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?

*****

Fleur - the miracle kitten

Except for the longest white whiskers you ever saw, so long that she looks as if she’s carrying a yard of fish bones in her mouth, Fleur is quite an ordinary-looking little cat really – black, long-haired, silky on top, fluffy underneath.  She has a ring of white on her chin, a white bib, white toe-tips on her forepaws, long white stockings on the back.

            But every time I look at that kitten I think, “There goes a miracle.”

            She was brought in as a stray of about five weeks old and spent the first day huddled away frightened, as was to be expected.  The next day I realised that much of this was due to shock, which now started to wear off and pain set in.  Soon there was no part of her not in pain.  She began to stiffen and in a few hours was paralyzed from the shoulders down.

            On close examination it looked as if she’d been trodden on length-wise.  Her young green bones had bent to the pressure without snapping, but her hips and shoulders had dislocated.  She had no external wounds but what internal damage and displacement there was I couldn’t tell.

            There were already eleven orphan kittens, and a genet kitten, here at Wildwoods Sanctuary, all on different formulae and schedules, but “Fleur” – as she came to be called, I don’t know why – wanted no company.  She lay on her side moaning softly, the nictitating membranes half covering her eyes.

            It is difficult to treat an animal in such pain.  Where do you even start without making matters worse?  She screamed at every touch and if the greatest care was not taken when moving her, her shoulders dislocated.  For the first few days I could do little but dribble-feed her from a spoon, keep her clean and sit with her, for she was just a feral kitten who had never known a human friend and her natural instinctive fear of people also had to be overcome.

            The programme of progressive massage I planned for her had to begin in a very token way.  I slipped my hand under her hind paws without disturbing her and just let those silky little white socks lie on my palm.  Although this surely couldn’t hurt, she cried and I could see in her eyes that all she wanted was to drag herself away.

            The next step was to stroke her paws very softly, just over the tips of the hairs, hind and fore paws, gradually a firmer stroking up to the hocks and elbows.  I had hoped she would at least resign herself to this soft, rhythmic action but days passed with no sign of her tolerating even such sub-treatment, and her small muscles were wasting away and couldn’t wait.

            I stroked her body from ears to tail, day by day becoming gradually firmer.  Her cries were terrible although I was scarcely touching her, but far harder to bear was the hatred of me in her eyes.  At least her screams were no worse when finally my fingers worked on muscles, tendons and joints than they had been when I merely stroked her fur.  Not only the major joints and muscles had to be stimulated and made to move, but such tiny bones as those in her tail and the tendons of her toes and claws needed to stretch and contract.

            Those claws needed occasional clipping, too, as did the seat of her pants for hygiene.  This latter necessity she hated, swearing and spitting as soon as she saw the scissors.  And one wonderful day she actually lashed her tail in fury.  It was such a small flicker of movement I could have missed it had she not repeated it, and my fading hopes of any success swelled again.

            Weeks went by.  She even grew a little.  For quite a while I had felt that she was screaming because she thought I was going to hurt her, before I’d really done anything, and then there crept into her voice another note, a flatness as of boredom.  Perhaps she was getting fed up opposing the unopposable.  More noticeable was the gradual change in her expression.  She could raise her head and glare at me and I saw the fires of fury slowly die down to a warm and almost welcoming glow.  And one day when I was massaging her shoulders I felt the vibrations of her growling become a purr.

            To try to induce her to move and play I sometimes put one or two other kittens in with her for a while.  One of these, a newcomer, brought ringworm with him and almost all the kittens were infected, including Fleur.  This was a major setback.  The little bit of trust so patiently built up was crushed for she loathed the rather drastic treatment, as did the others.  And fearful of carrying the disease to the rest of the multi-species household I had now to handle Fleur as little as possible, curtailing the time I had spent holding and caressing her.  By the grace of good fortune and pretty powerful tablets Whipaway, the genet, whose progress to a natural life in the forest was by that time well advanced, remained free of infection.

Whipaway the genet

            When at last the trouble had cleared up all the kittens were hostile, which a few days of loving soon rectified.  Not for Fleur, however.  In her efforts to avoid me she began to flop about without direction; at least that was movement of a sort.

            Now I was able to return to, and intensify, the periods of long, firm massage, the grooming and the loving.  Added to the ever-important time in the sun was time for her to be with the rest of us.  The household cats who, over that summer, tolerated no less than twenty-seven kittens, accepted Fleur without a murmur and the dogs were marvellous with her.  They were so careful not to frighten her as they moved about, stepped very cautiously round her, and even Bay, the Irish Wolfhound/Great Dane, took extra care not to sit on her.  (Bay sits on everyone else, friend and stranger alike, with never a thought!)

            It took Fleur quite a while to regain the small measure of trust that she had had in me before the ringworm trouble.  Eventually we got back to the point where her growl at the start of each massaging session turned into purring.  Then her frightened cries at my approach ended in a note that was not of fear, almost of greeting.

            One morning when I went to her basket I found her curled comfortably against its curve instead of flat on her side, but when I called her there was no response.

            “Fleur!” I gasped, my heart thumping into my throat. “Fleur, what’s wrong?”

            I fell on my knees beside her, my hands half expecting to find her stiff and dead.  She must have been deeply asleep, for at my trembling touch she jerked her head up and then, as if I hadn’t enough tears in my eyes already, she gave me a sweet little “Prrrp!” of greeting.

            After that she cried only when I moved to pick her up.  I taught her how to lie against my shoulder so that her own shoulders weren’t in danger of dislocating and she could feel quite secure.  From there she visited the rest of the house and the garden and the pens where the orphan fawns were kept.  Like all the cats she adored the fawns, who pranced and danced for her, nuzzled her face and practiced browsing on her fur.  A large, flat bit of forest wood of an interesting rottenness was brought in to encourage her to exercise her claws; a small dog-basket was upturned for her hide under and eventually pull herself up the side to a blanket nest on top.

            Her first efforts at walking looked as if she was coming round from an anaesthetic, improving in time to the gait of a slightly tipsy sailor on a tilting deck.

            I really felt we were getting somewhere when we suffered another setback.  Fleur developed a gum infection which failed to respond to treatment, and I decided she must endure the rather long trip to town, partly over a rough road, to visit the vet.  I put her on a cushion and a blanket in the travelling basket, and as an afterthought because it was cold, added an old cardigan, fastened the lid firmly and put her in the Anglia van.

            On our steep, narrow driveway the brakes failed and the van rolled down the mountain. As it tilted off the edge of the driveway I tried frantically to get the door open  while reaching back for the basket.  Almost too late, half leaping, half flung, I hit the road and Fleur went over with the van, which rolled about five times and stopped against a tree that smashed though the cab roof.  Had either of us been in the seat we would certainly have been killed.

            I hurled myself down the steep slope only feet behind the rolling van, Fleur the only thought in my mind, wrenched open the buckled back doors and opened the basket lid a crack to see if she was, pray God, at least still alive.  In tumbling the cardigan had wrapped her around and around and she suffered only a bruised forepaw – a lot better than I could claim for myself!  It took over two weeks of the most careful handling to get her over her shock and terror.

            Two months later we tried another car journey, this time to get her spayed.  Not knowing how displaced her internals might be I couldn’t risk her having kittens.  Heavily tranquillized in advance, she took it all very well.  Coming round from the anaesthetic, however, she went into another blind and terrible panic.  She bit me hard time and again, bit her own paw until it bled, cried and gasped and threw herself around in a totally uncontrollable way.  Once the anaesthetic wore off she forgot all about it and was my friend again.

The family: the Anglia van, Lea the duiker, Fleur (back)
Jungle, and Drum (foreground)

            Today she climbs trees, chases around with the buck, the leaves and the other cats, loves and is loved by all the people and animals of our family.  Her special friend is the beautifully marked Jungle, another orphan kitten that somehow stayed and that makes six.  Sometimes she catches small birds.  This is something I hate, loving as I do both cats and birds, but it is a relief to know that she could, if necessary, hunt for herself.

            The complete and utter trust she places in me is almost frightening and though she no longer needs massaging she comes to me, begging for it.  She butts her little head into my hands, pushes and rolls and poses between my palms.  If I pretend that I don’t know what she wants she thrusts one leg after the other stiffly into my hand and grasps my fingers and pulls them in against her.

            I have had several offers of good homes for her but it is unthinkable that she should leave the Sanctuary where people and animals alike all protect and care for her.  Besides, her innocent delight in living and moving is a contagious and addictive thing, and I, for one, am hooked.

***

On the edge of the Sanctuary driveway once stood a huge Cape fig.  One day it fell, more or less over the same spot where the Anglia van had rolled.  It left standing a tall and straggly cabbage-tree, which Silvery-cheeked hornbills found a great perch. Nothing signified Fleur’s remarkable recovery than, I remember, the sight of her clinching her way up the trunk, yammering away and keen as mustard to catch one of those birds, which must have been at least twice her size. Oddly, I can find no good photographs of Fleur. – DW 

***

Hands

Jill and search dog Javelin

Jill has always said she was embarrassed by her hands: they were certainly not slender and feminine, like her sister Anne’s pianist’s hands.  Yet from their robust workmanlike planes such tenderness and healing flowed that few animals failed to respond.  She wrote a poem about her hands, and also some practical hints about hand-grooming horses and dogs, which I put together here.

These hands of mine

These hands of mine

That I so hated all my growing life,

Because of their square bluntness

And the softness of the palms and fingertips

And too much skin across the knuckles

And the way the veins stuck out like an old woman’s

When they were still but children –

These hands of mine

That I so tried to hide behind my back

Or in my pockets or where? where?

That hung like lumps of expressionless meat

Dragging my arms down my sides to awkward branches

And could not be taken off, like shoes, and forgotten;

That I could see pendulum by when I walked with such distaste

That I would rather lift them to my waist

And snatch them full of wild spice and run –

These hands of mine

Are loved by animals.

 

Jill and Chiri, banded mongoose

All the many animals of my house

Vie without malice for these hands of mine,

Snuffle and push for just one finger, please!

And when they are engaged in household tasks

There is a jealousy that they should waste their touch

On beds and plates instead of them, the animals.

There seems to be some warmth, some understanding,

Or perhaps just love warming from every cell,

That brings an ease to the frightened and the hurt.

They come into my hands, these animals,

To live, to die, or maybe just to rest.

And little wild orphans, cold with shock

And terrified of every moving thing

Lie easy and grow warm and strong beneath these hands.

These hands of mine

Love the feel of fur, the beating heart, the reaching muzzle,

Though torn with the agony of some too-injured thing,

When pain-blind claws or fangs lash out, not understanding,

Do not complain.

Webbed with thin scars, roughed with work, and old,

More ugly than before, they need not hide,

But walk out in the sun with everyone else,

Because they are loved by animals –

These hands of mine.

(1972)

Hand-grooming

Jill demonstrates hand-grooming on Bay.
Note hip-pistol - it was wartime

Hand-grooming – or hand-rubbing as it is sometimes known – is a method long practiced by the Indians and Arabs.  It is possibly a better means of stimulating the skin than any other form of grooming and puts a marvellous gloss on the animal’s coat.  Because only the bare hands are used it is never irritating to the skin and horses and dogs alike usually love it.

            Because horses perspire over almost the entire surface of the body it is important to keep the skin in a clean and healthy condition.  Hand-grooming the legs of stabled horses stimulates the circulation not only in the skin but around the tendons and ligaments and helps to guard against “cracked heel”.

            Captain M H Hayes, in is book Stable Management and Exercise – a very old book but still well worth studying – describes it thus:

“In hand-rubbing above the knees and hocks, the stroke should be commenced by bringing the flat of the hand – each hand to be used alternately – well under the belly down the forearm, thigh or between the forelegs as the case may be, and it then should be drawn up with an even and firm pressure.  In doing this the weight of the body and strength of the arm should be utilised.

            The usual method adopted for hand-rubbing the legs below the knees and hocks is to kneel down or sit on one’s hams by the side of the leg which is to be manipulated and make alternate strokes downwards, while grasping the leg between forefinger and thumb.  The pressure exerted by the hands should be firm but by no means irritating.  The skin at the back of the pasterns should be well rubbed, so as to render it as dry and pliable as possible.”

He points out that although this technique is sufficient for ordinary grooming, in cases of sprain etc, this rubbing should be from the fetlock upwards, while the limb is held up off the ground.

            In hand-grooming the horse’s body, the coat may first be rubbed up with the fingertips or a wisp made of hay twisted to form a pad.  Then, starting at the nose, the hands stroke alternately with a long, firm action, following the lie of the coat.

            If the hands are dampened with water or cold strained tea, hand-grooming will help to keep the coat short.  However, the natural oil of the coat plus the friction of dry hands should suffice to bring any dirt up onto the palms and this must be rolled off periodically.

***

Jill with Jana and Tisa

Although dogs perspire only from the mouth, nose and paw-pads, hand-grooming is also effective with them, especially the short-haired types, and once they get the idea, most dogs love it.

            Because of the firmness of the stroking, the dog must be able to brace himself against your legs, or against your lap if he is small and you kneel to groom him.

            Rub the coat all over the wrong way, with stiff fingertips, especially through the harder hair along the back.  By fingertips I mean the pads of the fingers, not the nails.  Lift and move the skin as you go, without pinching.  Then dampen your hands, if you wish, with water, with cold strained tea or, if it is the tick season, with a solution of one tablespoon of lamp paraffin in one quart of water.  Once again, beginning at the nose, stroke firmly over the dog, the way the hair lies.

            Do not expect him to keep still.  He will probably stiffen his body, lean against your legs, stamp and shift and toss his head about, the more so if he is enjoying it.  It may help to give him a cloth or a brush to hold in his mouth.

            I frequently try, without any success at all, to hand-groom my cats.  The method is excellent and most effective, but the cats refuse to stand still. After the first few strokes they begin to roll around, grasp my hands, kick my forearms playfully and generally become so purringly impossible that I give up, no matter how they plead for me to continue.

            Hand-grooming is quite hard work, but the health and shine of the animal’s coat will prove it well worth the effort.

Puzzlingly, Jill doesn’t here mention a primary benefit of hand-grooming – strengthening simple bonding and trust.  In addition, it’s the perfect way to pick up ticks, wounds, lesions or strange lumps hidden by the fur, so they can be dealt with timeously.  My cat actually loves a massage, and knows that anything I pick off her, tick or scab, can be explored in my fingers afterwards, and possibly eaten (by her, not me).

Mouse-eye view of the SPCA

From the mouse that ate the files that recorded the affairs of the animals that lived in the house that the SPCA built.

From my office-cum-storeroom, among the SPCA files, the dry goods and the baby food so kindly donated, I watch.

            This office was built for me in 1963.  For the thirty-six years before that I often had to rough it, but I watched.

            I watched a group of people put together their love of animals, their care and skill and what money they could, and form a living, growing, working idea – this Society.

            I watched them agree and disagree and debate, and settle their differences because animals in need were more important than people’s personalities.

            I watched them build safe, dry shelters for dogs, cats, rabbits, chickens, birds, everyone, every kind, and I have watched these shelters fill and clear and fill again, times beyond counting.

            I have seen lost animals brought here, mindless with panic, ferocious with fear, in their confusion torn between their instinct to hide away and their desperate dependence on people.  Ah, and I have seen the tear-blinding, heaven-high joy of reunion.

            I have seen abandoned dogs stunned with disbelief that all they gave, all their love and trust, meant no more than paint upon a wall, admired for a while then left behind without a thought.

            Some have been left tied to empty houses, trapped by their chains as surely as by a snare.  Some have been taken to unfamiliar places and thrown away like paper, to blow and cry on a strange, unheeding wind.  And I have watched them grow anew the courage and confidence to trust again.

            I have seen the injured carried in, the ears of their minds closed against their screaming pain, thinking every hand must be against them, every road must lead to death.

            I have watched them heal and walk and run again, or watched their eyes close in the vast relief of final sleep brought by the vet who understands when enough is enough.

            I have seen cats, their clean, sleek pride broken by poverty, so scuffed by the careless boots of the world that I – even I – have wept.  And tiny kittens, still blind and deaf to that world, crying and reaching out with incredible, stubborn courage, for the only thing they know – their mother their universe.

            I have watched people too, choked with grief, bringing a  beloved animal they can no longer keep; people with their hearts in their eyes, offering their homes to one or two waifs and yearning to take them all; people, SPCA people, being greeted by name by all the animals at once and greeting them in turn.

            From my office, where I live fatly on the dry goods and baby food so kindly donated and the SPCA files thoughtfully made of our sweet, local paper, I watch the dignitaries and the children, the loving and the careless – I can tell them all – come to this special place and leave with new thoughts in their eyes.

            I watch cats play again, and dogs laugh and birds fly free on mended wings, and I think, what would become of this world if people no longer cared, but shrugged away from the silent cry in the eyes of an animal in need, were too heartless or too afraid to call an animal “little friend”.  I think it would cease to be a world at all and go back to lifeless rock.

***

Animals in the guerrilla war

Farm dogs

All that evening Gertie, an alert fox-terrier, was worried and agitated.  Several times the farmer stood still in the shadows of the house, listening.  All was quiet.  Eventually Gertie and the other seven dogs settled down for the night on the veranda and the farmer and his family went to bed.

The attack, when it came soon afterwards, sounded for a second like hail on the roof.  Then came the roar of guns, grenades and rockets, fired from the south where the veranda was situated.  In the heated exchange of fire that followed as the farmer and his family defended themselves there was no time to estimate injuries or comfort animals.  In twenty minutes it was over and help was at hand.

Miraculously no one was hurt.  The dogs had all hidden away in various corners of the garden, except for little Bonzo, a six month-old bull terrier pup.  Somehow he had wedged himself between two brick chimneys, one of which had been hit by a rocket and was leaning at a frightening angle.

It took ten anxious minutes to free the crying, terrified pup who was, to everyone’s great relief, uninjured.  The chimney fell into the sitting room the next day; once again no one was hurt.

It was several weeks before the dogs could be induced to sleep on the veranda again and the sound of a rifle being cocked would send them cringing and shaking into hiding.  In time, however, even Bonzo, who took it all much harder than the others, got over his nerves.

Six months later, without warning a rocket hit the veranda where the dogs were sleeping, crashing through the roof, sending sheets of corrugated iron flying and blasting three of the farmhouse doors from their frames.

Alert little Gertie was killed outright.  So also was Rover, an Alsatian/Doberman, his body sliced in two.  Bully, an enormous thirteen year-old black Labrador, was very badly wounded in the chest and neck and lost a great deal of blood before the attack was repelled by this courageous little family and he could be attended to.  Young Bonzo was also wounded and the terrier Scamp, the old man of the pack, had shrapnel lodged in his upper jaw.

The farm was far from town and the constant veterinary attention the dogs required if they were to be saved, and so they were nursed back to health at the SPCA kennels.  Bully took a long time to regain his strength and his great guarding qualities, and Scamp will carry that shrapnel in his jaw for the rest of his life.  It was six months before the old terrier could breathe properly again.

For weeks after their return home, like frightened children the dogs could not bear to let their owners out of their sight and shook with fear at any loud noises or the sound of a helicopter overhead.

Bonzo’s nerves were shattered.  Two such terrifying experiences in his young life were more than he could manage, and the loss of Rover, his special pal, affected him deeply.  When months of patient, gentle handling failed to help him, he was evacuated right away from that area with all its frightening associations, and in a new home was slowly able to adjust and live a normal life again.

Police dogs

Under the crossed swords of war, boys are called upon to be men, men to be soldiers, soldiers to be leaders.  Policemen extend their duties and their courage far beyond the outlines of their careers.  And with them go their dogs, carefully selected, highly trained, keenly intelligent, embracing without complaint a military role with all its differences, difficulties and dangers.

And if they must give their lives, they give them, some with no more understanding than blind obedience and loyalty; some knowing death when they see it, and meeting it without flinching.

Such a dog was big Brutus.  Dubbed “The Frog-Dog” – from a famous exploit of his in which he, while tracking a common house-breaker, plunged undirected into a river and retrieved from its murky depths a linen bag filled with stolen goods – Brutus sometimes exchanged his city beat for the bush.

There, working free ahead of his patrol, in their search for a new and uncompromising enemy, through grass too long and scrub too thick even for a dog of his size, he caught wind of his well-hidden quarry.

Again undirected, entirely on his own initiative, Brutus hurled himself towards their position, drawing their fire but charging on none the less, into the thick of it.

His action saved his patrol, but cost him his own brave life.

***

 

Clipping from THE OUTPOST - 1978

One tends to think of the dogs of war and work as males.  Alexis, however, was a female.  being a bloodhound, her job was to track, never mind where or why, and track she did, with keenness and stamina that might have been the envy of her brothers.

            Her keenness was called for when the spoor of two armed and wounded men, known to have gone to earth, was lost after twelve hours of searching.  Alexis was brought in and within five minutes had located one man, already dead, and in another five found the second, who was captured.

            Christmas Day was no treat for Alexis.  Four District Assistants had been abducted and she was put on their trail.  She worked without let-up for twenty-six kilometres until she caught up with the group.  In the ensuing contact one abductor was killed, the others fled, and the four captives rescued.

            How well this great girl deserved her retirement, late as it was, and the sweet, easy life.

The ox and the ass

If it means nothing to lock children in a hut and burn it down, why should it mean anything to set fire to a pen of pigs, or turn a machine-gun on a herd of cattle, or chop off the leg of a living cow and leave her, without a qualm?

*

The loaded cattle truck was stopped at gun-point.  The driver was ordered out.  Then the truck was set alight.  The trapped, packed cattle burned to death.

            Why?

*

Not all the cattle stolen were slaughtered straight away.  Some were hidden.  Their legs were broken to prevent them moving away.  They were left there, untended, for days, until someone remembered or needed fresh meat.

*

Donkeys bow their heads in servitude to man.  Obediently they carry maximum loads without complaint.  They wait for food, for water, for rest.  They do not ask.

            They pull the scotch carts down the dusty roads.  They do not know the disturbance in the ground hides a landmine.  They plod across.

            Help must surely come for the tragic little children in the carts, for the wounded and the dead.

            Does somebody help the donkeys, dying in the traces?

            Does anybody care?

The wild ones

For some, in some places, there was relief.  People and livestock moved away.  Grass grew again, and small bushes where a fawn might hide dotted the lands.  As quietly as the grass growing, the animals, hunted out because they were alive, drifted back.

            Night hunting with lights and guns all but ceased.  With less traffic on the roads at night, the casualties there were fewer.  For a while even trapping became less prevalent.

            Against these small gains stood the terrible toll of the minefields.

            Paths trace this way and that across the face of wild Africa – character lines on an ancient face.  Paths that lead to seasonal grazing, browse and water.  Paths that that have been there ever since time was.

            Across the paths fences were strung, adequate for people who knew about such things, but not for animals.

            Some of them, seeing others blown apart, the deafening explosion drowning the screams of agony, understood not to go that way again.  But for most the lesson could only be learned by each one for itself.  One lesson only, taught by Death.

            And to the wounded and the dead came scavengers, victims in their turn.

***

Thousands of animals lost, innocent every one, caught up in man’s stupid wars.  For what?

War, women and dogs

Who suffers most in a war?  The commanders, who fight with coloured pins stabbed in a map?  The soldiers, trained to the weapons and the glory?  Or the women, the children, the old and the helpless, who want none of it – and the animals, who do not understand?

The women

Men don’t have to “adjust to a war situation.”  They cause it!  But ever since one dumbfool man threw a rock at another, women have had to bear with their men going off to fight, all too often taking their sons with them.

Behind me I sense centuries of women, dressed in the fashions of their time – skins, bustles, mid-calf skirts – nodding and saying, “Oh yes, we know.  We too!”  It has happened to every generation.  Did we think we would be spared?

Those women must have coped somehow.  I mean, if all the men went to war and all the women went to pieces the problem of adjusting would have fallen away, along with mankind.

How did early women manage?  Did she sit like this, staring down into a beautiful valley turned suddenly hostile, worrying and wondering when , if ever, her Early Man would come back?  Did she force herself up from her despondency and get along with minding the kids and tending the fire?  Even taking advantage of the situation and going on a crash diet and redecorating the cave walls while the old man was out from underfoot?

Did everything go wrong as soon as he left?  Sure, she didn’t have a fridge whose handle would fall off leaving the door in the locked position ten minutes before breakfast on a school day.    And she didn’t have a car whose torque, whatever that is, wouldn’t torque to her any more because of something to do with the engine turning which won’t.

But I bet the moment her he-man hitched his haunch over hump of the hill the dog threw a fit that looked suspiciously like rabies and there weren’t any vets in those days, and an out-of-season landslide brought the cave down.

Today’s Man gets called out at half an hour’s notice and Today’s Woman spins through the kitchen looking for something substantial to feed him before he goes because the roast isn’t done yet; sifts desperately through the sand pit for the camp cutlery set and tin mug the kids were playing with; frantically sews buttons back on his pants while he’s stepping into them already.

Perhaps it’s no worse than trying to get a decent design in war paint on him while he’s sweating and won’t keep still, sharpening the spikes on his mace, or clanking him into his armour.

Today’s Son wallows in war tales, talks weapons and tactics with his father beyond his mother’s understanding.  She purrs with pride to see him grow so fine and strong and wishes he was a baby she could cradle away from harm.  All too soon he will be off too, a man with a boy’s light laughter.  And they’ll come back (dear Lord, let them come back), brother warriors the pair of them, thumping each others’ shoulders and leaving the dreadful language men talk among themselves outside like dirty boots.  And she’ll pretend she wasn’t miserable without them and send them off to wash as if they were children.

Love and worry are worn together, the warp and the weave of the heart’s homespun mantle.

We tread the same path through the centuries, we women, in our skins and bustles and mid-calf skirts, minis and denims and all.  And while our men fight to stop the fighting and dare not stop themselves or be over-run, we must leave for a moment our dismal valley-watching and go in and feed the kids and the cats and tell the war to wait while we finish the chores.

Men who go to war: the husband

 

The dogs

When you are just a little puppy, loving only your mother in all the world, they take you away, from her, from your brothers and sisters.

You don’t understand.  You just don’t understand why.

But they are good to you and soon the hurt eases.  You are a child with their children and life is good.  For some reason, time goes faster for you than for them.  The children are still children when you are grown.  And you are a parent with their parents.  They are all you want and all you need and life is good, loving only them in all the world.

In the night strangers come, wet with rain, reeking of hate and danger.  You challenge them but they are many.  They drag your people from their beds, the parents and the children.  Drag them shrieking out into the rain.

You fight.  You bite.  You scream for help.  But the strangers are many and no help comes.  The clothes are torn from your people.  Struggling and praying they are apassed from man to man.

Guns bark.  Pangas flash.  And at last the screams are stopped with blood.

And the strangers walk away, laughing.

All night you stay with them.  With their blood and their silence in the rain.  You call to them and lick their faces, loving only them in all the world.  But they grow cold in the rain.  All night you cry for help and no help comes.

You don’t understand.  You just don’t understand why.

The 'beautiful valley'; Umtali (Mutare) in the distance

                                       ***

In the pre-dawn of Wednesday, August 11th 1971, Umtali came under mortar attack.  In a few moments everyone in the suburb of Greenside realised what was happening – everyone except the animals.  Without the reassurance and control few owners had time or thought to give them, they fled in panic into other suburbs, to the distant industrial sites, up Christmas Pass on the other side of town, into the hills, anywhere to escape the awful noise. 

All that day our phones rang incessantly as frantic owners enquired after lost pets and other reported dogs cowering in dark corners or staggering around exhausted, lost and blank-eyed with shock.

Some dogs ran until their pads were bleeding and they were virtually crawling on their elbows.  Some normally friendly dogs turned so vicious in their fear they attacked those trying to help them.  One very old dog was found an incredible distance from his home, hiding in a lumber yard.  A ridgeback puppy was not found until five days later.  Few had any form of identification on them and afterwards an appeal was launched for people to put licence discs or address tags on their dogs because this sort of thing could happen again.  How much quicker it would have been to have called the owner to come to the dog instead of spending twenty precious minutes coaxing it out of some inaccessible place while all those others were crying for help.  Those dogs needed their owners that day far more than they needed us.

The cats in the affected areas vanished, then turned up later ready to forgive everyone the way cats do.  There was only one report of a missing cat.  This Siamese belonged to the house whose roof was hit and after a long and desperate search was found unharmed beneath the rubble.

Over a month later another casualty came to light – a small black dog belonging to a man who worked at Forbes Border Post.  This dog was found after the raid with paralyzed hindquarters and taken to a vet, who advised the owner to let him put him to sleep.  The owner did not want to do this and hid the dog illegally in one of the townships in a chicken coop under a wheelbarrow.

Because the dragging legs became raw, he made “socks” from bicycle inner tube and wired them on.  The lack of circulation and air caused the hind feet to rot and it was a mercy that the dog could not feel anything.  The genuinely concerned owner had done his best in his ignorance.

Following a report, this pathetic little casualty was discovered and taken again to a vet.  As he was removing the rubber and wire from the putrid feet, the vet noticed a pronounced difference in the size, shape and expression in each of the dog’s eyes.  A few simple tests showed positive brain damage.  This time the sad owner agreed to have his put out of its long misery.

***