Predators I Have Known (5 page)

I had it.

Holding it up before my mask, I gazed at my prize in wonderment. It was all of an inch long. There the serrated edges, there the sharp point. Just like in the flat, dead book illustrations. Unlike in such illustrations, however, small bits of white flesh hung from the root. There was blood on the left side. Great white shark blood. Great white shark flesh. I didn’t know whether to laugh or shout, both difficult to do with a regulator gripped in one’s mouth. Where to sequester safely this singular trophy? Bending, I unzipped one bootie and slid the tooth inside, then zipped the neoprene back up. I could feel the tooth pressing against my ankle, hard and unyielding and still sharp.

Outside, several hundred similar teeth are cruising back and forth, still in firm possession of their owners. Mine will not be missed. I resumed shooting.

Back on board, my fellow divers expressed envy and delight at the sight of the tooth. It looked smaller on the boat and in the daylight, but what it represented to me grew greater by the minute.

Later, when I removed my wet suit, I was in so much pain I couldn’t climb into my bunk. I had to lever myself in. Turning over was agony. For the remainder of the expedition, I didn’t sleep well, nor was I able to return to the water for another dive.

No matter. I’d had my half hour alone with the masters of the earth’s oceans. I would be returning home with my memories and with video—and with the tooth.

I also returned with a hairline fracture of one or more ribs, but somehow that didn’t matter, either.

Mount Etjo, Namibia, November 1993

ARIZONA HAS BEEN MY HOME
for a third of a century. It’s a visually arresting corner of the world—towering flat-topped buttes, winding canyons of multihued candy-striped stone, rivers that sink out of sight and turn to sand in the dry season, hardy vegetation that half the time is unable to decide if it’s cactus or not, indomitable animals and insects that manage to eke out a rugged existence in a tough, unforgiving, highly variable climate, and birds that, of necessity, seem to possess vision just a little sharper than that of close relatives that have an easier time of life elsewhere.

It looks just like Namibia.

But while the vegetation in Namibia is no less confused than its North American relatives and the birds that patrol its startlingly unpolluted sky have sight equally acute, the animals and insects are very different. As a general rule, the insects of Southwest Africa, whose barren and melancholy shores Namibia fronts, are relatively harmless. For one thing, they’re too busy trying to collect enough moisture to stay alive to spend time producing poisons. But the animals—ah, the animals . . .

You know you’re not in Arizona when a pack of baboons runs across the highway in front of your car.

Yes, Arizona has its predators. Foremost is the cougar, or mountain lion, star of many a Hollywood film and hysterical news report as well as innumerable nature documentaries. Then there is its smaller cousin, the bobcat. The Mexican wolf has been reintroduced in Arizona, with sporadic success. If infrequent rare sightings are to be believed, the occasional solemn and ghostly jaguar also intermittently crosses the border from Mexico to hunt, mate, and scout ancient traditional territories from which single-minded ranchers expelled it a hundred years ago. There are also foxes and, most notably, the ubiquitous coyote. Contrary to its enduring and endearing cartoon adventures, the coyote is far too smart to engage in futile pursuit of lightening-quick roadrunners when the countryside is full of plump rabbits, nut-stuffed ground squirrels, and more frequently these days, clueless suburbanite mini-mutts.

But from there the larger mammalian population of Namibia diverges sharply from its Arizona relations. Perhaps it’s just as well. One wonders at the psychic shock a pack of American coyotes would suffer were they suddenly to be confronted by a foraging elephant.

Far from the overdeveloped, overpopulated centers of civilization in the Northern Hemisphere, Namibia still boasts healthy numbers of leopards, lions, jackals, hyenas, and numerous smaller carnivores. For many people, the most admirable member of the Namibian pantheon of predators is that fastest and most gracile of all the big cats: the cheetah (
Acinonyx jubatus
). Sleek of line, limber of build, with a strikingly marked face that is more doglike than that of any other feline, the patient cheetah was a favored pet of ancient Egyptian nobility. Or so the legends say.

It’s difficult for those of us who are non-royalty to envision successfully keeping a big cat as a pet. At one time or another, my wife and I have shared our home with half a dozen house cats that lumped together wouldn’t weigh as much as a healthy cheetah’s full belly. The outrageous thought of having one of the pharaoh’s favorites freely roaming the kitchen and the rest of the house was a notion destined to remain forever a fragment of little more than dreams and fantasy.

Until I met Felix.

I had not been in Namibia very long, and I can’t remember who it was who recommended that on my way north to the Etosha National Park I should stop and pay a visit to the Mount Etjo Safari Lodge, but a glance at the map showed that it was not terribly far off the main highway. And at 150 miles from the capital, Windhoek, it would make a nice break in the journey to the famed wildlife reserve. Unsure of the driving time, the condition of the highway, or much else in this strange new land that looked exactly like my home state, I figured I could easily give the place a pass if I found myself running short on time.

My informant told me that the turn-off was well marked. And so it was. A few hours out of Windhoek and already in the middle of nowhere, I came upon a large sign indicating that the lodge lay about twenty-five miles almost due west of where I was parked. Standing outside my vehicle flanked by mountains, high veldt, and little else, I took stock of my surroundings. Even here, on the side of the most important road in the country, there was virtually no traffic. This is understandable once one realizes that for Namibia the highway connection southward to South Africa is of far more significance than any need to reach Angola by road.

I was tired, but not exhausted. Should I continue on to Otjiwarongo, or take my casual acquaintance’s recommendation and detour west for a couple of days? Slipping back into my rented Toyota, I turned left and started down the well-maintained dirt road.

The lodge at Mount Etjo (where on March 21, 1990, the Namibian Declaration of Independence had been signed) was even nicer than advertised. Though the weather was incredibly hot, I immediately signed up to stay over for a couple of nights and agreed to join the next available game drive. Situated amid the Okonjati Wildlife Sanctuary’s 75,000 acres of wilderness, the lodge offered plenty to see, from kudu and Damara dik-diks to hippos and friendly elephants—including one young female that insistently kept trying to purloin an Italian visitor’s camera.

Hot, sweaty, and tired after the game drive, the other four travelers hurried from the 4x4 to their cool rooms. Hot, sweaty, and energized, I decided to take a walk. Like sex, the prospect of a freshwater shower in a sizzling climate is enhanced the longer it is delayed.

It was while wandering around the lodge compound that I came upon an enclosure demarcated by a flimsy wall of chicken wire. No more than five feet high at any point, it seemed wholly inadequate to contain anything bigger than a languorous desert tortoise. Wiping sweat from my eyes with the back of my hand, I decided that it was empty. Searching the interior, I noted a few scrubby plants, sand, and some scraggly shade trees. Nothing else but shadows.

Then one of the shadows moved.

My eyes widened, and my heart beat a little faster. Off to my left and right beside the insubstantial fence, something sleek and powerful was stirring in the shady indistinctness of a dappled patch of soil. I took a couple of steps toward it. It moved again. Then it yawned. I had a glimpse of teeth, fur, legs. Leopard? No, surely not. Not in that pen, whose fragile barrier any healthy child could easily have pushed over.

A voice startled me. So focused was I on the softly panting shape of the full-grown male cheetah that I hadn’t heard the guide come up behind me.

“That’s Felix.” The man with the strong South African accent nodded in the big cat’s direction. The afternoon heat was oppressive, slowing my thoughts as well as my movements. “Would you like to meet him?”

“Uh, meet him?”

The guide smiled. “It’s up to you. If you’re willing to go inside his enclosure, I’ll take you in. You can interact.”

Interact
. Under the circumstances, it was a word pregnant with more than one possible outcome. I looked once more at the wobbly fence. Describing it as frail would have flattered it.

“Can’t he get out?”

“Oh, sure,” the guide said. “But he doesn’t. It’s his home.” He proceeded to tell me the cheetah’s story.

Felix’s mother had been killed by a car or truck. Of her two cubs, found alone and crying by the roadside, only Felix was still alive. His sibling had been killed by a mamba. Now Felix was fully mature, and this cockleshell compound was his home. If he really wanted to, he could likely leave any time he so desired, even though, unlike many cats, cheetahs are poor climbers. I looked again at the barrier. It would not have to be climbed. A single leap would allow its sole occupant to clear it.

Torn between desire and common sense, I debated. “Are you sure this is OK?” Wearing proper safari clothes didn’t make me a shikari.

The guide shrugged. “Felix knows me. You should be OK as long as I’m with you.”

Should be. Since childhood it had been a dream of mine to get close to one of the big cats. I think it must be a dream everyone has. If such an encounter came to pass, I had always imagined it would take place at some shopping-mall Christmastime photo-op and involve a well-fed veteran feline performer from the movies or television, or perhaps at a private zoo featuring an elderly people-habituated lion used to having its picture taken alongside giggling children clutching its scruffy mane. Not in the middle of northern Namibia amid heat and sand and far greater variables. I told myself that having been raised by humans, Felix might qualify as half-domesticated.

Of course, that also meant he qualified as half-wild.

I had not come to Namibia on a wine-tasting tour. I nodded at the guide. “Let’s go in.”

Maybe it was only a chicken-wire fence, but once I was standing
inside
the enclosure, the meager meandering barrier suddenly seemed a lot more substantial than it had from the other side. The guide picked up a well-chewed hard rubber sphere about the size of a volleyball and tossed it.

“Here, Felix! Get your toy, Felix. Go get it.”

At the sound of the encouraging guide’s voice, the cheetah lifted his head, looked at the man a moment, and then slumped back down. The guide continued to try to get Felix to play, or just to stand up. Just as studiously, the cheetah ignored him. Standing nearby and watching, I was acutely conscious of still being encased in a veneer of gummy sweat and dust from the afternoon game drive.
Shower
, I thought longingly. But instead of leaving, I made myself stand there and study the recumbent, somnolent carnivore. Heat be damned: I knew these were precious moments not to be wasted.

Felix was big, full-grown, but compared to a lion or tiger not at all that intimidating.
Acinonyx jubatus
resides in its own genus. Famed as the fastest of all land animals, capable of reaching speeds of nearly eighty miles an hour, the cheetah can accelerate from a standing start to seventy miles per hour in three seconds. A Porsche can’t do that. Neither can a Ferrari.

Felix, it was becoming increasingly apparent, was disinclined to provide proof.

The guide kept tossing the ball. With great dignity, Felix continued to ignore both it and him. While it was a privilege simply to be permitted to stand in such close unbarred proximity to such a magnificent animal, the afternoon heat was making me drowsy. Surely, now it was time to leave and partake of the refreshing delights of my room. Or to do something else. Anything to alleviate the tedium and the heat.

Instead of backing toward the exit, I heard myself saying, “Can I get closer to him?”

The guide shrugged. Was that a smile filled with humor, or a cautioning one? “Up to you.”

It seemed as if everything and anything was up to me. Handing the guide my video camera and asking him to shoot some footage, I walked slowly over to Felix, never taking my eyes off him. My deliberate and careful approach aroused him not at all. He didn’t so much as twitch. Slowly, I crouched down beside him. From what seemed like a great distance, I heard the guide say, “He likes to be petted and scratched on his head.”

O-o-o-o-h . . . k-a-a-a-y. Reaching out with my right hand, I began to stroke the fur between the cheetah’s ears, exercising a firm, consistent motion.
After all
, I kept telling myself,
you have six cats at home, and this is just another cat
. Each time I slid my fingers forward onto his forehead, I was acutely conscious of how close they were to that closed mouth.