Christmas for Everyone

It was Christmas eve at our mountain farm in Kenya. The night was cool and bright as dew and all the stars wide open.  The young moon wandered the sky like a little canoe and down in the forest a wood-dove called purely and slept again.  Now all the lamps in the house had been turned out except mine and the one in my mother’s room where she worked away at things rustling and mysterious.

            Big dog Slasher and I turned away from the night and went into the tiny cabin we shared.  Slasher got into bed without saying his prayers but I knelt down.  It was, after all, the Lord’s birthday and not the time for shirking.

            Our Father who art in heaven... The thatched roof of the cabin was beautifully neat, the grass lying straight and slick on wattle poles, rising to a peak in the centre and fastened with strips of bark.  The walls were neat, too, of horizontal planks overlaying one another.

            Our Father who art in heaven...  And over the bed was a lovely picture of a doe with twin fawns drinking in a river.  It was just a picture torn off an old calendar but tonight, with the lamp low and flickering in the far corner of the room the stream in the picture seemed to glisten and swirl.  I fancied the doe flicked her ears to listen and the fawns stood ready to run.  I listened too.

            From somewhere above us came the thinnest whisper of sound.  Before I could move, down the steps of the wall planks, very cautiously, fist over foot, came a little grey dormouse.

            He stopped, looked across at Slasher snoring in his basket, at the doe and the twins in the picture, and at me.  Nobody moved a whisker.

            He was as round as a butterball, wrapped up in a fuzz of close grey fur.  His bushy tail was long, the hair harsh and not very thick.  He flicked it once to show how it worked.  he had a round little face, a turned-up nose and mouse ears.  Darker shading from his nose to his ears highlighted his silver cheeks.

            After we had stared at each other for so long without moving  I was beginning to wonder if we were real or dreaming, he gripped a plank with his hind feet, head down, shook hands with himself and skipped away into the thatch.

            I nipped across to the house, put some milk and cheese in the soap dish and left it on the cabin shelf, turned out the light and got into bed, too full of wonder and happiness to get any further with the Our Father.

            At half past four the next morning my mother came by lamplight to rouse us children for church.  Christmas slept in the mist.

            The first thing I thought of was the soap dish and jumped out of bed so fast my mother never got over it.  The soap dish was empty and polished.  A corner of the dish had been sampled too.

            Day came on the way to church.  Mist swam among the soft pink featherheads of the grass.  Birds yawned and fluffed and covered their eyes with their wings again.  A little duiker doe stepped carefully through the dew.  Church was nice, too, so early in the morning, with the cattle outside just waking, blowing bubbles of warm breath into the cold dawn.

            Afterwards, we spent the rest of the morning squealing over our presents.  The dogs and cats got theirs, all edible except for new collars for the Sealyhams.

            We all ate stick-jaw toffee to keep our strength up.  It gummed the cats’ whiskers together but they asked for more.  The Sealyhams loved it.  Slasher didn’t but wasn’t going to be left out of anything and carried his piece around for ages between his left canine teeth, very careful not to get his lips on it, until he thought no one was looking.  Then he shoved it under a corner of the carpet and came back licking his lips and saying how delicious it was.

            Only one person had to wait for Christmas until all the house was quiet and dark and everyone asleep.  Then I filled the soap dish with piles of titbits I had saved during the day and put it up on the shelf for the dormouse. 

            In the thick of the night I woke and lay wondering why.  Slasher was asleep, snoring his way through some jerky dream.

            There came a soft, rude noise, followed by a sound like someone slapping about with a very small facecloth.  I moved my hand slowly to my new Christmas torch and shone it onto the shelf above the washstand.

            The little dormouse was sitting in the empty soap dish washing his face.  His stomach was so full the bulge of it lay on his toes.  Slasher woke up as surprised as if he saw his dream come true and I whispered to him to be still.

            The dormouse finished washing, patted his stomach and scratched his bottom, gave the soap dish a long, sad look, flicked his tail and waddled off.

            Later in the night Slasher woke with a terrible stomach ache.  I took him onto my bed and massaged him.  He groaned and rolled his eyes and looked awful.  I had been very careful to take all the turkey bones out of his celebrations but I grew afraid and ran to the house to call my mother.  She helped me give him a dose of milk of magnesia, then she tied a hot water bottle on his stomach with a towel.  Slasher didn’t mind how funny he looked.  He was much comforted and drooled his thanks.

            I had a look at the Sealyhams and they were all right.  The cats were out somewhere, living it up on their own.  The night had turned cold.  Slasher and I got under the blanket and he was soon asleep.

            I lay for a while hoping the dormouse wasn’t in the same trouble.  The last I saw of him his stomach looked full to bursting, his cheek pouches bulging out past his shoulders as he waddled fatly up the wall planks.

            I made a note to get a wee doll’s hot water bottle, just in case we may need it sometime.  The first bird was yawning as I fell asleep.

*****

A Tale of White Horses

Once upon a time long ago, there lived in a coastal town a little boy named Jock.  He was small for his age, thin and not very strong.  The other children seldom allowed him to join their games.  “You’re not big enough to play with us,” they would say.  “You can’t keep up.”  So Jock was a lonely little boy who spent most of his spare time on the beach.

            He loved the sea.  The pounding of the waves seemed to tell him of great strength he could find within himself, and when the sea was calm, he felt at peace being on his own and not having anyone to compete with.

            But even more than the sea Jock loved horses.  Almost every morning he got up early and went down to the beach to watch the race horses exercising on the sands.  He wished one of the riders would call to him, “Hi there! Would you like a go?”  For he knew, he just knew, that the very first time he would get on a horse he would be able to ride with the best of them.  But they didn’t even notice him, alone among the sand dunes.

            One morning Jock went down to the beach to find the tide in high and the waves mightier than he had ever seen them before.  He laughed and ran along the hissing edge of the water, and because it was much too rough for the horses to come down, he ran all the way to the rocks on the point that marked the end of the beach.

            Suddenly he saw, standing by the rocks, a pure white foal.  Jock gasped, for never had he seen such a beautiful animal.  He approached cautiously but the foal wasn’t at all afraid and let Jock come right up to him.  His snowy coat was as fine as spun silk, his curly mane and tail as soft as combed wool, and his eyes, that Jock thought at first were black, were blue and green and dark as the deepest part of the sea.  He and Jock played together until it was time for Jock to go to school.

            After that he often met the foal, but only when the tide was in or the waves were tall.  The foal never came when the sea was calm.  Jock would hold on to the foal’s mane and they would run up and down the beach and in and out of the water.

            All this exercise made Jock’s legs grow strong and soon the other children were asking him to join their teams because he could run so fast.  Jock was happy to do so, but he didn’t tell them about the white foal.  That was his secret.

            One day, after about a year, the foal, who had grown a lot by then, was standing by a tall rock and Jock thought that if he climbed up on that rock he might be able to get on the foal’s back – if the foal didn’t mind.

            The foal didn’t mind at all.  When Jock was safely seated he walked up the beach. And then he cantered, and then he galloped, and Jock, gripping the foal’s mane hard, shouted into the wind, “I can ride!  I can ride!”  Later they dared to join the race horses and had a wonderful time.

            “That’s a nice horse you’ve got there,” said one of the stable boys.  “Is he yours?”

            Jock didn’t know what to say.  If he said Yes, he would be telling a lie.  If he said No, they might accuse him of stealing.  If he said he didn’t know they might think the white foal was a stray and try to catch him.

            “He – he’s my friend,” stammered Jock.

            “Oh, he’s your friend, is he?” said the stable boy.  “Let’s race him.  He’s fast!”

            One morning Mr Mansfield, who owned the racing stables, came down to watch his horses exercising.  Jock and the foal didn’t notice.  When it was time for Jock to go to school he rode the foal back to the rocks, watched him disappear round the point and trudged back up the beach.

            “Hold on there, boy!” called Mr Mansfield, intercepting him.  “What’s your name?  Where do you live?”

            Jock told him, but with a sinking heart.  All that day he had a terrible feeling that he was in for trouble.  In the evening Mr Mansfield came to see Jock’s father.

            “I like that horse of yours,” he said.  “I’ll give you a good offer for him.”

            “I’m sorry,” said Jock’s father.  “There must be some mistake.  I haven’t got a horse!”

            “Well, whose is that horse I see your son riding on the beach?”  asked Mr Mansfield.

            “My son?  Jock?  But Jock doesn’t ride!”

            “He certainly does,” corrected Mr Mansfield.  “Where is he?”

            “In his room dong his homework, I hope,” said Jock’s father.  “Jock!” he called.  Jock came running.

            “What’s this I hear about you riding on the beach?”

            “I was only playing, Dad,” explained Jock quickly.  “I wasn’t doing anything wrong, honestly!”

            “Whose horse is it?” asked his father.

            “I don’t know,” Jock replied.  “He just comes to the beach sometimes and we play together, that’s all.”

            “Playing or not,” interrupted Mr Mansfield, “your son is a fine little rider and I’d like to see him start at my stables as an apprentice.”

            “Why, that’s very good of you,” exclaimed Jock’s father, very relieved to learn that his son was good at something.  “I’ll certainly think about it.”

            “Oh, thank you, Dad!” cried Jock, hugging him.

            “Hold it,” his father smiled.  “I haven’t said yes yet.  It will depend on some improvement in your school work.”

            “Yes, Dad!” Jock laughed, and ran off to finish his homework.

            But the secret of the white foal was out.  Mr Mansfield, after many inquiries, decided the foal was a stray and made plans to catch him.  When Jock heard about this he ran to his father in tears.

            “Dad!” he cried.  “They’re going to catch the foal!  They can’t do that!”

            “Why not?” asked his father.  “He’ll go to Mr Mansfield’s stables and be properly trained.  What’s wrong with that?”

            “He’s a free horse!” Jock tried to explain.  “He’s never had a bit in his mouth.  He’s never known a saddle or a bridle.  He has to stay that way – even if I never see him again!”

            “I just don’t understand you,” grumbled his father.  “You know you can’t have a horse running about without an owner.  Mr Mansfield will look after him properly.  And of course you’ll see him again.  When you start at the stables, as I’ve decided to let you do, he’ll be there for you to take care of.  Now run along.  I have to get to work.”

            When Jock got down to the beach he found heavy nets strung across the sands, men crouched amongst the rocks at the point, others on horseback hiding in the dunes.

            “Don’t come today, white foal,” Jock begged silently.  But the waves were rough and he knew the foal would come – and there he was, trotting round the point looking for his friend.

            The men made ready at the nets, moved out from among the rocks, blocking the way round the point, rode up from the dunes with ropes in their hands.

            “Run away! Run away!” shouted Jock, sprinting down to the white foal and waving his arms.  But the foal thought he was playing a game and frisked about on the sand as pretty as a white cloud in a summer sky.  The men moved closer and closer.

            Jock flung his arms around the foal’s neck. “No!” he screamed.  “You can’t take him! You can’t!”  But the men came on and on.

            Just then, out from the wild waves reared a herd of great white horses, water cascading from their backs, their nostrils flared, their hooves like polished stone.  Quickly they surrounded the foal.  One of the mares touched her soft muzzle to his and they all wheeled and raced back into the sea, the foal with them.  And their manes were spray on the leaping waves, their flashing eyes, deep water.

            Jock collapsed on the sand, sobbing.  His father, who had quietly followed him, sat down beside him and put his arm around his shaking shoulders.

            “Don’t take it so hard, son,” he comforted.  “You were right.  The foal wanted to be free.  Perhaps it’s better this way.”

            “No, Dad, you don’t understand,” whispered Jock.  “He hasn’t drowned.  That’s where he came from, don’t you see.  He’s gone home now.  And I’ll never see him again.”  And he sobbed some more, in both sorrow and relief.

            But Jock did see the white foal again, often, playing with the others in the wind-whipped waves, although they never came on the beach again.  It was too dangerous.

            He went each day after school to work at the stables and in time became a very famous rider, which is why today the small, wiry men and boys who ride race-horses are called ‘jockeys’.

            He never used to whip or spur on the horses he rode.  They always raced their best for him, knowing how much he loved them and their brothers in the sea.

*****

Don't wake the baby

(A talk to schoolchildren)

A year or so ago many of you youngsters were allowed to walk in the town by yourselves for the first time – because you knew something about the rules of the road.  This year you have started wandering in the bush, and you should know some of the rules that apply there too.

            At the moment I don’t want to talk about your safety in the bush, except to say that you shouldn’t go too far at first.  Get to know the nearest part very very well before gradually exploring further.  And until you have learned what is poisonous and what is not, don’t put anything in your mouth!

            I want to talk about how we should behave.

            When you visit the house of a special friend you don’t go charging about disturbing and destroying things, leave rubbish lying around the place or go off with things that don’t belong to you, do you?  It’s the same when you go into the bush.

            The bush is the home of many wonderful and special creatures and you are the visitor.  Move as quietly as you can, like the animals do.  Stop often to watch and listen and get the feel of the place.  That way you will be able to see what is going on, instead of frightening everything away.

            By all means collect interesting sticks, stones, leaves, grasses and feathers.   But leave the butterflies and other creatures where they are.  Their lives are hard enough without people interfering.  Leave the birds’ eggs in the nests.  They belong to the bird, not to you.  If you are careful and clever you can keep watch on a nest and see when the fledglings hatch, see the parents feeding them and watch them learn to fly.  This is far more interesting and useful than taking an egg home with you where it will never come to anything.

            Another thing you might come across is a fawn.  He may look thin and all alone and you might think he is starving and lost.  But leave him alone.  His mother won’t be far away and she’ll come back as soon as you leave.

            Let me tell you how it is for some of these little buck and you will see what I mean.

            When a baby duiker or bushbuck is born he weighs less than one kilogram and is only 25 to 30 cm tall at the shoulder.  His stilty, wobbly legs are no thicker than a finger and his tiny hooves make prints that would fit on a thumbnail.  A baby steenbok or a grysbok is very much smaller and a blue duiker smaller still.

            He has many enemies: humans, all the dog family and most of the cats, the large mongooses and civets, owls and eagles.

            How can the mother protect such a frail little baby?  She can’t fight for him with teeth  and claws like a cat or a dog.  She hasn’t even got horns.  She can’t carry him away from danger like a monkey can.  And if she stands around worrying about it, an enemy may get her scent and creep up and find the baby.

            So what does she do?  She hides him.  He has hardly any body scent at all and an enemy could come sniffing around and walk right past him, never knowing he was there.  So she feeds him and washes him and tucks him down in the tall grass or under a bush, and there he lies with his chin on his flank and his ears smoothed back so that his head isn’t easily seen.  He closes his big bright eyes and sleeps the hours away, looking quite like a boulder or a little mound of earth.  The mother slips away to find food and scout around for danger.

            If she sees an enemy she might let it get her scent and lead it away from her baby.  Once in a while she tip-toes back to feed him.  He doesn’t do any droppings until she washes him and cleans the droppings away so that there is no smell left around his hiding place.

            Some mothers are very brave of an enemy catches the baby.  My dog Whisper once found a duiker fawn hiding on a hill.  She held him gently between her paws and washed his head and sang a little croony song to him.  As I was getting her to leave him without frightening him, the mother came back.  She tried to butt us and made the fawn run behind her.  Wild babies have to do exactly as they are told or risk coming to harm.

            After a few days the new fawn tries a little exercise, but only when the mother is there.  He tosses his little head, which makes him lose his balance.  After a bit of practice he tries skipping – one foot at a time at first.  Later he tries kicking his heels in the air.  He likes to be near his mother when he does this so that he can bump up against her instead of falling on his nose.  Some days later he tries jumping.  He leaps straight up in the air, and comes down in exactly the same place – so as not to get lost.

            The next thing is to try running.  This is fun but can be dangerous.  He soon finds that he can go like the wind.  Well, perhaps a small, not very fast wind.  The problem is how to stop.  He bumps into bushes and prickles and sometimes scratches his face.  His mother is very anxious but she knows that he must learn how to stop now, before he is strong enough to go really fast, or heavy enough to crash hard into something.

            Now she lets him walk about with her some of the time.  When he is two weeks old he tries to copy her.  He takes leaves into his mouth but sucks them instead of chewing.  He moves his ears this way and that and learns to understand what the birds and the wind are saying.  Watching his mother browse he learns to look up, which is very important, and he copies the careful way she walks, stopping often to listen.

            The father lives off away by himself and doesn’t help to care for the fawn.  The mother must do it all alone and she loves her little baby more than anything in the world.  If something happens to him she will grieve for days and all the milk that she has made ready for him will begin to hurt her and make her sick.

            So if you find a fawn all alone in the bush, pretending to be a stone or standing very still like a furry sort of flower, don’t disturb him.  Creep very quietly away and don’t go there again for several weeks, especially if you have a dog.

            Fawns can be very difficult to bring up without their mothers, and very often die.  If they do live they don’t make such good pets.  They don’t like to be cuddled and carried around and played with like other animals.  And long before they are a year old they want to join others of their kind and would be most unhappy staying with you.

            So don’t wake the baby.  Be his friend and pretend you didn’t really see him hiding there.

*****

Orphan in the rain

She was born under a log

with the sour smell of a passing cobra

still smeared on the bark.

Rain elbowed round the curve of the wood

and dripped onto her, its inexorable beat

part of the harsh rhythm of being born.

            She knew Hunger from the start.

Every nerve and new-born fibre of her body

strained for the cold, hard teat

lost in her mother’s soaking pelt.

And when milk came

it warmed the lining of her stomach

but could not fill it.

            She knew Cold.  Her fur could not dry,

nor her mother’s desperate tongue

keep pace with the constant rain.

            Her little paws, plunged into steaming coat,

pummelled warmth from a gaunt flank,

and her tiny nose, pressed against thin skin

long after the milk was finished,

breathed warmth into chilled lungs.

But mist seeped into every pore.

The sodden earth was ice against each movement.

            She knew Fear.  Not at first

when the need for milk was all there was

to her blind, deaf world,

but soon, and always.

            Fear paralysed her when her mother left;

it clenched her, huddled until she returned.

Fear curled her up like a dry leaf

as her mother carried her from place to place.

Everything that moved threatened her life.

Every stir of wind breathed fear – beware!

Life was Fear.  Death was Fear.

Every step of cautious paw, each flick of ear

tested Fear against need.

Hunger, Cold, Fear, dulled, sharpened, dulled,

in accepted waves until one day

Hunger gained a place above the rest;

ached and twisted in her fleshless bones,

hour upon lonely hour, day upon night,

drawing her out at last to seek her mother.

            Rain hammered her into the ground,

smashed all scent and sight and sound,

drowned her thinning wails,

drummed up death.

            Suddenly Fear reared up, Fear grown to Terror,

as two great hands from some immense being

tall as trees, cupped her round,

and lifted her against a mighty heart.

            All her wild heritage sprang to her aid.

Leopard, serval, caracal,

shook ancestral fury through her frame.

She spread her frail claws,

slammed them into furless flesh,

hooked there, rigid, while she screamed

and swore and bit with baby teeth and spat

to no avail.

            Came a long journey cradled in those hands

so warm and firm that Fear almost fell asleep...

A rough towel licked her dry.

She fought and squalled.

The hard edge of a spoon touched her teeth.

She spat and bit.

Warm milk flowed, and forgetting all else

she grasped the spoon – more, more –

sneeze and hiccup and burp until,

warm and dry and full

for the first time in her life,

her spinning mind tumbled into sleep.  

Hunger and Cold stayed outside the door

but Fear came in.

For days she hid behind furniture

spurning the woollen nest made up for her,

finding, anyway, warm lesser beds

in all her hiding places; creeping out only when alone,

her sleep snatched awake by every sound.

Twice she called her mother, a thin sound,

that drifted without direction in this strange world.

            For days she fought the hands that gently

reached for her, that fed and warmed and kissed her

because Fear said she must.

            One day she fell asleep between those hands.

One day she tapped a fingertip in play.

One day she purred.

Today the house and garden are her kingdom,

she the tiny queen, with love her throne.

Every thing that moves is pounced upon –

leaves, people, dogs’ tails –

plunder for her paws.

Every thing that doesn’t move is also pounced upon,

since not to move is dull.

            Cold and Hunger may not come again

but Fear will always walk not far behind,

keeping her body lithe, senses alert,

her nerves flash-quick.

She teases Fear.  She mocks it,

imitates its staring eyes and slashing claws,

makes it join in many of her games –

Leopard Hunting Prey, perhaps,

or Lynx Defending Den.

Full well she knows that should Fear come too close

loving hands will make a fortress round her,

hands and heart a trusted fortress round her,

soft and warm as her contented purr.

*****

The photographs are of Siberia - The Tiger who Came in from the Cold - who was just such a bedraggled and savage orphan, grown to be an extraordinary companion. - DW

The Mystery of the Deserted House

A true detective story

Deep in the shadows of the dark, damp forest there stands a quaint little house perched high upon a rock.  The small-paned windows are closed; the door is locked; weeds grow lank to the walls.  It has only ever been used as an occasional weekend retreat.  I walk over there now and then to see that all is well.

            On the evening of October 18th, 1978, when passing through, I found that, for the first time, windows were broken, one on the west side, one on the east.  It was too late then to do anything more than notify the local defence authorities – which in this case, was me.

            Next morning, in the cold grey dawn, I collected the keys and the .410 shotgun and, suitably disguised in dark glasses and a moustache, stole through the dripping forest to the deserted house.

            Mist coiled among the trees.  The wind moaned around the walls.  The key grated loudly in the lock and the door creaked ominously as I eased it open with the barrel of the gun.  A black bat shuddered out past my head.

            Before me narrow steps wound upwards out of sight.  Turning my collar up and pulling my trilby over my brows I crept cautiously up the steps, gun at the ready.

            Rounding the bend in the stairway I came to the alcove that is the kitchen.  Slit-eyed I surveyed the scene.  Picnic items under a chequered cloth were disarranged but as far as I could see, nothing was missing.

            I examined the dust on the floor, black dust that had filtered in from earlier bush fires.  There were no tracks to be seen.  A pile of droppings below a beam showed where a very small bat, probably a banana bat, dined nightly.  I examined the bathroom and tiny unfurnished bedroom. Nothing amiss.

            Two wooden steps creaked as I stepped up to the dark livingroom.  In this room a pane in the east window was shattered, all the glass lying on the floor and the sofa below it.  The glass from the broken west window, on the other hand, had fallen outside.  Simple, one might conclude.  Someone threw, or fired, a missile through the east window and out the west. I viewed this theory from every angle but the alignment of the two windows showed it to be impossible.  No such missile was in the room.

            I crept up more hollow wooden steps to the bedroom at the top of the house. Dust and bat droppings yielded no tracks or signs of disturbance.  I returned to the livingroom.

            The dust on the westward end of the table had been swept by something such as a sleeve with a stiff cuff.  No other marks were visible.  On the sofa there were droppings unfamiliar to me.  They were a light brown in colour, averaging 3 centimetres in length and 1 cm wide, blunt-ended and consisting entirely of fig seeds.

            What forest animal would have a diet so exclusively of fig seeds?  Somango monkey, sun squirrel, bushbaby, and tree civet.  I was familiar with the droppings of all of them except the last.  Nevertheless, with these four species in mind I reviewed the situation.

            I noted that the windows were inaccessible from the ground.  The nearest branches of the trees were slender and would not make good take-off points.  I could not visualise any of these animals being able to jump from them with enough force to break a window.  That was not to say that the breaker of the windows had to be the dropper of the droppings.  The plot thickened.

            In vain I scanned the jagged edges of glass and the narrow, sloping sills for a single hair, a single fliff of fluff or fur.  Finally, with no other clues whatsoever I collected a couple of the droppings.  Exhibit A.  These I took to Dr Don Broadley of the Museum; he did not recognise them.  He took them with him to Dr Reay Smithers on the eve of that great mammalogist’s departure for South Africa.  Dr Smithers did not recognise them either.  Therefore: they were not mammal droppings.  The tall, authoritative figure of Mr Des Jackson entered the case.  The dryness and formed appearance of the droppings, and the complete absence of white guano, caused him to shake his ornithological beard in puzzlement.

            At this time, having secretly watched the house for long stiff hours from the dark shadows of the forest, sometimes disguised as an inoffensive rock, sometimes as a naturalist interested in something else, my suspicions began to fall upon a certain Silvery-Cheeked Hornbill, adult (code name SCHA) seen on two separate occasions lingering in the vicinity of the crime without good cause.

            This splendid individual, I reasoned, might be able to get a foothold on the sloping sill, and with his great bill and enormous casque would surely be capable of pecking in the pane.  This would account for the fact that, unlike the damage expected from a stone or a bullet, there was very little glass left in the frames – a small edging only.  Furthermore, large though he was , he could have squeezed through the resultant gap.  Could SCHA have attacked his reflection in the east window with such vigour that he found himself breaking and entering – or more accurately, broken and entered?  Might he then have flapped around seeking an exit, knocked over the picnic things in the kitchen window in his efforts, returned to the livingroom, perched on the end of the table, disturbing the dust with his undercarriage and his stiff tail, and from there launched himself towards the sun shining through the west window?  I had already noted that the reflections were at their best when the sun was on the other side of the house.

            I endeavoured to increase my vigilance, but being on my own I found myself too short of manpower to do this as effectively as I wished.  The vandal eluded me.  More windows were broken in my absence, all the glass being knocked out of the frames and lying inside the rooms.

            To lend weight to my theory I noticed that as the sun shifted its orbit slightly southwards, so were the corresponding windows being broken.  I drew what curtains there were and these windows ceased to be attacked.  Also the one set of louvres, that gave a distorted reflection, remained intact.

            Meanwhile I submitted a report that I could find no human involvement in the affair.

            “Why, then,” came the question, “has this not happened before? The house has been empty for years.”

            I reasoned that for the first time there was no caretaker on the premises.  He had done little work around the place but had occupied nearby quarters.  Without him about SCHA may have been emboldened to choose his nest hole nearer the house than he would otherwise have done.

            On November 30th, disguised as a rather portly tree stump in raincoat and gumboots, munching nonchalantly on a bunch of grapes, I disturbed SCHA sitting on the concrete ledge above the door of the deserted house.  In helping me with my enquiries he produced a dropping.  This I collected with some acrobatical difficulty and compared it with the original being held at the Museum.  The two specimens were identical except that the fig content of the last was replaced to some extent with the seeds of other fruits.

            This might have seemed evidence enough but I was keen to wrap up the case by actually witnessing SCHA committing the crime.  In any case, there was no question of arresting him since he was the sole supporter of his wife and family at that time.

            Then the bedroom windows came under attack.  I found the now familiar droppings on the floor and even on the bed.  The intruder was growing bolder with familiarity.  It was only a matter of time, I felt, before he made his fatal mistake.

            That time came on January 3rd, 1979.  In the cool early dawn of that day, disguised as a lovely slender shrub wandering harmlessly about in the forest, I saw SCHA perched upon a sill of the deserted house, beak to beak with his reflection in a south-east window – sound asleep!  Once in a while he twitched in his sleep, muttered, “Jerk!” and pecked the pane.  He had knocked a sizable hole in it when his lady love suddenly appeared, for the first time as far as I knew.  So besotted with her beauty was he that he forsook forthwith his juvenile pranks of breaking windows in deserted houses.

            Until that time SCHA had been most silent and secretive. Now he became more vocal and I abandoned several ideas I had as to the location of his nest hole in favour of a group of trees quite impossible to reach undetected.

            On January 7th there was a tremendous noise from all the hornbills in the forest that lasted most of the day.  After that the entire population left for less depleted feeding grounds. I imagine that was when the chicks broke out of the nests – they would have been walled in with mud in tree-holes for weeks – all of them on that same day it would seem.

           

The exercise had posed several questions.  Was SCHA attacking his own reflection or did he think it was another hornbill to be fed?  I feel aggression is the most likely answer although one would not consider these great birds as being aggressive.  Certainly he seemed to tolerate other males of his species also nesting in that part of the forest.  These would have been members of his own group with which he was familiar, while he would not, of course, be familiar with his own image.  Besides, he would surely have seen that his reflection had a mighty casque and therefore was another male – and who would want to feed another male?

            And why were SCHA’s droppings so completely unbirdlike?  Perhaps the female and chicks, in order to keep the nest clean, must pick up the droppings and throw them outside, in which case they would have to be fairly dry and formed.

            There being nothing more to report, the case was adjourned sine die.

_________________________________________

Having occupied this little house myself for a while, I can attest to the accuracy of this story.  Except the moustache, perhaps. - DW

*****

Mammals on my mind

Kegu the genet

On the spare-room bed, in a box containing newspaper, a towel, a hot-water bottle and a jersey, and covered with a tray from the oven, the grey kittens are curled up together like caterpillars.  They are three days old and for half of their life-time they have been without food, warmth or shelter.  Every half hour, day and night, I feed them one or two drops until their shrivelled stomachs can manage more and they are strong enough to drink from a bottle.  Once in a while I dab their miniscule little bottoms to simulate the mother’s tongue.  Like all baby mammals that spend their early days in a nest, they will not urinate or defecate until the mother washes them, keeping them and the nest clean.

            In a basket on the floor, also snuggled into a jersey on a hot-water bottle, are four more kittens, a bit older and stronger than the others. They are bottle-fed and cleaned every three hours.  One is wrapped in a nappy awaiting the outcome of an enema.  The dilution instructions for the enema are per 15 kilograms body weight.  The kitten weighs 67 grams.  Nearby a sheet of paper is covered with calculations.  There is need of a mathematician here.

            On a shelf in the cupboard under the stairs, cleared of everything that could possibly break, is a tin tray of sand.  The young genet has decided that that is where he will do his doings, so that is where his sand tray must go.

            The genet is learning to climb.  He goes looping up the edge of the open door like a super-swift inchworm, pauses at the top, eyes slitted, then comes down head first with the same undulating motion, his pads gripping the sides of the smooth, enamel-painted door like a gecko’s.  he climbs up the clothes-horse, noses the freshly ironed clothes off the rails and watches them slither to the floor with intense interest.  He climbs onto the pantry shelf and does the same with a row of cups. The crash of breaking crockery heightens his sense of satisfaction.

            He wants to play and races through the house ahead of me, pouncing on my toes, bouncing off my shins, jumping onto places where I am about to put things down, pushing things down that I am about to pick up.  He keeps up his fast, hard game for an hour as I do the house chores in between feeding animals.  And all the time he gives a running commentary: “Oof-oof!  Oof-oof!” a soft, staccato explosion of air with a small vocal grunt to it.

            Tiring, he scampers up my clothes as if I was a tree, snuffles in my ear, slides down my arm and locks his tiny, round lion paws around my wrist and forearm.  There he rides, his chin on the back of my hand, his eyes dreamy, as I sterilise bottles, mix formulas and make tea for the household.  In error I pour the bushbabies’ formula into the teacups.  Doubtless the added vitamins, minerals, calcium and honey will do the people good.

            The mongoose has found a crack in the sitting-room wall.  With frightening enthusiasm and success he sets about removing the wall from the crack.

            In the pen behind the house are three fawns – two bushbuck and a duiker.  All are injured.  They drink as much as five pints of milk each, over three bottle feeds a day.  Like the kittens they must also be dabbed after each meal. It takes a minimum of half an hour to feed and tend each fawn.  One will not drink until he has sucked my ear lobe for a few minutes.  The duiker must first be kissed on the nose and told how very much like her mamma is this warmed rubber teat.  She is reluctant to believe it and needs a great deal of coaxing.  I rush to fit this in with feeding the other animals, with the housework and cooking, cleaning pens and nests, grooming and exercising our dogs, bringing selected leaves at dawn and dusk for the fawns who are beginning to browse, and catching grasshoppers for the genet and the bushbabies.

            The genet plays a distracting and crazy game in the hay of the shelter before falling asleep on the back of my neck as I crouch beside a fawn.  Bent over, I carry him back to the house, tip him into his nest and cover him up before checking on the leveret.

 

Bushbaby (photo: Simon Bearder)

 The leveret looks uncomfortable. He has a wind bubble. I put him against my shoulder in the recognised way and walk the floor with him, patting his back.  He is the size of a turkey egg.

            The phone rings.  Cupping one hand over the leveret I lift the receiver, tuck it under my chin and continue patting him.  It is my friend Marion.

            “It’s ages since I’ve seen you!” she exclaims.  “How are you doing up there?”

            I ask, “What’s the plural of chaos?”  My 70-year old friend gives a 17-year old giggle. We both wish she lived nearer to give me a hand sometimes.

            The leveret brings up his wind bubble, sneezes loudly and falls asleep.  Hearing him, Marion asks what is it this time and we chuckle again. We discuss the peculiarities of her dog’s digestive system which is giving him trouble and decide on a course of action.

            It is the instinct of the fawns at this age to lie down and keep still while their mother is away browsing.  Only when she is there to watch over them will they abandon safety precautions and devote themselves to uninhibited play.  Since I am the mother, a poor substitute to be sure but better than nothing I suppose, and such exercise is vital for their well-being, I ease the leveret back to bed, feed the kittens one more time, take up my clip-board and sit in the grass of their pen to write.

            Around me they rise and stretch, race and skip and dance. I abandon thoughts of writing to watch them with delight and to study the intricate way they communicate with each other: a flash of eyes, a flicker of ears, a twitch of noses, a shiver of tails, a lift of hooves, a whispered sound of controlled breath, perhaps telepathy. I can pick up only a fraction of it and emulate even less.

            Scientists chide me for my “outrageous anthropomorphisms”, for making it sound as if animals have human attributes and characteristics.  Animals, they point out, are not the same as humans. True.  I agree, although indulging in anthropomorphism now and then can be enormous fun and I have no intention of giving it up! But they are right.

            And yet, sitting here watching my fawns, I wonder how it is that I can understand what they are saying to each other, can identify with their moods and their needs?  How do I know when the leveret is uncomfortable with a wind bubble, when the genet wants to play and when he wants to rest, when the dog is genuinely sick and when she is just looking for sympathy?  How come most of us understand immediately when an animal is, say, in distress, pain or fear, even vaguely apprehensive? Well, because we know how they feel.  Simple!  Why do scientists make such a big issue of it?

            I think the answer is not that animals are like us but that we are like them. We don’t study humans to gain a better understanding of animals, but we do study animals, and very effectively too, to gain a better understanding of humans.

            As I see it, we are all mammals, and as such we share certain responses, needs, emotions, and I think we should not be afraid to recognise this.  We should not be afraid to identify something that we observe in animals by the same name, the same term, that we use when we identify it in humans.  And as we are all mammals, in my work whoever has the greatest need at any given moment is the one who gets attended to first, regardless of species or intellectual capabilities.  This philosophy dictates priorities without which I could never cope.

Bushbuck fawn at ablutions

            All mammals know the pain of childbirth, and the tremendous love for their young – even greater sometimes than their instinct for self-preservation, which must be one of the strongest instincts.  These youngsters drive their parents up the wall sometimes, and the parents chastise them; and as they grow, the young ones – especially the males – tousle and scrap and play-fight, try out their muscles, get cheeky and play dangerous games.  And when they leave the security of the parent they go out with apprehension and bravado.  Don’t we all?

            And the thing that is going to give the most trouble to a male of any species is another male – other males – of his own species, whether it is a leopard or a mongoose or a bushbaby going into territory already claimed by another, to try to get a place for himself and hold what he owns against intruders, or whether it is a boy going out to fight for his country or his ideals or his place in a competitive society, to hold what he owns against bandits and con-men – and politicians!

            Mammals know all about pain and fear, joy and sorrow, hate and love, and the tremendous need for love to be returned.  They know about boredom and the desire for action, at other times the desire for peace and quiet.  They know loneliness and the need sometimes to be alone.  They know jealousy, no matter how some scientists may hedge at the term.  And they know the apprehension of old age when the muscles won’t respond in the old way, the eye is not so quick and the bones ache. And they know about the will to live and the wish to die, about courage – often to a high degree – and sometimes even compassion.  We have so much in common.

            To take it further, here is something people take for granted every day: you can teach a dog, an ordinary dog, elements of the human language.  When you stop to think of it, this is nothing short of marvellous. My Doberman Javelin knew thirty-nine phrases and I could break them up, mix them up, connect them up, in any way I needed, and she understood.

            And look at the exciting research being done with dolphins, recording the sounds they make, trying to decipher them, playing them back and getting replies!  This is the opposite to our methods with dogs.  Here are people learning an animal language and using it to communicate with that animal.

            Chimpanzees, orang-utans and least one gorilla have been taught hand signs and signals which they string together on their own accord to communicate quite a wide variety of needs and thoughts with their trainers.  Who can say that given the anatomy – the tongue, the larynx, the lips – required for human speech, some of these animals would not learn to use a word or two of ours?  A man tells his dog, “Get outside!”  The dog understands.  He curls his lip in defiance.  The man understands the dog.  They are communicating.  But what if the dog actually said, “Go to hell!” which is what he means, as the man knows?  How would the man feel about that?  His ideas about dogs would be shaken to the core!

            Take it further, into the realm of art, thought of as a very human activity.  It turns out that chimps love to draw.  In recent experiments, researchers give a chimp and pencil and show him only that it is capable of making a mark on paper.  The chimp is delighted.  At first he will hold the pencil like a stick and scribble with the use of his whole arm.  But after a while, without being shown, he discovers the same method of holding it as we do.  Thereafter he draws with movements of the fingers and wrist instead of the entire forearm.  When they take a drawing away from a chimp and give it back later, he will take up the design where he left off.  He recognizes his own work.

            One chimp was seen to outline his shadow on the wall.  Another liked to breathe on the window pane and draw designs on it with her finger. The progress of a chimp’s art, researchers find, parallels that of a human child, step by predictable step, until they come to draw faces and further than that the chimp seems unable to go.

            These are apes, of course – a fact that some people find disturbing.  But I learned with surprise that the star of a series of such experiments was not an ape at all but a little Capuchin monkey from South America, named, unimaginatively, P2, who beat the chimps hollow, especially in problem solving.

Genet atop the fawns' pen

So if we must classify humans on one hand and animals on the other, where does the line between them lie? The further we delve into this the further we find we must extend the limits previously set.

            As I see it, one of the main differences is in the matter of abstract thought.  As far as we know animals are not capable of abstract thought.  And yet, how sure of this can we be?  We know, or think we know, when a child is daydreaming.  But unless he gives some physical expression of this we can’t be sure.  He may be inventing some marvellous new gadget or composing great poetry while he gazes into space.  I think that until communication between humans and animals is much more refined, we can’t be absolutely sure that there is not a glimmer of abstract thought emerging in some of the higher animals.

            The most positive difference, I feel, is in awareness.  Certainly a kudu bull, for instance, is aware that he is a very fine fellow, in that he feels good and gets a satisfying reaction from other kudus.  He is aware that he belongs to his species and not another.  He knows his own species by sight and smell, by patterns of behaviour and communication.  Although he may understand these same things very well in other species with which he is familiar, such as sable, eland or zebra, he is aware that he does not belong to those species.

            But is he aware that he is aware?  I think not.  This seems to be the big gap.  Once the mind is aware of its own awareness it can become analytical.  It can take great leaps forward in the matter of foresight.  It can seek to control a situation before that situation arises.  The possibilities for the expansion of thought become boundless.  Is not the difference between a human infant, who is aware of a great many things but who is not aware of his own awareness, and the adult who is, akin to the difference between the higher animals and early people?

            For this marvellous analytical mind there is a price to be paid: once you start to think, to reason, you lose instinct.  Instinct becomes submerged until, among humans, it is only really found in any reliable form in little babies and people under hypnosis.

            It is happening with baboons now.  They are having to cope with a wide variety of circumstances, some of which change virtually overnight, such as a farmer moving into a previously deserted area, or the erection of the Border fence between Zimbabwe and Mozambique with its minefields.  And almost all changes, due largely to human pressures, are hard, bitterly hard, on the baboons.  Because they are being forced to figure out how to cope, as opposed to reacting with blind instinct which may not be appropriate – albeit to cope in the light of experience, rather than foresight – instinct is becoming submerged.

            Hand-rear a baboon and turn him loose in the bush and he will perish.  He won’t know what to eat, how to find it, how to behave, or what are his natural enemies.  He will have learned these things from his family, from his troop – from you.  If he is used to bacon and egg for breakfast that is what he is going to look for in the bush.  Show him a scorpion and though he might have an idea that it may be edible, he will likely get stung.  He won’t know how to pinch off its tail in typical baboon fashion without being shown.  Hand-rear a buck and turn him loose, at least he will nibble at leaves and will know instinctively what he should eat and what to avoid.

            I wouldn’t say even baboons are aware of being aware.  They still share with the other animals this innocence that so often touches our human hearts.  It is just that I can see their minds having to extend and develop in the desperate need for survival, as maybe our remote forebears were forced to develop.  How true that necessity is the mother of invention.  Necessity and desperation.

            Another difference between humans and animals that puzzles me is that, with the possible exception of sea mammals, humans are the only ones to show so much white in their eyes. Even the apes, closest to us physically, show only a touch of white in the corners.  Why this should be and where along the path of evolution it developed I would love to know.  Beauty-wise, I think it is a disadvantage.  Oh to have great, dark, liquid eyes like my fawns!  Or the green eyes of a cat – complete with vertical pupils for devastating effect!

            If all people everywhere could understand how animals feel, could realise that mammals are mammals in all their variations and paths of development, and that we as humans are part of the brotherhood of it all, what could they do about it?  Go out there and kill everything off, as is happening now, today?  You don’t have to fire a shot, you don’t have to set a single trap, to eliminate a species. All you have to do is wreck their habitat in the cause of progress; pollute their water supplies in the cause of industrialisation; kill the insects and lower forms of life on which they depend and interact with, in the cause of pest control; harass them to the point where they will no longer breed.  Or nothing.  Ignore them.  Ignore them in all their fascinating and wonderful diversities and fill their places with more humans, who are, as a species, all the same – the same vicious killers no matter where they come from.

           

Or we can try to foresee, as intelligently as possible, what effect an action of ours will have on all those other lives and conduct it accordingly, in keeping with them.  We, all of us, from the children to the leaders, from the cripples to the supermen, can care, deeply and unashamedly.  It becomes the strong to be gentle.  It becomes the intelligent to be thoughtful. It becomes the brave to be kind.

            When the time is right these dancing, vulnerable, innocent little fawns of mine, like all my wild orphans, will go back to the wild.  The hours I spend caring for them will then be spent worrying about them.  I would feel a lot easier if there were no people around; no poachers, hunters, firesetters, or woodcutters.  They will have enough to contend with without the interference of man.  In fact, wildlife in general would do very well without humanity.

            Could humanity really do without wildlife?

*****