The Tree Where Man Was Born (21 page)

Last year four poachers died in the Serengeti, One was shot down by the rangers after firing his fourth poisoned arrow. Two corpses were found under a tree, caught by a fire probably set by themselves, for grasslands near a water course are often burned to give the hunters a better view and to make sure that their poisoned arrows are not lost; also, the use of bangi (the marijuana hemp,
Cannabis
, brought to the east coast in the earliest trade with Asia) and homemade spirits is popular in the poachers’ camps, and perhaps the two were taken by surprise. The fourth was mangled and decapitated by a maimed
buffalo caught in his wire snare. Myles was anxious to display the poacher’s head as cautionary evidence in the small museum at Seronera, but was dissuaded by John Owen, who felt that the public display of an African head might be taken amiss. The head is on view in Turner’s office, over the legend (from an Italian graveyard)

Myles Turner is sympathetic with the Ikuria, who are one of the peoples he admires. “The land is all they have,” he says. But he is a traditionalist in his dealings with the Africans, and though he joked with the ranger in the plane, the jokes were firm. When his plane appeared over Lemai, a half dozen of his “Field Force” rushed to the airstrip, where they were lined up more or less smartly by their corporal. In green drill shorts, shirts, berets, and black puttees, they made a fine-looking line, and when Turner stepped down from the plane, they sprang backwards to attention, slapping rifles. “Jambo, Corporal,” Turner said, by way of greeting and approval, then put the rangers at their ease. Plainly the men enjoyed these formalities as much as Myles did, and at the same time were amused. Myles gave them letters and news of their families, and they gave him messages to send back. Then we marched down to the Mara in a military manner to inspect the hippos.

Hippos can weigh twice as much as buffalo, or a ton and a half each. Like whales, they are born in the water, but ordinarily they feed on land, and their copious manure, supporting rich growths of blue-green algae, is a great boon to fish. Here they had piled up in the river rapids, where the lateritic silt had turned them the same red as the broad-backed boulders. On land, the hippopotamus exudes a red secretion, perhaps to protect its skin against the sun, and Africans say that it is sweating its own blood. With their flayed skin, cavernous raw mouths, and bulging eyes, their tuba voices splitting the wash of the Mara on its banks seemed like the uproar of the damned, as if,
in the cold rain and purgatorial din, just at this moment, the great water pigs had been cast into perdition, their downfall heralded by the scream of the fish eagle that circled overhead.

East of Soit Naado Murt, on the Girtasho Plain, a burrow had been taken over and enlarged by wild hunting dogs, which differ from true dogs in having a four-toed foot. In the Girtasho pack were eleven dogs and three bitches, black with patches of dirty white and brindle, and the invariable white tip to the tattered tail. Wild dogs are mangy and bad-smelling, with bat ears and gaunt bodies, yet they are appealing creatures, pirouetting in almost constant play, and rolling and flopping about in piles. Perhaps distemper keeps their numbers low,
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for they are faithful in the raising of their young, and the most efficient killers on the plain.

Wild dogs are nomadic most of the year, attending the migrations of the herds, but when a bitch whelps, they remain with her and bring her food. Ordinarily one dog—not necessarily the mother—remains with the pups when the pack goes out to hunt, and five dogs have been known to raise nine pups after their mother—the pack’s only bitch—had died. At the den one afternoon, four pups were frolicking from dog to dog, and one of the dogs dutifully disgorged some undigested chunks of meat, but the pups were bothered by the bursts of thunder, looking up from their food to whine at the far, silent lightning. A mile to the westward, zebra herds moved steadily along the skyline. When the rain thickened, the pups tumbled down into their den, and the adults gathered in a pile of matted black and brindle hair to shed the huge tropical downpour. Toward twilight, the rain eased and the dog pile broke apart, white tail tips twirling; the animals frisked about the soggy plain, greeting anew by inserting the muzzle into the corner of another’s mouth, as the pups do when begging food. When they are old enough to follow the hunt, the pups will be given first place at the kill.

Four dogs led by a brindle male moved off a little toward the west; they stood stiff-legged, straining forward, round black
ears cocked toward the zebra herds which, agitated by the storm, were moving along at a steady gallop. Then the four set off at a steady trot, and the others broke their play to watch them go. Three more moved out, though not so swiftly, and George Schaller followed the seven at a little distance. Soon the remaining animals were coming, all but one that remained to guard the den. Only the first four were intent; the rest stopping repeatedly to romp and crouch or greet the stragglers. Then these nine would run to catch the four, loping along on both sides of the moving vehicle, casting a brief look at us as they passed. Ahead, the leaders trotted steadily, and the nine stragglers, overtaking them, would again break off to romp and play.

The four lead dogs, nearing the herds, broke into an easy run; the zebras spurted. Perhaps the dogs had singled out a victim—an old or diseased horse, a pregnant mare, a foal—for now they were streaming over the wet grass. Rain swept the plain, and gray sheets blurred the swirling stripes, which burst apart to scatter in all directions. The dogs wheeled hard, intent now on a quarry, but lost it as the horses veered, then milled together in a solid phalanx. A stallion charged the dogs, ears back, and they gave way.

The chase of a mile or more had failed; the wild dogs frisked and played. But now all thirteen were intent, and in moments they were loping back past the waiting vehicle, headed west. The leaders were already in their hunting run, bounding along in silence through the growing dark like hounds of hell, and the others, close behind, made sweet puppy-like call notes, strangely audible over the motor of the car, which swerved violently to miss half-hidden burrows. All thirteen stretched cadaverous shapes in long easy leaps over the plain. In their run, the dogs are beautiful and swift, and came up with the herds in not more than a mile. Then the dark shapes were whisking in and out among the zebra, and a foal still brown with a foal’s long guard hairs quit the mare’s side when a dog bit at it, and was surrounded.

A six-month zebra foal, weighing perhaps three hundred
pounds, is too big to be downed easily by thin animals of forty pounds apiece. The dogs chivvied it round and round. One dog had sunk its teeth into the foal’s black muzzle, tugging backwards to keep the victim’s head low—this is a habit of the dogs, to compensate for their light weight—and the dog was swung free of the ground as the foal reared, lost its balance, and went down. Now the mare charged, scattering the pack, and when the foal jumped up as if unhurt, the two fled for the herd. But the dogs overtook the foal again, snapping at its hams, and braying softly, it stopped short of its own accord. Again a dog seized its muzzle, legs braced, dragging the head forward, as the rest tore into it from behind and below. At the yanking of its nose, the foal’s mouth fell open, and it made a last small sound. Once more the mare rushed at the dogs, and once again, but already she seemed resigned to what was happening, and did not follow up her own attacks. The foal sank to its knees, neck still stretched by the backing dog, its entrails a dim gleam in the rain. Then the dog at its nose let go and joined the rest, and the foal raised its head, ears high, gazing in silence at the mare, which stood guard over it, motionless. Between her legs, her foal was being eaten alive, and mercifully, she did nothing. Then the foal sank down, and the dogs surged at the belly, all but one that snapped an eye out as the head flopped on the grass.

Unmarked, the mare turned and walked away. Intent on her foal, the dogs had not once snapped at her. Noticing the car twenty yards off, she gave a snort and a jump sideways, then walked on. Flanks pressed together, ears alert, her band awaited her; nearby, other zebra clans were grazing. Soon the foal’s family, carrying the mare with it, moved away, snatching at the grass as they ambled westward.

The foal’s spread legs stuck up like sticks from the twisting black and brindle; the dogs drove into the belly, hind legs straining. They snatched a mouthful, gulped it, and tore in again, climbing the carcass, tails erect, as if every lion and hyena on the plain were coming fast to drive them from the kill. All thirteen heads snapped at the meat, so close together
that inevitably one yelped, but even when two would worry the same shred, there was never a snarl, only a wet steady sound of meat-eating. When the first dog moved off, licking its chops, the foal’s rib cage was already bare; not ten minutes had passed since it had died. Then the hyenas came. First there were two, rising up out of the raining grass like mud lumps given life. They shambled forward without haste, neither numerous nor hungry enough to drive away the dogs. Then there were five in a semicircle, feinting a little. A dog ran out to chase away the boldest, and then two of the five, with the strange speed that makes them deadly hunters on their own, chased off a sixth hyena—not a clan member, apparently—that had come in from the north through the twilight rain.

Six of the dogs, their feeding finished, wagged long tails as they romped and greeted; there was just enough light left to illumine the red on their white patches. The rest fed steadily, eyes turned to the hyenas as they swallowed, and as each dog got its fill and forsook the carcass, the half-circle of hyenas tightened. The last dog gave way to them without a snarl. The forequarters were left, and the head and neck, and all the bones. For the powerful jaws of the hyena, the bones of the plains animals present no problem. Hoofs, bones, and skin of what had been, ten minutes before, the fat hindquarters of a swift skittish young horse lay twisted up in a torn muddy bag; the teeth of its skull and the white eye sockets were luminous. At dark, as the tail tips of the dogs danced away eastward, the hyena shapes drew together at the remains, one great night beast sinking slowly down into the mud.

I once watched a hyena gaining on a gnu that only saved itself by plunging into the heart of a panicked herd; the hyena lost track of its quarry when the herd stampeded. The cringing bear-like lope of these strange cat relatives is deceptive: a hyena can run forty miles an hour, which is considered the top speed of the swift wild dog. Cheetah are said to attain sixty but have small endurance; I have seen one spring at a Thomson’s gazelle, its usual prey, and quit within the first one hundred yards.
Hyenas, on the other hand, will run their prey into the ground; there is no escape. And in darkness they are bold—a man alone on the night roads of Africa has less to fear from lions than hyena. In the Ngorongoro Crater the roles ordinarily assigned to lions and hyenas are reversed. It is the hyenas, hunting at night, that make most of the kills, and the lions seen on the carcasses in daytime are the scavengers. Hans Kruuk has discovered that the crater’s hyenas are divided in great clans, and that sometimes these hyena armies war at night, filling the crater with the din of the inferno.

The natural history of even the best-known African mammals is incomplete, and such hole dwellers as the ant-bear, the aard-wolf, and the pangolin have avoided the scrutiny of man almost entirely. It is not even known which species excavate the holes, which may also be occupied by hyenas, jackals, mongooses, bat-eared foxes, aard-wolves, porcupines, ratels or honey badgers, and, in whelping season, the wild hunting dog. Often the burrows are dug in the bases of old termite hills, which stand on the plain like strange red statues of a vanished civilization, worn to anonymity by time. The termites are ancient relatives of the cockroach, and in the wake of rains they leave the termitaria in nuptial flight; soon their wings break off, and new colonies are founded where they come to earth. Were man to destroy the many creatures that prey on them, the termite mounds would cover entire landscapes. The African past lies in the belly of the termite, which has eaten all trace of past tropical civilizations and will do as much for the greater part of what now stands. At the termitaria, one may look at dawn and evening for such nocturnal creatures as the striped hyena, with its long hair and gaunt body, but in my stays in the Serengeti I never saw this wolf-sized animal that lived in the ground beneath my feet.