eyes gazed at us from puzzled faces. Then the animals shuffled away to continue their altercation at a safer distance. It seemed to us, reading Rhino body language, that Mother had a headache and was saying ‘no’ to Father’s advances; Father was annoyed, he wanted his conjugal rights and was willing to do whatever it took to get his way. Chris – sitting safely in front of us – said that Father must be on industrial-strength Viagra.

When one of the youngsters tried to separate Mom and Dad, he got whacked for his pains with a side-swipe from a horn. Sitting behind us, my son Bergen, commented, “He’s trying to horn in!”

When we left them, Mother and Father were facing each other, horns crossed like fencers’ swords, while the two youngsters thought they’d try this game themselves – but their stumpy horns were too short to cross!

That evening we celebrated Bergen’s birthday in the main lodge, eight of us sitting at the gleaming twelve seater table in the dining room. We enjoyed a meal of roast beef, with Yorkshire pudding and all the trimmings and cake for dessert. Safe in that lovely, candlelit room, with a glorious fire warming our backs, it was difficult to believe that we were in the heart of the African bush.

Next day while driving through the reserve, we came across a nursery herd of elephant; once again, Herbert parked the vehicle with the engine turned off so as not to disturb these majestic creatures. We were all aware that standing up, making a noise, or taking a photograph with a flash may attract their attention and put us all in danger. We whispered to each other and watched, fascinated, as a matriarch battered a tree with her forehead until its roots ripped from the ground and it fell with a rush of leaves and a great creaking as its branches tore through other trees. The herd moved in on the feast of tender leaves that were now accessible to the younger members. There were five full-grown animals, several ‘teenagers’, two ‘children’ with tiny tusks, and one baby, about six weeks old who shadowed between the massive legs of its relatives, elusive and well-protected.

With no sound at all, the baby’s teenaged mother ghosted up the road behind our vehicle, to appear on the edge of the bank less than a metre from us. She lifted her trunk, waving it closer and closer to smell us. Looking into an elephant’s nostrils is very disconcerting; we all held our breaths and sat like statues. If any of us had moved or made a noise, she could easily have snatched and trampled one of us in her ensuing alarm. Thank goodness the young mother didn’t find anything threatening about us. She reversed a few steps away from the crumbling edge of the bank and allowed her baby to creep between her front legs where he curled up his trunk and opened his delicate pink mouth to suckle at her breasts. Then mother, baby and the rest of the herd quietly turned and drifted away, vanishing within moments between the trees.

That was a close encounter of a marvellous, though dangerous, kind!

Just after setting out on our drive next morning, we came across a family of lion, three almost full grown males with their mother. They were lying down, sunbathing and dozing: it’s what lions do best. We watched them for a while; unless they’re hungry and hunting, lion are boring, occasionally twitching an eye in the watcher’s direction and yawning to reveal a massive gape filled with vicious, sharp teeth. Here too, standing, noise, dangling an arm from the vehicle when big cats are near can be very dangerous: a lion can bite off an arm or drag a whole human away with alarming speed; though they look like large versions of kitty at home, they are wild felines! We left them to their midday snooze which we later learned lasted eight hours.

A little further along the road a family of baboons cavorted, too fast to photograph; little ones rode on their mothers backs or clung miraculously to her undercarriage, big males barked in warning, or sat, scratching themselves and grooming each other.

Families of all kinds have fun together, argue, love and protect each other and enjoy times of rest.

Until next week, ‘here comes Treble!’

Isabel Bradley
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