Children swimming with Crocodiles

'Trust only tap water - any other water in the Lowveld should be treated as if there's crocodiles in it'.
My grandpa used to hammer this into our heads as children.

Good thing he did.

Just outside the town of White River lies the most spectacular farm with a couple of beautiful dams.
We used to fish and have picnics under the huge Camel Thorn trees at the Fish Eagle dam.
The dam was fed by springs and the run-off of summer storms, and the closest river was the Crocodile River, some fifteen miles down the valley.

My kids were forbidden to play in the water, and my incessant concerns fell on deaf ears as far as the other parents were concerned.  Old wives' tales etc.

I borrowed a croc capture cage from my friend Cobus Raath in the Kruger Park, and set the trap.  I drove out to check on it every morning and every evening for weeks on end. Nothing.

I'm sure the friends were sniggering behind my back.

The water level receded as winter progressed, and I had to keep moving the cage in order to keep it half submerged.

Then, one morning I noticed from a distance that the drop-gate on the cage had been triggered.  To my utter disappointment there was not a ripple on the water in the cage. 
However, the moment I touched the cage all hell broke loose - the croc exploded from the water, jaws snapping wildly.
This was one mean mother.

I notified Nature Conservation as well as my friend Elise Visagie, one of the co-owners.  I asked her to go get her son Erwin out of school.  Erwin was about ten years old at the time, and one of the more enthusiastic swimmers in the dam.

Erwin didn't like what he saw close-up.

With the help of the officials we got the cage on the back of my truck, and we released the croc on the banks of the Crocodile River.

In this picture Elise is standing next to the cage with folded arms, contemplating her son's swimming mate.

Needless to say, this unusual sight on the road during morning rush hour created some chaos.

Heading for its new home

Needless to say Erwin preferred swimming pools with crystal clear water from that day.  But tough young Lowveld kids being what they are, it only lasted for a couple of months....

Remarkable how memories can fade, eh Erwin?

Behold the beauty of the Boomslang (Tree Snake)

As stated in an earlier posting, Yzerfontein has lots of snakes.
On an early walk yesterday I noticed one of my neighbours having some very nice trees trimmed down to skeletons.  She told me that particular thicket was home to a monster of a boomslang.
Well.... it was her trees so I refrained from commenting.

Later in the afternoon, returning from a scenic drive with visiting family, my wife Monica spotted a huge snake crossing the driveway two houses down the road.  For some obscure reason she shrieked.
I must admit, this was a very impressive boomslang - by far the biggest I've ever seen.

I jumped out and gingerly herded the monster towards a secluded shrub, where it obligingly took refuge.  I phoned Johan, Yzerfontein's local Snake Whisperer, while circling the bush to discourage the snake from bolting.

The good man pitched up within five minutes, armed with the tools of his trade.

The snake didn't make things easy for Johan.

"I know you're in there somewhere......"

After a while he managed to extricate it unharmed.  The boomslang is one of the most beautiful snakes, displaying colours varying from bright orange through olive green to black.

The snake was released in the nearby National Park where it will undoubtedly find a new thicket to call home.

The boomslang is, as a rule, not an aggressive snake and will only bite when provoked.  The venom is highly potent but slow working.  It takes several hours after a bite before any symptoms set in, so there is plenty of time to get to a hospital.  Don't let the lack of symptoms fool you into thinking the bite was not serious - if left untreated you will be dead in one to three days.

Several years ago the famous herpetologist Karl Schmidt died following the bite of a boomslang.


I love Yzer!

Explosive secret on mistery island.

Opposite the northern tip of the city of Maputo, on the African East Coast, there lies a small island some five kilometres offshore.
It is shrouded in mystery and strictly a no-go, forbidden area.  The locals refer to it as 'Jail Island' or 'Hell Island.'  Nobody could ever tell me anything about it.
The dark secrecy fascinated me, and I always wanted to go there.  The only information I ever managed to unearth was the island's name: 'Ilha Xefina Grande'.  (These days one can look it up on Google Earth - check out the naval gun emplacements on the north-eastern shoreline.)

Then, one day, opportunity came knocking in the form of Rui Mattias.

Rui was about as secretive as the island itself.  At the time when we were trying to renovate the zoo (see earlier postings), Maputo was the poorest city in the world.  Civil war was raging, and conditions were precarious.  Amidst all this, Rui was living like a king.  How he did it, and why he chose to befriend me, remains a mystery.

Rui had the means, and I had the obsession.  I eventually managed to convince him that the war would be keeping the authorities way too busy to be keeping an eye on a deserted island.  It was before the advent of mobile phones, but Rui had a radio telephone in his new Range Rover.

Within an hour of contacting his pilot, we were buzzing the island with his King Air, looking for any sign of human presence.  There was no sign of present habitation, and the sight of ruins and half submerged gun emplacements got us really fired up.

Another hour later we were on his boat, heading for the island.  From what we could see from the air, the shore on the seaward side had been eroded to the extent that some gun emplacements were semi-submerged, and concrete pillboxes had been undermined and had rolled out into the sea.
Dropping anchor on the leeward side we started exploring the extensive ruins - what appeared to have been army barracks, and a jail.  Definitely a jail, and a pretty horrible one at that.  The cells were windowless 1 x 2 metre cubicles behind serious bars. The roofs being long-gone, all the floors were covered in a foot of stinking water.  We did not linger.

The naval guns were monstrous.  The great rusted hulks resembled Saddam Hussein's gigantic cannon.
The emplacements had huge steel doors at the back, mostly buried in sand.  I found one that appeared to be ever so slightly ajar, and started digging.

What I found nearly gave me a heart attack.

 

 

                                                                                                                                          

 
Thousands upon thousands of them, all oozing some gooey stuff.  All of this, unguarded, in a country in the middle of a fifteen year civil war!  I was convinced that the stuff was highly unstable and a loud noise might set it off, blowing the island and half the city out of existence.

Time to get out smartly.  The skipper had remained on the boat, so only Rui and I knew about this.  We decided to keep it that way.
I'm sure the skipper was convinced we had seen the devil himself on the island, but he never enquired about the frantic departure.

Now that the story is out after more than 20 years, I cannot help but wonder if there is someone out there who would care to follow it up.  Maybe my good friend Irma Green might be tempted to send over an investigative journalist?  Someone with a big, brass pair....

More promised pictures.

Maputo Crocodiles: Confirmation that the first batch of drugs was not working.

Determining the sex of a croc.

The baby crocodiles in their new home.

 

 

Another lion arrives at the Sperm Bank.

Administering general anaesthetic.

Refer back to older posts for more info.

The buffalo that refused to die.

Once in a while there are days that start out as fairly predictable and straight-forward, and end up turning into sweaty nightmares.
This was one of those.  It happened near the Albasini Ruins in the Kruger National Park.

Joao Albasini was probably the first white settler in the inhospitable Eastern Lowveld wilderness, known today as the Kruger National Park.  In the 19th century he established a permanent trading post on the banks of a small spruit, despite the dangers of malaria and tsetse flies.  The Albasini Ruins is one of the few places in the Park where tourists are allowed to get out of their vehicles in order to view the site.  An armed ranger is present at all times.

My friend Tom Yssel (then regional ranger of the Pretotiuslop division) phoned me one evening to ask if I would care to accompany him the next day to sort out what appeared to be a wounded buffalo.  This happened from time to time whenever a problem animal was in a particularly difficult area.  The dense reed beds of the Albasini spruit definitely qualified as such, especially during a wet summer.  I exalted in these adrenalin-high excursions and my wife loathed them - she hates lies, even little white ones.  She would have to re-schedule the next day's appointments, telling the patients that the good Doctor is unwell (kidney stone, migraine, flu etc.) and would therefore not be available for the day. She was also not very keen on me traipsing off into the tall grass with Tom, to "do all sorts of stupid things".  Fortunately she never really understood half of it.

At first light we were at Albasini, accompanied by Tom's tracker and a junior ranger.  The buffalo had been seen frequenting the dense reeds in the vicinity, and had been growing more belligerent by the day.  The previous day it had treed all three rangers on a bicycle patrol.  Nobody was sure if it had been injured or was just being plain aggressive.  Either way, it posed a serious threat to tourists.

Fresh tracks led straight into the dense reeds.  Going in on foot would be tantamount to suicide, as visibility was down to less than two yards.  Tom had his trusty canon (.458 Winchester Magnum) and I was armed with an R1 assault rifle.  The 7.62mm calibre is a little on the light side for buffalo, but on the upside you can have twenty tries in half as many seconds.  Precision shooting might not be on the menu, and with Tom's artillery piece as backup the R1 was good for the job.

The tracker got onto the bulbar, and with the junior ranger driving, Tom and I got on the back of the truck.
We would nose the truck into the reeds and creep as far as we could, looking for freshly trodden reeds.  Every time we found some, we would back up and re-enter the reeds hundred yards further down stream.
By about 10 am there was no indication that the buffalo had gone past our 'inspection line' and there was no sign that it had exited the reeds by climbing the steep opposite bank.  Now we were fairly certain that it was somewhere in an area spanning 100 x 50 yards.  Not that it really meant a damn thing, because the reeds were up to eight feet high, and as thick as the hair on a hound.
Plan B:  We would cut the area into 20 yard strips with the truck.  There would be no other option but for Tom to try for a spine shot, and I would follow up with the R1. 
On our second entry a tornado erupted in the reeds right in front of the vehicle.  The buff was heading further down stream at speed, offering only glimpses of its broad back.  Tom fired, and I followed up with a couple of double-taps but the buff just kept going.
Back to the old procedure, this time finding trampled reeds with lots of blood on them.  Every now and again we would catch fleeting glimpses of the black locomotive and pump streams of lead at it, to no avail.  By then we were beginning to hope it would succumb to lead poisoning.

We were a couple of miles away from Albasini by 3pm and flagging a bit in the heat.  The buffalo was still going strong when we came to a tourist road.  The reeds were a little sparser here.  With no blood on the road, we concluded that the animal was holed up in a small clump of reeds next to the road.  Due to the water we couldn't get closer than 15 yards with the vehicle.  We disembarked and tentatively walked a few yards.  In the stream we sank into the coarse sand up to our knees.  We re-assessed the situation.  Going in on foot was not an option and we decided to back up and approach from the opposite side.

Both Tom and I had 9mm Parabellums with extended magazines as standard equipment.  I drew mine and emptied the 20-shot clip into the reeds, probably out of frustration.  No movement.

We backed up, and as we crossed the small bridge, the clump of reeds exploded and the buffalo stormed across the road behind us.  He had a clear 30 yards to go, and we gave him the bad news big-time.  I suspect the Toyota sounded like an Apache Longbow attack helicopter.  The buff kept going and disappeared into another clump of reeds.
"No way", Tom said.  Well, something like that, but rather more spicy.
Some ten yards in there was a solid 'thump' and the reeds stopped moving.  We looked at each other.  "Yeah", Tom said and we disembarked once more.
Midway through reloading, the buffalo grunted, and we could hear its laboured breathing.  The reloading became rather feverish.  We eyed the thicket, but nothing happened.  Tom shrugged, took aim at the point from which the breathing emanated, and started emptying his magazine.  So did I. 
In the silence following the thunder the buffalo grunted and kept on breathing.
"No way", Tom said.  We reloaded and repeated the fusillade.
The buff grunted.
We reloaded once again and decided we had no option - this is it.  We went in, me on my knees and Tom upright directly behind me.  I would push the reeds aside with the muzzle of my rifle, with Tom ready to shoot.  Then a few inches forward, and he would push the reeds aside with me ready to fire.
Dead ahead the buffalo was still breathing audibly, and grunting from time to time.
This was sweaty work, and we were pumping adrenaline big-time.
With one last sweep we were right on top of the buffalo, close enough to touch.
Mortally wounded, it had fallen into the streambed behind a three foot bank.  Both the bank and the uppermost six inches of the animal were shot to pieces.  We felt very, very sorry for the animal as we administered the necessary.  We plonked down on our backsides next to the animal. "F*** me", we said in unison.  It had stopped breathing.  At last.
The tracker, standing on top of the buffalo

When skinning the buffalo that night, we found three 9mm bullets embedded just beneath the skin.  Why on earth it didn't charge at that stage remains an open question.  We were extremely vulnerable at that point.

 Maybe my good wife had a point....

Scorpion stings Monica.

The fiery little devil......

My wife Monica was re-organising clothing cupboards in the bedroom while I was pottering in the garden late yesterday.

Suddenly she let out a scream the volume of which warranted at least a very large snake in the bedroom.  I dropped everything and ran.  So did she.  We met in the conservatory, with her screaming hysterically "this spider has just bitten me!"  On the front of her dress was this nasty yellow scorpion, looking pretty aggressive.

Under normal circumstances I don't kill wildlife, but these weren't normal circumstances.  I slapped it off her and converted it to a Bushman rock painting on the quarry tiles.  Monica was in hysterics, holding her arm and screaming with shock and pain.

The fact that the scorpion had small pinchers and a thick tail wasn't good news at all.  These little buggers are dangerous and pack a very nasty sting.

Administering anti-venom is only contemplated in infants and frail geriatrics.  A liberal dash of Voltaren gel, systemic anti-histamine and some pain killers did the trick.
And, of course, lots of TLC.

World-wide some 800 people are killed by scorpions annually.
In the Western Cape scorpions of the genus Parabutus are the worst, and as far as my limited knowledge goes this one belonged to the genus Uroplectes.  A little better, but bad news all the same.

Jip, Africa sure isn't for sissies.

On Buffaloes and Poachers - Part One.

The easy one

During an early morning drive we spotted a buffalo with a cable snare around its chest.  The moment I stopped it took off like a rocket.  Fortunately it was early spring and the veld in the Pretoriuskop area resembled the fairway on a golf course.  This enabled me to give chase with the vehicle, and after a pretty wild ride I managed to draw parallel to the fleeing animal.  Five rapid shots from Tom's R1 sent it ploughing into the wet soil.  This was immediately followed up with two point-blank brain shots, as double-dead buffaloes have less of a tendency to get up and create havoc.

With ringing ears I congratulated Tom on excellent shooting - a moving target from a bouncing vehicle, with a calibre  far too light for the job (7.62), and the buff went down in about four seconds flat.
  
Closer inspection revealed that the cable was in the process of working its way into the sub dermal tissue and a large sack of puss had already formed between the front legs.

Bloody poachers.

Promised pictures - Lion at the Sperm Bank.

The bait

The invitation to Donate

Tying the "thank you" knot - see earlier posting about The Lion at the sperm Bank.

Todays victim: Cape Cobra.

Same sound, same fatal result.
Today the neighbour's electric wires killed a juvenile Cape Cobra.

Ironically, the snake seems to have been killed on its way out of the yard.
Some deterrent.
We'll have to talk.

Shocking Death of a Tortoise in Yzer.

At last! Settled down in our new home in Yzerfontein on the Cape West Coast, and back on the air.

Sadly, tragedy struck in our very first week here. 

Some background info about our little resort town:
Yzerfontein is situated in a large Nature Conservation area.  Unfortunately there's no big game, but wild ostriches and Cape grysbok wandering through town is a common sight.  There has even been a mongoose sniffing around on my lawn in broad daylight, and the birdlife is awesome.
And then of course, true to Africa, there's the snakes.  Lots of them.

There's only about a thousand permanent residents in town, and at least half the properties are holiday homes and as such are unoccupied most of the time.  Such is the house next to me.  The owner, apparently, is petrified of snakes.  He had three strands of electric fencing installed over the width of the security gate in his driveway.  The wires are about half an inch (1.25 cm) off the ground, and are meant to keep snakes out (??!!).  First time I've ever heard of something like that in all my years.  If a snake wants to get in, it will get in somewhere else.  What's the point of living in a conservancy, then?
The problem I have with the man's system is that there is a five inch (13cm) gap between his driveway and the bottom edge of the security gate.

A couple of days ago, we were working ourselves to a standstill unpacking cartons, hanging pictures and doing the things people do when moving in.  Just before dusk I sauntered out onto the lawn, and immediately heard the unpleasant rhythmic "crack, crack, crack" of  an electric fence short-circuiting.

What I found was a heart-breaking sight - with its shell scorched black, the dead turtle was still on the wires, and blue sparks were continuously snapping at it.  It had probably been there for hours, and was truly cooked.  I couldn't reach it, and pushed it off the wires with a broomstick.  Needless to say, its still there, and beginning to smell to high heaven.

It should be a fairly simple matter to pop rivet a strip of conveyor belting to the bottom of the security gate to stop this from ever happening again. 
Definitely to be strongly suggested to the owner at his next visit.

Update: Tom and the crocodile 30 years on.

Tom is living happily in the USA and it seems he is now completely pain free for the first time, thirty years after the attack.  It did, however, require another round of serious surgery.

Tom's new titanium knee.

Like always, there is forever something new to learn from this unique friend of mine:

Some twelve years ago he resigned as senior ranger in the Kruger National Park and emigrated to the USA.  People who knew him as well as I do were unanimous in their predictions that he would soon be back in Africa.  All of us were under the impression that anyone with such a passion for nature and the wild outdoors cannot survive anywhere else but on this dark continent.

We were all wrong.

I followed suit two years later, and in my ten years in the UK there was not a single day I did not dream of Africa.  I became totally obsessed - it was the most boring ten years of my life.  I simply had to come back or be institutionalised.

Only now do I realise that it depends on where you go and what you do. 

Tom has done a remarkable job of crossing the Rubicon.  I'm sure his love for lions, buffalo and elephant will never wane, but he has managed to immerse himself with great gusto in a different frame of mind concerning nature.
He has spent eight years doing research on the highly endangered Carson Wandering Skipper, and he does freelance work for both the California Department of Fish and Game, and the Nevada Dept. of Fish and Wildlife

Carson Wandering Skipper

He is also deeply involved in the rehabilitation of old military training areas and restoring large tracts of land to its former natural state.  Where there used to be unexploded ordnance and other nasty stuff, there are now bears, deer and butterflies.
It just goes to show - there is much, much more to nature than just the big and dangerous stuff we're all so keen on.

I am happy to note he is still creating the most awesome wildlife sculptures - do check it out on
www.thomasysselart.com.

If any of my friends in the USA should wander into Cabela's in Reno, you might get to meet the legend himself in the Gun Library.  Trust Yssel to do some freelancing in a place where he can fondle the occasional Greener, Rigby, Holland&Holland, Nitro Express and other old friends.  Not that he would ever find a use for them again, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least if he has acquired a considerable collection by now.

With all that said and done I still cannot help but sometimes wonder......
There is no stronger bond of friendship and trust than stepping into the dense reeds together, in pursuit of a buffalo wounded by poachers.
Reminds me of the old 1969 hit song by Peter Sarsted "where do you go to....when you're alone in your bed...."        Could it be Africa?

  

   

Lion in my face - the bad breath nightmares are made of.

Lion cubs are cute, cuddly little things.

Once teenagers, they should be handled with caution.

All lions in the wild are cautious of man by nature, and would normally go to great lengths to avoid contact.  This doesn't mean you should push your luck - in the bush, nothing is ever considered a certainty.

When lions turn into confirmed man-eaters, however, it becomes  a whole new ball game.  Different rules, different outcomes.....

My good friend Tom Yssel (see Tom and the crocodile in earlier posting) had resigned from his post as senior ranger in the Kruger National Park after more than 20 years.  At the time he was sectional ranger in the Malelane division, and he lived alone in a big house in the middle of the wilderness.
As he was going to leave for the USA on a Saturday, some friends and I impulsively decided on the Thursday to pay him a farewell visit that evening.
After work we headed into the Park, coolers heavily laden with steaks and beer.

The huge yard was enclosed by a sturdy 10 foot high diamond mesh fence, topped by six strands of electrified fencing.  The fence was angled outwards to further discourage monkeys and baboons.

At sunset we built a huge lead wood fire in the braai corner, and we tucked in to the beer with gusto.
It was a warm evening with a full moon and no wind, and a truly great time was had by all.

Sometime before midnight I decided to call it a day, even though the party was still in full swing.  Tom warned me that our regular habit of bedding down in the open bush was no longer an option, as some of the lions in the area had started killing and eating illegal immigrants trying to enter the country from neighbouring Mozambique through the Park (see earlier posting).  He told me to pick any bed in the house, which I declined.  When in the bush, I need to be outside.

So I compromised by rolling out my sleeping bag in the furthest corner of the yard, between a dense shrub and the fence.  Fortunately it was a hot night, and I was sleeping on top of my sleeping bag, and not zipped up in it.

Despite the raucous noise around the fire, I soon drifted off with my one forearm leaning against the fence.

In deep sleep my subconscious mind screamed at me that there was a lion breathing in my face.

In my years as a practicing dentist I've come across some serious cases of halitosis.  Some even memorable.  None, however, gets imprinted as profoundly as that of a lion close-up.  This is probably the result of a long-dormant gene from our primitive ancestors.  One whiff, and you'll know. I knew instantly - I've worked with lions before.

When I opened my eyes I was staring right into the dilated pupils of a huge male over a distance of less than 18 inches.  Eye contact is not a good idea.

Time stood still, but everything probably happened in less than two seconds.

The lion lunged at me with a tremendous roar, kicking sand into my face.  In my mind the fence did not exist.  In retrospect I'm pretty sure I must have levitated - one instant I was supine, the next I was five feet off the ground, getting my feet under me and under full acceleration while still airborne.

When I skidded to a stop next to the fire, my dusty arrival was met with stunned silence. The scene looked like a still photograph. Nobody was looking at me - they were all staring at the distant corner, glasses and bottles frozen halfway to open mouths.
Smithy (Dr. E.Smith, best GP ever) broke the silence with a drawn out "Whaaaat the f...........ck?"
Then everyone joined in.
Once it was established that there was neither harm nor danger, the wisecracks started.
A tall brandy was pushed into my hand, and they all exalted in their own wit. Their observations, remarks and advice for future reference had no bounds.  After a while I grew rather weary of their hilarity and headed back to my sleeping bag under loud (albeit cynical) applause.  I knew that if I headed into the house, I would never hear the end of it.

After all, lightning doesn't strike in the same place twice.  Or does it?

Needless to say, I didn't dare close my eyes for an instant for the rest of the night. 

The Ethics of Hunting.

A sport or a killing spree?

Hunting is as old as life itself.  It is an integral part of daily life on our little green planet.  Spiders hunt, sharks hunt, lions hunt - all for sustenance.
There was a time when man, too, had to hunt to stay alive and procreate. 

But that was a long time ago.  We are now the apex predator, comfortably ensconced at the very top of the food chain.  We can now let the others do the killing for us, and ignore the fact that for every morsel of meat or fish on our plate, something had to die somewhere.  Ever visited an abattoir?  Don't be fooled - there is no such thing as 'humane killing'.  Killing is killing and death is death, but it is the only way to get the bacon on the table.

With that said and done, the question remains:  Why is it that there are still millions of keen hunters out there, raring to go?  Why do they spend fortunes on rifles, bows, reels and tons of other equipment and then hike to snow covered mountain tops and bug-infested bush under sometimes extremely averse conditions?  Just for the sake of killing something?

I don't think so.  In my humble opinion they are (most of them, anyway) the true lovers of nature and the wild outdoors.  What ends up on the plate or in the trophy room is a bonus - the best part is the hunting, not the killing.  The expensive equipment serves as justification for extended sojourns to where the air is clean and the water clear.  Even the silence out there is clean and clear.

For the record:  I am not a hunter.  Yes, I have killed, but for different reasons.  Never liked it, but I'm a realist.

The single most important word I can link to hunting is sustainability. 

Hunt in such a way that your children and grandchildren can, in the distant future, enjoy the same privilege.

Mozambique cobra vs Dad

The Mozambique spitting cobra - a snake to be reckoned with.

 

In the blue corner: Naja mossambica, considered one of the most dangerous snakes in Africa. It can spit its venom over a distance of up to 3 metres (10 feet) with remarkable accuracy. The bite leads to severe tissue destruction and can be fatal.  

 

In the red corner: My late Dad (Oom KP). He was a true gentleman, and practically impossible to provoke. Practically.

 

Spectators: Me (about 10 years old) and my mother.

 

It was a hot summer evening in the Lowveld, and we were relaxing in the lounge. The concertina-type doors to the veranda were wide open allowing us to hear the distant rumble of an approaching storm, and marvel at the lightning flashing in the boiling cumulus clouds.  Every section of the folding door had a brass rod from floor to ceiling, serving as hinge/locking device. My dad sauntered out to the veranda for a better view.

 

Unnoticed by us a large Mfezi (local Shangaan name for the snake) had made itself comfortable on one of the handles of the folding door, at about chest level. As my dad walked past, the snake let fly with a squirt and hit him in both eyes. 

 

Pandemonium.

 

Mom made him lie on his back on the kitchen floor and washed out both eyes with copious amounts of milk. This was the old 'Boer' emergency treatment prior to seeking medical help.

It did help to the extent that he could open his eyes and peer around myopically, in severe pain.  That was the only time in my whole life I ever heard my dad swear. He got up and stormed out the back door, digging in his pants pocket for his folding knife. He cut a six foot length off the hosepipe and headed straight back to the veranda again. Mom's protestations fell on deaf ears.

 

To this day I still wonder if my dad was that quick, or just that lucky. He grabbed the snake by the tail and jerked it down to the floor.  It was still in the process of rearing up and flattening its hood when the hosepipe came whistling down.

 

By the time he stopped, the snake resembled a Bushman rock drawing of some as yet undiscovered continent.  Flattest snake I've ever seen.

 

He then consented to being taken to hospital, where he was successfully treated.

 

My mom refrained from lamenting the short hosepipe.

 

The buffalo and the tail rotor

A bird-hit on the tail rotor is one thing....

The Cape buffalo is one mean animal.
They tend to look at you as if you owe them money.

They have no qualms about collecting, either.

Dead buffaloes are famous for getting up and wreaking havoc. Some hunters say all buffaloes are born sick, and every time you hit it, it gets a little healthier.

Many years ago buffalo, like elephant, were regularly culled in the Kruger National Park. Some thirty animals would be separated from the herd. This was accomplished by means of some very hair-raising aerobatics with a Bell Jetranger helicopter.
The door behind the pilot having been removed, the ranger would hang halfway out of the chopper, darting the animals with an overdose of Scoline. That was before the days of modern dart guns. A modified double barrelled shotgun was used, the darts propelled by .22 blanks. Extreme skill was required from both the shooter and the pilot to put down thirty buffalo in an area accessible to the ground crew, and in as small an area as possible. Infinitely more hectic (and dangerous) than culling elephant.

On this particular day everything went according to plan, and between Piet Otto (pilot) and Andrew Hofmeyer (ranger) they did a splendid job.

Piet put the chopper down in a nearby clearing while the ground crew moved in, Eric Wood administering the necessary coup de grace where indicated.  Andrew had gotten out and was standing with his back to the action, busily picking up the .22 casings strewn throughout the helicopter. The engine was still running, as it takes a couple of minutes for the turbo to cool sufficiently to shut down.

A 'dead' buffalo suddenly jumped up and came charging directly at the blissfully unaware Andrew.  Eric could not shoot for fear of hitting either Piet or Andrew. Piet still had his earphones on, and Andrew couldn't hear the shouting above the din. Andrew interpreted the warning shots as Eric doing his job. The buffalo was closing fast, and nobody could do anything about it.

It was one of those moments where time stood still and everyone stopped breathing.

At the very last moment before impact, the buffalo seemed to decide that the spinning tail rotor would be a more worthy adversary than Andrew's relaxed backside, and it changed course.

The damage to the helicopter was horrendous and very, very expensive.

That was the last time the chopper was allowed to land without the 'all clear' from Eric.

Thieving seal and the wrath of fox terriers

Seals stealing meals.

Early this morning I came across some local fishermen toiling with their net. Loud cursing and swearing warranted a closer look.

The cause of their agitation were three seals that had slipped over the floats, and were having a jolly good time inside the net. A considerable number of seagulls were also in attendance, squabbling over the remains of the fish being decimated.

The fishermen gave it their best, trying to get the net in while there was still some of their catch (and some of their net) left. They were extremely vocal about it, and I heard words I haven't heard in a long time. And some brand new words.

When the net reached the shallows, two of the seals once again slipped over the floats and headed for deeper water.  The third one left it too late, and got entangled in the net, broadening the vocabulary even further.

 

Mammals that catch free-swimming fish have extremely sharp teeth and lightning reflexes. Seals are particularly well equipped in this respect.

The seal resembled a bride with an attitude, and unveiling this bride was going to take some nifty footwork and nimble fingers.

I wish I had brought my video camera instead - this dance macabre was really something to behold. By now a crowd had gathered, and there was no shortage of advice shouted from a safe distance. Loudest of all were two fox terriers, making no bones about their intention to tear this beast apart. From a safe distance.

The seal was eventually freed and started lumbering towards the surf under loud applause. The foxies saw this as the cue to launch their vicious attack. Despite the seal's slow progress over the beach, the terriers seemed to be unable to quite catch up. Their body language said they were doing their best.

Once the water was deep enough for the seal to get a grip on its environment, it speeded up considerably. So did the fox terriers, making sure they didn't close the gap completely.

 

Having seen the seal off, the strutting and prancing was hilarious. They had saved the crowd, and that was one lucky, lucky seal.

Novels by the same author:
Poacher
Cheetah in the rain
Fighting AIDS
Available on Amazon, Kobo, Apple, Sony etc.

Lions feasting on illegal immigrants

Mother Nature can sometimes be a cruel old bitch....

 

The Kruger National Park comprises an area of some 20 000 square Km.  At its narrowest point it is  50 Km (31mi) wide, and it shares the whole of its eastern border (360 Km) with the neighbouring country of Mozambique.  In the days when the Kaftan fence (a lethal electrified fence between S.A. and Mozambique ) was still on full power, the Kruger Park was the only viable option for illegal immigrants. For fear of electrocuting animals, the fence stopped at the southern border of the Park, to be replaced by very heavy-duty game fencing for the next 360 Km.  The reasoning behind the willingness to kill illegals and spare the wildlife remains open to question.

The only risks in crossing this fence were being cut by the razor blade coils, and receiving a very unpleasant jolt from the non-lethal electric strands.  Once inside the park there were, of course, some other risks.

The modus operandi was to cross the fence at first light and hope to make it to the western fence before darkness without being spotted, trampled, eaten, gored etc.

Early one morning a group of five illegal immigrants did just that.  Unfortunately they chose a cloudy day and, unable to navigate by the sun, got hopelessly lost.

Unbeknown to them they were less than thirty yards from a major tourist road when they encountered a pride of lions at dusk.  Not that it would have been of any help, because tourists are confined to the rest camps from dusk till dawn.

The lions singled out one man and brought him down with ease.  There were no trees of any real substance in the vicinity, and the remaining four scrambled up the nearest tree which was only about four metres high.

By the time the pride had consumed their friend it was fully dark, and they couldn’t see the pride sauntering over to their tree, but they could surely hear them. One of the lions scrambled up the trunk and hooked another illegal to the ground.  Contrary to popular belief, lions can climb trees to a certain extent.  They don’t like to, but they can if they have to.

The man was killed and consumed directly beneath his comrades, who were desperately trying to get out of reach on the thinner branches.

All to no avail.  During the course of what must have been a very, very long night to the sole survivor the lions would finish one off and rake down another screaming victim.

By the time the first tourists spotted the lone man gibbering in the tree, the sated lions were long gone, and the hyenas and jackals had moved in, squabbling over the remains.

I have no idea what eventually happened to the man after deportation, but I’m sure that, even after all these years, he still wakes up screaming.

I know;  I’ve been there.  Years after this incident I was also targeted as a meal.  Words are inadequate to describe the feeling – but that’s another story for another time.

 

By the same author:

The Sam Jenkins trilogy:  Poacher,    Cheetah in the Rain,   Fighting AIDS
Available on Amazon, Apple, Sony, Kobo Smashwords etc. 

 

 

Leopard vs Mother goose and chicks

This is why I'm bosbedonderd (bush crazy)

Before the bush camp was built in the Olifants River gorge in the Kruger National Park, we used to go tiger fishing there.  Virgin waters, virgin fish….

Tiger fish in rivers are sleeker and faster than those lazing around in dams and reservoirs.  The water in the gorge was wild, and so were the tigers.

First light found us already off the beaten track (= public roads), far into the wilderness.

As we forded a shallow stream on the firebreak we spotted what seemed to be a severely injured Egyptian goose some ten yards up the road. She was honking loudly, could barely walk, and was dragging one outstretched wing in the dust.  The next moment Nick de Beer, our host, touched my arm and whispered:  “Stop. Watch this”, pointing upstream.

In a deeper pool right next to the firebreak, eight tiny goslings resembling furry golf balls were silently swimming in circles under the overhang of a clump of reeds.

The leopard was just suddenly there, streaking up the road and closing in on the goose.  It simply materialised from nowhere; an uncanny leopard trick.  Broadcasting panic at peak volume the goose was flapping up the road.  Unable to take off, the goose barely managed to stay out of the leopard’s reach.  She would lift off and fly a short distance only to come crashing to the ground again.  The leopard redoubled its efforts with us following at a distance. 

This went on for a couple of hundred yards, when the leopard started tiring and slowing down.  So did the goose.  At one point the leopard sat down looking rather perplexed, the goose still some ten yards ahead of it.  The goose was now really struggling, trying to drag itself along with great effort.  This made the leopard perk up and start trotting towards the bird again.  With utmost effort the goose maintained the gap at a steady ten yards.   After a while the leopard sat down again panting, and the scenario repeated itself.

This scene kept on repeating itself until we were about a Kilometre up the firebreak.  Suddenly the goose made a miraculous recovery of Biblical proportions.  She took off smoothly with loud, triumphant honking and hissing, gained altitude, and circled back towards the now distant stream.

Her perfect albeit dangerous performance warranted a standing ovation.  It was mother love at its best.

If only leopards could talk..... Its body language was screaming obscenities.


Google Leon Mare's kindle books on Amazon.com. Also available on Kobo, Sony, Apple etc.

Darting an elephant at night - on foot. Stupid.

  

 The Dumbest Move Ever.

 

In the fervency of youth, one sometimes does things of which one would later say “it
seemed a good idea at the time.”  This was one of those.  Big-time.

 Hoepel, Cobus’ veterinary technician (you’ve met both of them in previous postings – scroll down), was about to get married.  As is the custom in South Africa, a bachelors party was laid on for Hoepel.  The venue for this would be the dry riverbed of the Watinsaka spruit, some five kilometres from Skukuza, the main rest camp in the Kruger National Park.

 At the time Tom Yssel was the chief game ranger of the Pretoriuskop division in the

Park.  He was still recovering from major surgery following a crocodile attack which
nearly cost him his leg and his life (see earlier posting). With the long steel shafts of a Hoffman apparatus protruding on either side of his thigh and lower leg he resembled an ancient TV antenna, and could obviously not drive himself.  He couldn’t wear trousers either, and shuffled around on his crutches dressed in an old grey dust coat.  The attire, however, would be suitable for a bachelors party.

 I picked him up early on the Saturday morning, en route to Skukuza.  On the backseat

of my Gelandewagen was my customary giant coolbox, filled with beer and crushed
ice.

 In his condition Tom couldn’t get out to patrol his division of some 1000 square

Kilometres, so we used the opportunity to travel to Skukuza via the numerous fire
breaks in his division, checking up on the more remote watering points, windmills etc.

 We arrived at Cobus’ house in the staff village by about mid-afternoon.  A sense of

excited anticipation prevailed – the upcoming event was the talk of the ‘town’.  Living in the staff village at Skukuza could at times be a little dreary and boring.  A party was always a big event, even more so a bachelors party.

 In retrospect I sometimes wonder if the fact that everybody was pumped-up and

excited played a role in making us do what we did.  The excitement was contagious.

 Late afternoon Cobus got a call from Reception in Skukuza – a tourist had just

reported an elephant with a wire snare on the Lower Sabi road, some ten kilometres
from the rest camp.

 “I’ve been looking for that elephant since Tuesday,” Cobus said.  “Let’s go.”

“Forget it,” Tom said, “it’s too late in the day – you’ll never get the chopper in the air
in time.”
“Then we do it on foot.”
“Are you crazy?  You can’t do that.”
“’Course I can,” said Cobus, grabbing his lab keys and heading for the vehicle.  “You
coming?”
“I’m in,” I said and joined him.  Tom was having a hard time keeping up, and was
protesting all the way.
“Are you out of your mind?” Tom was pretty hot under the collar by now.  “Besides, it’ll be dark in an hour.”
“Exactly.  By morning that elephant will be twenty clicks away – he was near
Crocodile bridge on Tuesday.  The snare hasn’t slowed him down much.”

 At the veterinary lab Cobus hastily checked his muti box and grabbed a dart gun.

“You’re going to get yourselves killed,” Tom said.
Cobus handed him a .458 elephant gun from the safe.  “You’re the ranger – cover our
asses.”
Tom was furious, sputtering indignantly.  “I’m a bloody cripple on crutches!  How do
you expect me to handle the bloody rifle?  Get someone else who can shoot.”
“You’ll manage.  We’re running out of time,” Cobus said and headed out.

 The argument was still raging by the time we came across two tourist vehicles parked

on the road, hazard lights flashing.  They pointed out the direction in which the
elephant had disappeared.  By now the rest camp gates had closed, and tourist were
confined to the camps for the night.  Cobus suggested our tourists get to Skukuza
immediately – they should tell the guard at the gate what had transpired – he would
sort things out in the morning.

 It was dusk by the time Cobus had prepared a dart, and the two of us trotted off into

the bush, armed with the dart gun and a torch.  Tom’s Hoffman apparatus and
crutches got tangled up in a thicket within the first ten yards.  In the distance we could
still hear him ranting.

 The Lower Sabi road runs parallel to the Sabi river, at this point, about half a kilometre distant.  That was the direction in which the elephant had last been seen to be heading.  We knew he couldn’t be far, so we proceeded with caution.

 Then, in the fast fading light we could barely make out the animal, about forty yards ahead of us.  The wind was strongly in our favour, and we started stalking the animal.  By now it was getting too dark to be sure of our footing, and he must have become aware of us when we were fifteen yards away.  He turned and stared in our direction myopically.

 It was getting so dark that we had to crouch down to see his silhouette clearly.  An

elephant cannot be darted with a frontal shot, so we crept off to our left.  We crouched
down again, only to find that the elephant had turned with us, and Cobus was still
stuck with a frontal shot.  I motioned to him that I would veer further to the left, and if
the elephant turned with me, he could get his shot in.

 When the dart gun popped, I froze.  My bravado suddenly deserted me – this had

definitely been a dumb move.  At that stage sanity returned and washed over me like a
gigantic arctic wave.

 I knew the elephant could not smell us, and it could not see us.  As long as we

remained motionless it could not hear us either.  It could, however, take up to seven minutes to go down.

 The animal now had two choices.  It could come looking for the source of the sudden

burning pain in its butt, find us in the process and reduce us to something with the
consistency of fish paste.  Or it could run.

 Fortunately it chose the latter.

 This left us with a further dilemma.  If we were not present when it finally went

down, we had no hope of finding it in the darkness.  We did not have two choices.  At
top speed we raced off into the darkness, following the sound of breaking trees and branches.  I could not switch on the torch, as this would alert him to our presence.

 It was the toughest hundred and fifty yards I have ever run in my life.  A fleeing

elephant moves fast.  We had to do likewise, in the bush in pitch-black darkness.  We
ran holding our hands in front of our faces and trying to protect our eyes, while thorns
and branches whipped at us.  Both Cobus and I went down several times.

 Suddenly all was quiet ahead of us.  With the racket we were making, this fact didn’t

penetrate immediately.  By the time we skidded to a halt, the elephant could be
anywhere.  We would have liked to be silent, but we were panting like police dogs. 
We went down on our haunches to scan for a silhouette.  Before we could spot it, the
elephant went down with a rumble and a crash, not ten yards from us.

 After a moment of silence Cobus let out a wheezy “Jeeeezzzz…!”

“Yeah,” I said, “jeeezzzz.  Now what?”

We inspected the wound.  Fortunately it was a wire snare and not a cable, and the elephant had managed to break the wire before it had done too much damage. It had cut through the skin and was embedded about an inch into the subdermal tissue.  Infection had set in, and the leg was stinking to high heaven.

 We needed the muti box pronto – we still had a party to go to.  Once again, we had only one option.  Cobus would return to the vehicle with the torch to fetch his stuff.  I would wait by the elephant to guide him back – otherwise he would never find it again in the dark.  Cobus headed off to the road, and I watched the light of the torch disappear through the bush.  I climbed on top of the elephant and sat there listening to the deafening silence, alone in the darkness.

 I wasn’t alone for long.  All around me there were suddenly things moving around in the bush.  A hyena giggled questioningly.  It dawned on me that the elephant, laying down a trail of blood and pus, had probably built up a considerable group of followers over the past couple of days.  They had all been waiting for the moment the elephant would go down, so the feast could begin.  But something strange made them hesitate – part of the elephant was very vocal, reciting Afrikaans poetry at the top of its voice.  If I could sing, I would have.  However, I know a lot of poems, so I treated them to these, interspersed with all sorts of other language.

 To this day I still have nightmares about our headlong run in the darkness.  We must

have scattered dozens of hyenas, and possibly a lion or two thrown in.  Why we hadn’t been taken down remains a mystery.

 It was with great relief that I spotted the torch in the distance.  The decibels at which I

was delivering my repertoire could probably be heard all the way to the road, so
Cobus had no problem in finding me.  We were literally surrounded by hyenas, so we
worked with feverish haste.  We cut out the wire and cleaned and treated the wound,
which proved to be fairly superficial.  After a heavy dose of antibiotics Cobus
administered the antidote.  We waited till the elephant was on its feet, and headed for
the road.

 The elephant was now smelling strongly of bismuth impregnated petroleum paste and

iodine, and we were covered in blood and pus up to our elbows.  The hyenas switched
menus, and started following us, giggling excitedly.  We were swinging the torch
every which way, and made it back to the vehicle in one piece, to find Tom still
ranting.  The opening of the coolbox pacified him somewhat.  When we used the first cold beers to wash our hands and arms, he started ranting again – this time about wasteful sacrilege. The next beers, however, went where they were supposed to.

 The irony of this incident is that it happened during the time that elephant culling was

in full swing in the Kruger Park.  Chances are that our beneficiary promptly ended up as hundreds of tins of canned meat on a shelf somewhere.

 That night we didn’t enjoy the party with as much gusto as we should have – I think we were suffering from adrenaline depletion.

 Dumb but very, very lucky.

 

It did, however, seem like a good idea at the time.

 

Novels by the same author:

The Sam Jenkins trilogy:

Poacher

Cheetah in the rain

Fighting AIDS

Psychological thriller:

Show me a Reason

 

Available on Amazon, Apple, Sony etc.

 

Poacher is currently in the top 1% of the Amazon.com bestseller rankings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The golfer and the lioness

 

 

Golfing with lions – risky stuff…..

 

Sign on the third fairway of the Skukuza Golf Club, Kruger National Park:-

Directly translated (something is always lost in the translation) it says

Antelope – Dead – Hit

Huge – Fright – Stream

Here’s how the little stream got re-baptised:

Frans Laubscher, then chief civil engineer in the Park left his office ‘maybe a little early’ on that fateful Tuesday afternoon.  He was going to play a quick couple of holes on his own in an effort to improve his game.  That late on a Tuesday afternoon the course was deserted.  The Committee had just started their monthly meeting in the clubhouse, but otherwise there was no-one around.

Frans grabbed a couple of clubs from his bag and headed for No. 1.

                                                                                                *

When he teed up on No.3, he noticed a herd of impala grazing halfway down the fairway.  This is a very common sight, and he paid no heed.  His drive was a masterpiece, and when his ball sailed into the herd, they took off at speed, which is par for the course.  Except this time there was a supine impala left lying in the middle of the fairway. 

Thinking he may have stunned it, Frans walked up to the animal only to discover to his dismay that he had actually killed the impala with the golf ball.  He was still pondering this unlikely scenario when there was a threatening roar from the nearby bush.  Frans was an old hand in the Park, and was not unduly worried, as it was still broad daylight.  He got up and started retreating slowly while the roaring increased in ferocity.  Obviously the lion was intent on claiming the kill. 

He had retreated several yards when a lioness exploded from the thicket and charged.  Frans knew that turning his back or even thinking about running would guarantee certain death.  With nerves of steel he froze – the lioness would claim the kill and drag it back into the bush.

That’s what was supposed to happen, but it didn’t.  She cleared the carcass and kept on coming straight at him.  He later remarked that at this stage his frozen state wasn’t due to ‘nerves of steel’.  He was simply unable to move.  He knew that his brand-new Big Bertha driver wasn’t going to impress this lady at all.

The lioness skidded to a halt right in front of him, snarling and showing off her very impressive dentition.  After a stalemate moment Frans took another slow, tiny step backwards.  She allowed him to, and held her ground.  With very slow and careful steps Frans increased the distance.

The lioness seemed to be calming down and he increased his pace slightly.  Once he was well away she broke off and turned away.  Frans increased his pace considerably – he probably would have made a fool of Ben Johnson.

Back at the clubhouse the meeting was in full swing.  Nick de Beer, one of the committee members later told me Frans came flying into the clubhouse without a word, white as a sheet.  He headed straight for the fridge without greeting anyone, gulped down a beer in a single swallow, opened another one and sat down mumbling something along the lines of “sheeeeit…. F**k me…..”

It took a while and another beer before they could get any sense out of him.

This was not normal behaviour (referring not to Frans, but to the lion) so they all got into a vehicle to investigate.

On the fairway they found the dead impala and a few scattered golf clubs.  When they exited the vehicle for a closer inspection, the lion started up again and they wasted no time in getting back into the vehicle.

In the thicket they discovered an irate lioness suckling four new born cubs.

That explained it all.  It also explained why Frans’ game took a serious downswing from that day on,  especially when playing in lion country.

 Novels by Leon Mare

The Sam Jenkins trilogy:        Poacher,      Cheetah in the Rain,       Fighting AIDS

Psychological thriller:            Show me a Reason – the lives and times of Michelle Montagne.

                Available on Amazon, Apple, Sony, Kobo, Barnes&Noble, Smashwords etc.

Poacher is currently in the top 2% on the Amazon.com bestseller list.