Part of the Pride (26 page)

“Kevin, come quick, Homer's desperately ill.” Rodney Nombekana had called me on my cell phone while I was driving and my first thought was that he was overreacting.

I thought, no way. Hyenas are tough, they never get sick.

“No,” Rodney insisted when I told him my thoughts. “He's at the vet. You have to come, this is serious.”

I tuned the wheel to change course and planted my foot on the accelerator. When I got to the surgery, Homer was catatonic, passed out with his eyeballs rolled back in his skull.

“I think he's been poisoned by something,” the vet said when I arrived.

While the vet monitored Homer's deteriorating condition I paced up and down, wracking my brain to work out what could have happened to him. The
Growing Up Hyena
film crew was already at the vet's surgery, and they filmed my arrival and my concern. I couldn't blame them for being intrusive. It was their job to film the whole story, but when Homer died, I cried.

The autopsy showed that the vet's initial suspicions were correct. Homer had died from poisoning by an unknown heavy metal, though there was no indication of how it had been administered. There was nothing in his enclosure he could have eaten or licked, and to this day I still don't know what happened to him. I wondered if someone could have poisoned him, but why would anyone do it? He was such a cute little ambassador for the world of hyenas that I couldn't figure why anyone would want him to die. I remembered, though, the look on Marge's face when I brought him back to the clan and it sent a little shiver down my spine.

Homer's death hit me hard and got me thinking about how I would react when all my other beloveds passed away. I'm not a fool—I
know animals come and go, but this was a tragedy and it made me realize that forming so many relationships with my animals, rather than just “working” them, meant I had invested a piece of my heart in each of them. Homer was really the child whose life was ripped away before he got to make his true mark. His short time on earth, however, had more impact on the way people think of hyenas than any other documentary ever made. He was just one in a million. You don't get dogs like Homer, never mind hyenas. I always felt, and still do, like a proud father when I speak of him, and I inevitably get all teary and emotional. Losing him and thinking about the others I might lose was as wrenching as losing a close friend or family member. These aren't simply pets. They've become part of my family and I've become part of theirs.

What made it worse with Homer was that he was only three months old. To all intents and purposes I had been his father, hand-raising him and even teaching him to eat. I had lived, slept, and breathed with him for virtually all of his short life. It made me think about the pain people must feel when they lose a child. If Tau and Napoleon had to die tomorrow, I would be very, very sad, but I'd know that they've led great lives—better than any lion in the wild. Homer, however, had been poisoned at the start of what I thought might be a great life. He would have had me as a friend and I would have had him. But it was not to be.

The documentary makers, of course, loved it, from a professional perspective. They and their viewers were seeing real, raw emotion when Homer died in the vet's surgery. At the time, however, the producers were very compassionate and said to me, “Let's leave it,” and it looked like that would be the end of
Growing Up Hyena
. Later, they phoned me and asked if I would consider carrying on the story, perhaps with two other hyena cubs we had just acquired, Bongo and Tika. They hadn't been part of the program, but they became the main game when I agreed to carry on with the filming.

It was an emotional time for me, getting over Homer's death,
and while I probably wouldn't have been involved in raising Bongo and Tika, the filming forced me into their pen, along with Helga, who had been working with them. I needed to get over Homer, and while I may have been reluctant at first, Bongo and Tika worked their way into my heart, as well. We were able to complete filming the documentary showing the pair's development, and in the process I made two new friends. Several years on, Bongo and Tika are still with me and we are great mates, but I'll never forget Homer. I'm not a crier generally, but I cried all over again when I saw
Growing Up Hyena
on television for the first time.

TWELVE
 
Life Away from the Lions

 

 

 

I'm like a lion. If I'm not sleeping, I'm up and doing something active. However, unlike a lion I have more than four hours of waking time per day to occupy, so I am a real busy body.

If I am not interacting with the lions or the hyenas or the other animals, I'm either working on a documentary or other filming project, or in my spare time pursuing one of a number of hobbies. The making of the feature film,
White Lion
, has consumed much of my time in the last few years, but when I can, I get out and ride my vintage Triumph motorcycle; I fly; I hike; and I ride superbikes on the racetrack.

When people meet me for the first time I think some of them are surprised. I don't wear khaki safari clothes or
veldskoen
shoes; I don't have a big bushy beard and long hair; and my whole life does not revolve around animals only.

I do have a life away from my lions, hyenas, leopards, and other predators. My passion for bikes as an adult was nurtured by my ex-girlfriend Lisa's brother-in-law, a guy called Clayton, better known
as Gopher, who remained a good friend of mine after Lisa and I broke off.

Gopher and I would sit for hours drinking ice cold Windhoek lagers and talking about bikes. When Mandy met him, I'm sure she thought Gopher might have been a bad influence in my life, but I assured her I had matured from my teen years, which I had already told her all about. Nonetheless, I knew she was concerned about what we got up to on Saturday afternoons, when Gopher and I would set off on our motorcycles together.

There is a great chain of outdoors shops in South Africa called Cape Union Mart, and the big store in Sandton Mall has its own indoor climbing wall. Gopher and I used to like going there on a Saturday and competing against each other to see who could reach the top of the wall first.

It was a good place to hang out, literally, and the shop also had a separate “climate room” with the air-conditioning set way down low. The idea was that rich suburbanites could try on some winter clothing for their next ski strip and go into the climate room to see how their gear performed in sub-zero temperatures. Gopher and I saw the possibility for a new competition immediately. We decided to go in dressed in shorts and T-shirts and see who could stand the cold for the longest time before freezing his nuts off. It was such good fun the first time that it became a regular game for us. Sadly for me, Gopher has now emigrated to Australia.

“What do you and Clayton get up to on Saturday afternoons when you disappear together?” Mandy asked suspiciously one evening early on in our relationship, after I'd returned home on the bike.

“We hang out in Cape Union Mart and then see who can last the longest in the cold room,” I told her honestly.

She looked at me and shook her head. “Is that the best story you could come up with?”

People also think that when I go into the bush I'm going to be
serious and sonorous like the great BBC commentator David Attenborough. Others think I'd be chasing every dangerous animal I can find, just like Steve Irwin. The truth is a lot more boring: when I get away I mostly just like to have fun. When I get to a national park or game reserve, I don't go out looking especially for lions or hyenas or other predators. I don't need to see big cats in the wild or see a predator make a kill to think I've had a worthwhile time. I like to simply be in the bush and appreciate everything around me in nature, even the little things—especially the little things.

Rodney Fuhr sponsors a wildlife research base in the Okavango Delta in Botswana, on the edge of the Moremi Game Reserve. I get up there when I can, as I love the bush, and one day, if I get the time, I would like to pursue some research ideas of my own, particularly in relation to wild hyenas.

The camp, called Squacco Heron Projects, is in a beautiful setting, overlooking a permanent waterhole not too far from the Gomoti River. Rodney's funding provides researchers with accommodation and an office where they can work on their reports. Most of the permanent staff at the camp are from the local community, the traditional owners of the land. Rodney leases the land the research base is on, and the rights to a photographic safari operation nearby, called Moremi Tented Camp (MTC).

The area abounds with game, such as buffalo, elephants, zebra, giraffe, kudu, and impala, and all the major African predators can be found around, and sometimes in the camp. When you visit, the nightly lullaby is usually the whoop of spotted hyenas, and your alarm is the low, mournful call of a lion in the predawn darkness. There are few places in Africa I've been to where you can see as many animals in one place as the rich verdant floodplains around the Gomoti at the end of the dry season.

Mandy and I were visiting the camp during a break and went
out for a game drive with Guy Lobjoit, the research camp manager, and Rodney Fuhr. We loaded the Land Cruiser with drinks and
padkos
, which means food for the road.

The delta is beautiful. Moremi's landscape ranges from forests of tall trees fed by a high water table beneath the Kalahari sandveld, to vast areas of marshes bisected by shallow clear water channels as the Okavango River trickles its way from Angola and Namibia to the north into the dry heart of Botswana.

Guy stopped the vehicle at a nice pan, a waterhole set in an open sandy area where we had good visibility. As we got out of the vehicle and started unloading our food and drinks for sundowners and dinner, Guy spotted movement in the bush at the edge of the pan. Before we knew it we found ourselves among a pack of about a dozen wild dogs.

The African wild dog is the most efficient predator on the continent. These highly organized professional killers bring down a higher percentage of the prey they chase than any other carnivore. They can rip an impala or wildebeest to shreds and devour it in a matter of minutes, yet there has never been a recorded incident of them attacking a human being in the wild. They have also been one of the most endangered mammals in Africa, which makes any sighting of them a rare treat.

“Kevin, get back in the vehicle,” Mandy hissed. She was already perched back inside the Land Cruiser.

Guy and I stayed on the ground. The dogs had seen us, and while they paused for a moment, their big ears rotating towards us and noses sniffing the air, they did not turn and run from us simply because they saw two humans standing by a vehicle. Guy has lived a lot of his life in the bush, and worked as a section ranger in the Umbabat private game reserve on the border of the Kruger National Park. He has a good knowledge of the bush, and we're both the kind of guys who are sometimes more comfortable around wild
animals than people. We held our ground and the dogs started moving slowly towards us.

Wild dogs are also known as painted hunting dogs because of their intricately patterned coats, which are decorated with blotches of yellow, white, brown, and black. They're the size of a small Alsatian and have overly large ears, which help them sense prey and danger, and long, spindly legs. Like all dogs they're curious, and this pack was no different.

“Kevin!”

I ignored my wife's command and stayed put with my friend and my dinner. Rodney was in the vehicle, having his dinner and enjoying the show. One by one the dogs closed the gap between us and them. I'm no different than how I was as a kid. I can't just look at things. I wanted to see how the dogs would react to me when I was on foot, as opposed to being in the vehicle. I don't feed wild animals—no one should—but one of the dogs in the pack was curious about what I was eating. It came close enough to me to smell my fingers. Mandy was having a heart attack but I knew the law of averages was on my side. The dogs had made a conscious decision to approach the humans and they satisfied themselves we were no threat to them.

As the dogs sniffed and played around us I realized, once again, how lucky I am to be able to have such an experience and to live on this continent. Like I said, I don't go looking for close encounters with wildlife in the bush, but sometimes things find me.

I love to fly and I took Rodney Fuhr's Cessna 182 up to Liuwa Plains in Zambia when he made the decision to close his research camp there and move it to Botswana. I had helped with some of the logistics at Liuwa camp and while I was excited about his new venture in Botswana, it was a little sad to be going back to close things down.

My regular safari tent was still set up in the camp, and I made myself at home again. I helped dismantle the camp during the days and each night, after a couple of beers, I lowered myself onto the camping bed on which I slept.