Predators I Have Known (20 page)

African trypanosomiasis is far less benign than the name it is commonly known by: sleeping sickness.

Besides obliterating cattle by the herd, this exceedingly unpleasant affliction was for many years the number-one cause of death among the human population in some parts of Africa. Once infected, a person begins to suffer fever, headache, and joint pain. Swelling of the lymph nodes, sometimes to prodigious size, follows. Left untreated, the disease spreads throughout the body and methodically overwhelms its defenses. It starts to affect the brain, manifesting itself in bouts of confusion and a complete disruption of the normal sleep cycle, which leads eventually to coma and death. Survivors often suffer permanent neurological damage, including at least one variety of Parkinson’s disease. The disease is caused by the introduction of the protozoan
Trypanosoma,
into the bloodstream of cattle and humans. The protozoan itself is transmitted to cattle and their herders by the tsetse fly.

If sleeping sickness is a benign malady, give me malaria.

Having read about Africa all my life, I had naturally come across innumerable references to the tsetse fly and to sleeping sickness. So it was with some trepidation that when preparing to visit East Africa for the first time, I wrote our friend and host Bill Smythe to ask about whether or not the disease was present in any of the areas where we intended to travel.

“Plenty of tsetse flies,” Bill replied, “but very little trypanosomiasis.”

Good enough—I was half reassured. We booked our plane tickets.

Having driven through east and southern Tanzania for weeks without encountering the fabled vectors, we had grown somewhat complacent regarding the threat they posed. It was not until we headed north and found ourselves in the forest around Lake Manyara that they began to make their presence known—and to remind us why entire sections of Africa remain to this day unable to support herdsmen and their cattle.

We had stopped the car to watch a huge troop of baboons playing, feeding, and generally acting like primates. To conserve hard-to-obtain fuel, we had the air-conditioner off and the windows rolled down. Had any of the baboons approached too closely, we would have swiftly rolled them back up. Baboons are notorious for invading cars and making off with anything they can lay their hands on. But since we were off the beaten tourist track, this particular large troop was unsure of us. They had not yet learned that humans in cars can be a source of food and entertainment.

Suddenly, Sally Smythe let out a yelp of pain, and we all immediately looked in her direction.

“Tsetse fly,” she declared unhappily. A moment later, JoAnn echoed our friend’s exclamation. We immediately started rolling up windows—and embarking on a frenzied program of highly localized extermination.

We couldn’t roll the windows down to shoo the flies out because that would only let more of them in. That was when I discovered that the tsetse fly is very likely the most intelligent and deceptive member of the fly family. It is certainly the toughest.

They’re not hard to see. About the size of a common large housefly, they are the same bland gray in color; the better to blend in with any background, no doubt. They are also the possums of the fly world. Swat a tsetse fly, and it will fall off you, lie on the ground (or in this case the floor of the car) and play dead. Look away, and this Lazarusian insect immediately returns to the attack.

And it is just that, an attack. Even the vicious horsefly of the western United States takes a moment or two to evaluate its meal before dining, going for a stroll on its unsuspecting quarry while searching for a suitable place to dig in. The tsetse is far less discriminating. It doesn’t land on you so much as it dives, needlelike proboscis fully extended, more swordsman than surgeon. Instead of touching down with its feet, it makes contact lance-first. Unlike the more well-mannered leech, which secretes painkiller along with anticoagulant, you are aware of the tsetse’s presence on your body immediately. If the tsetse was an airplane, it would be a Luftwaffe Stuka.

A fiery pain lanced through my left arm. Startled, I swung on the fly with the flat of my right hand. Used to dealing with flies back home, I failed to put sufficient force behind the blow.

I kid you not. The fly staggered, but remained affixed to my flesh.

It was plain that clearing out the car wasn’t going to be a simple matter of waving at flies. We were engaged in all-out combat.

I struck again, hard enough this time to bring redness to my skin. The tsetse dropped off, fell to the floor of the car, and lay there motionless. As yet unacquaintanted with the tsetse ruse, I immediately forgot about it. Big mistake.

I can’t swear that the fly that stabbed into my ankle moments later was the same one I had knocked off my arm, but by that time I was no longer interested in the details of individual identification. All of us were swatting, yelping, trying to juggle car windows, and generally acting like unwilling participants in a cheap horror movie.

“You can’t swat ’em,” Bill advised us from his position behind the wheel. “You have to kill ’em. One at a time. And make sure they’re dead.”

JoAnn and I had already divined this bit of practical African lore for ourselves. The problem was, kill them with what? The heaviest, loudest hand-smack was capable of dislodging them, but after playing deader than a parrot in a Monty Python sketch, they swiftly returned to the attack. A book would have been ideal, preferably something weighty by Stephen King or Tom Clancy, but our books were locked in the trunk—and with a horde of tsetses swarming around the Subaru anxious to get inside, no one offered to step out to unpack suitable volumes. Several minutes of desperate slapping and hopeful experimentation passed before the ideal solution presented itself.

I had brought along a couple of Frisbees, to play with and to trade or give away (somewhere in southern Kenya there is a Masai chief who is the proud owner of an official authorized Batman Frisbee). We soon developed a first-rate method for exterminating tsetse flies that have invaded a vehicle. I reproduce it here for all who may have need of it in the near future.

1. Use Frisbee to trap tsetse fly against solid material such as a window or dashboard.

2. Apply pressure to Frisbee.

3. Push down until you hear something crunch.

Although we suffered some nasty bites, I am happy to report that none of us contracted trypanosomiasis. However, effective as this treatment for dealing with tsetses is, I have to confess that it does come with a pair of unfortunate side effects: dirty windows (there is a lot of blood in a tsetse fly) and one very messy Frisbee. A fair trade-off, though, for avoiding the pain and blood loss that results from a bite. Having personally and successfully applied this technique on multiple occasions at Lake Manyara, Tarangire, and points north in Tanzania, I therefore recommend the inclusion of an emergency Frisbee in the baggage of anyone contemplating travel to these regions. It’s part of what you need to stay safe in the jungle and the savanna.

Socks and a Frisbee. Any caliber.

* * *

Southeastern Peru, May 1987: A Sartorial Digression

TO PROTECT YOURSELF FROM PREDATORY
bloodsuckers, you obviously need more than good socks. Chapter and verse has been written and ample debate exists about what are the best clothes to wear in the depths of the rain forest. As is true of much in life, that which we learn most effectively and which sticks with us the longest we often find out by doing the wrong and not the right thing.

I certainly fulfilled that truism in the course of my first visit to real rain forest, in southeastern Peru.

Wear long pants, the written advisories said. Wear shirts with long sleeves.

What? In the steamy rain forest, where I knew I would be far more comfortable in shorts and a cut-off T-shirt? Though I pondered the alternatives, I reluctantly decided to go with the professional advice. But what kind of long pants and long-sleeved shirt? The closest climate I had experienced to that of the Amazon was French Polynesia, where the land-based predators are considerably reduced in number, species, and temperament. While sucking blood infused with a good pinot noir, even the mosquitoes I had encountered in the canyons of Moorea had evinced a decidedly laissez-faire attitude toward my mildly alcoholic presence.

But this was the Amazon I was heading for, not Tahiti. I resolved to prepare as best I could, given the information available to me. The troubles I soon experienced stemmed not from ignoring good advice but from not having read widely enough.

In 1987, not a great deal was known about Manú. There was no place to stay in or near the park and no Internet that would allow one to readily draw upon the limited amount of information that was available. With no experience in true jungle travel and no one else in my family or circle of friends who had ever been closer to such a place than the Enchanted Tiki Room at Disneyland, I was on my own.

I decided not to invest money that I did not have anyway in specialized attire I might never use again. Surely, a good pair of jeans would suffice to keep off the insects, and if the mosquitoes were really bad I could swap out a T-shirt for one of several well-used long-sleeved dress shirts. So when my friend Mark and I made our arrangements in Cusco to go down into Manú, clothing-wise I felt reasonably well prepared.

It took less than a day for me to realize that I had no idea what I was in for.

There are several reasons why much of the Manú region of southeastern Peru has remained to this day in a virtually untouched state of natural bliss. Difficulty of access is one. Expense in getting there is another. But access and expense won’t keep out rogue loggers, illegal gold miners, and experienced animal poachers. What will keep them out are some of the most fearsome arthropods in the entire Amazon basin.

I’ve written about the vicious, headfirst attack of the tsetse fly and the subtle depredation of the leech. In Manú, I encountered something I have yet to come across anywhere else: bloodsucking insects that can bite through denim. At first, I was reluctant to believe it was happening. But the welts I rapidly acquired on my thighs and other “protected” areas quickly persuaded me. These had not been inflicted by chiggers, mites, ticks, or other parasitic creatures that had crawled under my jeans and up my legs. Never having heard of permethrin, I had not appropriately sprayed any of my clothing with that useful chemical prior to my departure for the hinterlands. My long-sleeved dress shirts proved equally powerless to blunt the daily attacks. Furthermore, they were heavy and hot to the point of suffocation.

I now understood why all the locals wore shorts and T-shirts. It was not because they were immune to the bites and stings, though they were certainly more habituated to them than I was. It was just that anything they could buy or afford locally would have provided little in the way of a defense against the biting insects they were forced to confront every hour of their lives. And if you’re going to get chewed up and spit out anyway, you might as well be as cool about it as possible while you’re being slowly devoured by dozens of tiny, determined, biting creatures.

I had brought along what I thought would serve as excellent protection; repellent that was 100 percent DEET. While this chemical has continued to prove its effectiveness against a multitude of bugs throughout the world, it failed me miserably in Manú. Contrastingly, there is no telling what would have happened to me without it. The problem with DEET in its purer concentrations is that it is exceptionally powerful stuff. I learned this when my sticky, repellent-slathered hands left permanent fingerprints on the metal housing of my 35-mm camera. Tests run years later by the U.S. Army disclosed that a repellent containing 29 to 33 percent DEET is the ideal formulation. Anything less results in reduced effectiveness, and greater concentrations provide little or no additional protection against biting insects.

When I returned home, my wife took one peep at me and nearly picked up the phone to call the doctor. I looked, I am not ashamed to say, like someone who had contracted every disease the Amazon had to offer, in addition to some colorful decorative flourishes added by a deranged but especially imaginative artist. Think someone struck by the measles and chickenpox at the same time. I itched like a madman for several weeks until the splotches, blotches, and other visible marks of my South American sojourn finally faded away. We all like to lose a little weight now and then, but there are more efficient and less debilitating methods of doing it.

The next time I was preparing to visit rain forest (in this case, Papua New Guinea), I thoroughly researched appropriate clothing. A company named Willis & Geiger that had been making safari gear for almost a hundred years boasted of clothing woven from a custom lightweight cotton twill that breathed well and was tough enough to turn back the jaws of an army ant. I bought a pair of their shorts, a pair of long pants, and a long-sleeved shirt. I have them still. With the exception of having to replace two buttons, they are as sound as the day I first wore them. No thorn has ever pierced the material nor any bug, no matter how determined, penetrated the fabric to reach my skin. Additionally, in this specialized attire, I can walk all day in the rain forest, soak it through with perspiration, hang it up in a hotel room, and wear the same outfit to dinner that night in a nice restaurant without embarrassing myself.

So naturally, the company is now out of business, having been purchased by a much bigger concern that promptly discontinued the special material because, as was explained to me by a company executive, “The market for this sort of specialized apparel is too small.” I wouldn’t trade my set of well-worn Willis & Geiger for the finest suit on Saville Row.

After all, when it comes to repelling bugs with jaws the size of your fingernails and the temperament of a testosterone-crazed ultimate fighter, you’re far better off setting aside the silk and satin.