Predators I Have Known (6 page)

Without looking in my direction, Felix lifted his head slightly and began to purr.

I had no idea what to expect from the encounter, but I did not anticipate that. It was a perfectly normal, ordinary, familiar feline purr. Deeper than that emitted by our cats at home, but unmistakable. It was one of the most beautiful sounds I have ever heard in my life. I am sure the uncontainable smile that spread across my face made me look like a prime candidate for the post of village idiot, but I didn’t care.

I stayed like that, petting and stroking Felix, until the guide began to fidget. Unnoticed by me, half an hour had passed in the late afternoon heat.

“Had enough?” he finally asked me.

Utterly and completely subsumed in the magic of the moment, I would have stayed until my thighs gave out and I toppled over, but his query reminded me of the time and the temperature. “Almost,” I replied. Our cats enjoyed being scratched between their front legs. At least half full of confidence now, I reached forward and began to scratch Felix on his chest, between his lanky but muscular front legs.

Something
whizzed
past my face. I felt the slightest brush of wind. It happened so quickly that only after the fact did I realize what had taken place. At the same time, I became aware that Felix had twisted his upper body around, turned his head, opened his mouth, and was looking straight at me. He was holding his right leg up, the paw pointed at my face. For the first time, I could see his teeth clearly. The killing canines were much, much bigger than I would have imagined.

The guide had immediately lowered the video camera. His voice had tensed slightly. “That’s interesting,” he said evenly. “I didn’t know he didn’t like that.”

You didn’t know . . . ? You didn’t
know
?

I know I flinched. But in a crouching position, with my thighs and calves already thoroughly cramped from maintaining the same posture for so long, I couldn’t do more than flinch without falling down. That would have put me flat on the ground, which I suspected would have been A Really Bad Idea. I stared at Felix. Felix stared at me. Then he lowered his foreleg and resumed facing forward. And did something that in its own way was even more shocking than the warning swipe he had taken at my face.

He meowed.

I swear, it was a cartoon dialogue-balloon meow. A perfect Sylvester-the-Cat meow. I knew cheetahs might purr. I knew they barked. But
meow
? The guide had shut off the video camera as soon as the cat had swung at me, so we missed recording the sound. Mentally, I tried to reconcile what I had just experienced with what I had just heard. Was the cat apologizing? Laughing? Teasing?

First I’ll rip your face off, then—meow.

Reviewing the video later, I was able to see what my eyes had not been able to register when the incident had occurred. Felix’s semi-retractable claws (semi-retractable claws are known only in three other cat species) had missed my nose by about an inch. The cheetah had known exactly what he had been doing.

Don’t scratch my chest.

I counted myself fortunate. Very fortunate indeed. Had Felix been in a more irritable mood, he could just as easily have taken my nose off. Or bit down on the offending hand. Instead, he had chosen only to warn me. Maybe it was the heat. Maybe at night, or on a cooler afternoon, it might have gone differently.

Handing my camera back to me, the guide said casually, “You mentioned earlier than your wife is an ex–vet tech, and that you have some land in Arizona with a horse stable and a high fence.”

“Thirteen acres.” I wiped sweat from my forehead. My eyes were burning. “Why?”

That half smile again. “We have more animals than we can take care of here. Would you be interested in taking Felix home with you? We could prepare the necessary export papers, handle quarantine arrangements, and so on.”

He’s putting me on
, I thought.
Probably plays the same gag on everyone who spends time with the cat.

But what if it
wasn’t
a joke . . .

I gave the offer serious thought. Really serious thought. For about thirty seconds. Not because I didn’t think I could get along with Felix. Not because our thirteen acres of terrain virtually identical to what he was familiar with here at Mount Etjo would be unsuitable for him. Not because I worried that he might scare our own cats inside out. But because I don’t believe in keeping big cats, or any big animal with the exception of a horse or a llama, as a pet.

I’ve been torn up pretty good by the claws of house cats. They can bite, too. Dogs also bite. So do babies. My philosophy on keeping big cats as pets is twofold.

First, it’s a silly and unnecessary paradigm of macho self-aggrandizement.

Second, you can keep a big cat as a pet for years. You can sleep with it, eat with it, play with it, swim with it, let your family nuzzle it while they’re watching TV. And then the cat has one bad hair day. If it’s a house cat, you get a scratch. If it’s a dog, you get a nip. If it’s a kid, you get yelled at and maybe cussed out.

If it’s a big cat, you lose something else. Like maybe the kid. So I put the idea out of my head permanently, if not instantly.

Those thirty seconds of serious consideration lingered in my mind for an unusually long time.

Before I left the compound, Felix stood up and stretched. I can tell you that a full-grown male cheetah standing up is a helluva lot more striking than one that is lying down. The attenuated body and the impressively long legs make for one deceptively large animal. Had Felix chosen to stand on his hind legs and put his forelegs on my shoulders, he could easily have looked me in the eye. But we had already done that last bit.

So there you have it. A fragment of knowledge you won’t find in the guidebooks and one I inadvertently added to the local lore at Mount Etjo. The next male cheetah you meet, don’t try to scratch him between his front legs.

Not even for the chance of hearing him meow.

East Central Australia, November 1989

MY WIFE AND I WERE
standing on the sweltering tarmac at the little airport in Bundaberg, Queensland, Australia, waiting beside our modest luggage to depart for Lady Elliot Island. I had heard a great deal about the unspoiled beauty of isolated Lady Elliot, usually promoted as the southernmost island on the Great Barrier Reef, and we were both looking forward to a few days’ respite from our planned long drive up the coast from Brisbane to still-distant Cape Tribulation.

Assuming the well-used aircraft parked in front of us could get us there in one piece, of course.

I don’t like flying. I’ve had some stunning flights in tiny planes and ghastly flights in big planes and vice versa, but the discomfort and unease in my gut never goes away. The veteran Twin Otter parked before us was already crammed to the gills with supplies for the island’s solitary resort. As the only passengers on this particular flight, we were allowed to seat ourselves wherever we could find space among the stacked crates of biscuits, boxes of canned goods, and cartons of bottled drinks, many of the latter from Bundaberg’s own excellent local brewery.

“Where’s the rest of the plane?” my wife asked as we prepared to board.

Fortunately, the air was calm and clear, and the flight itself thankfully devoid of literal ups and downs. Landing on Lady Elliot presented an interesting prospect of its own. There is something unsettling about small island airstrips that extend all the way from one side of your destination to the other. Come in too short, and you end up in the water. Delay touchdown too long or fail to brake in time, and you end up in the water.

I’ve always been grateful that my love of being in the water tends to cancel out my fear of flying over it.

We and our minimal baggage were soon settled in our comfortable if basic room, luxuriating in the island’s much-advertised tranquillity, the flitting about of hyperactive sparrow-size yellow-tinged silvereyes twittering in the pisonia trees, and the rhythmic flush of wavelets breaking on the nearby shore. Lady Elliot is not an atoll, but an island with a fringing reef, so at high tide the water rolls all the way in to the island.

While JoAnn rested, I did an afternoon dive with a small group of fellow visitors and one of the more unpleasant dive masters I’ve ever encountered, but I enjoyed myself anyway. I always do in the water. Whenever I’m diving I’m reminded of Peter O’Toole’s statement while portraying Lawrence of Arabia in the film of the same name. When asked what it is that he, Lawrence, finds so appealing about the desert, O’Toole flatly replies, “It’s clean.” In the context of O’Toole’s cinematic characterization of Lawrence, this brief response holds many meanings. I think of it often when I’m diving.

When the tide is out at Lady Elliot, visitors are permitted to walk on and to explore the shallow fringing reef. As my wife doesn’t dive, this offered her the chance to observe at close range those sea creatures caught in pools left by the receding waters as well as those who dwell permanently in the intertidal zone. Reef walking is something anyone can do, but it’s not as casual or danger-free an exercise as it is often portrayed in tourist advertisements.

To begin with, you need to have appropriate footwear. Simple sandals, flip-flops, and cheap open shoes just won’t do. Coral can cut like a knife. Your feet need more than a minimal amount of protection. Ragged coral can also slice and dice footgear that is insufficiently durable. One of the quickest routes I know to a hospital is to be caught hiking far out on a reef with inadequate footwear. Coral not only cuts, it infects, and coral infections can be damnably difficult to cure and reluctant to heal.

Your feet can slip out of cheap sandals. Coral constitutes a rough walking surface whose unevenness is further disguised by the action and visual distortions caused by rippling water. Your favorite footwear may be tough, but if it doesn’t provide proper support for your feet and ankles, you’re better off skipping a reef walk, however enticing it seems. Nothing can bring a vacation to a miserable, screeching halt faster than a twisted knee or broken leg.

The best shoes I’ve found for reef walking are the booties scuba divers don before slipping on their fins. Booties are tough, designed to be submerged in salt water all the time, and many styles are equipped with ribbed soles suitable for limited hiking. They come with an added benefit in that they can be used with fins, even if all you do is snorkel. Compared to booties, expensive reef-walker shoes, Tevas and their clones, and plastic sandals don’t hold up. If you don’t have booties, I suggest bringing along a pair of expendable sneakers.

Because it’s not only the inanimate sharp-edged coral that you have to look out for.

Reefs and their inhabitants are among the most amazing places on the planet. But like every other ecologically rich biota, they are home to hunters as well as the hunted, and sometimes the hunters are less than obvious.

When discussing diving I’m often asked, “Aren’t you afraid of the sharks?” Let me tell you—whether on land or in the water, it’s not the big predators you have to worry about. It’s the little guys. The chance of being attacked by a shark, or a lion, or a bear, is far smaller than that of contracting a tropical disease, or acquiring an inimical internal parasite, or a persistent infection. It’s smaller than that of meeting up with one of Nature’s miniaturized but no less deadly predators. As any Australian who has been stung by an irukandji jellyfish (and survived) can tell you.

Cephalopods are all carnivores. Their class is comprised of squid, octopus, cuttlefish, and that living fossil, the chambered nautilus. They are the most intelligent of all invertebrates. Unlike a fish, when you confront a cephalopod, especially a cuttlefish or octopus, and gaze into its remarkably advanced eyes, you get the distinct feeling that something is looking back at you and . . . thinking. Their parrotlike beaks are powerful enough to crush the shells of mollusks to get at the edible flesh within. When biting, some species drip toxins of varying potency into the wound they inflict in order to help immobilize their prey. Sadly, they only live two or three years. I’ve always wondered how our species would have fared if intelligent cephalopods enjoyed life spans akin to that of humans. Perhaps one day genetic engineering would allow . . .

“Come look at the pretty octopus!”

I was preoccupied with examining some small fish isolated in a tidal pool when JoAnn called out to me. At her shout, I immediately left the fish to their sanctuary and carefully made my way over to my wife. Kneeling in shallow water that occasionally lapped over her ankles, she was poking and prodding at something just beneath the surface. I couldn’t see what it was until I drew much closer.

When I saw what it was she was toying with, I’m sure my heart skipped a beat.

“Stop that,” I said. I think I was too taken aback to speak loudly. “Stand up and step back.”

She looked up at me. “Why? Isn’t it pretty?”

“Please, hon. Just step back.”

As a point of pride as well as amusement, JoAnn will usually argue anything with me, grinning as she does so. There must have been something in my voice, because she looked at me uncertainly and then, thankfully, stood up and took a step backward. She was wearing tough but open-toed sandals. Grateful for my ankle-high diving booties, I advanced gingerly and leaned over to get a better look at what she had been casually fingering. If I had guessed wrong as to its identity, I would be forced to own up to my ignorance. A cloud momentarily slid in front of the equatorial sun, fortuitously eliminating most of the glare coming off the gently rippling water.