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.

*****