Cry of the Kalahari Page 23

  We had somehow hoped that in Deception we would find relief from the heat, drought, and searing wind. Instead, it was more of the same. Neither of us spoke.

  A dozen dust devils skipped across the parched plains, as if the ground was too hot to touch. Sunburned, with cracked lips and reddened eyes, we slowly crossed the riverbed and stopped at what was left of camp: A heap of twisted poles, some shredded, sun-bleached canvas, and a scattering of rusted tin cans all lay under a layer of broken twigs and sand. The hanging shelf dangled from its tree limb by a frayed length of rope, and the shelter we had built for shade had collapsed to a stack of reeds. Crescents of sand had climbed the wind-ward sides of the water drums at the edge of camp. Except for the wind whistling through the trees, a ghostly silence greeted us.

  We tried to come to grips with feelings of utter despair. Typically blithe and overoptimistic, we had hoped for rain. There had been none. There were no antelope, and no lions or hyenas. Only wind, thornscrub, sand, and heat. A tattered strip of canvas still holding to a corner of the buckled tent frame flapped harshly in the wind. We tied rags over our faces against the stinging sand carried by the gale and slowly picked up a pot here, a tin can there. What are we doing here . . . and why? we wondered silently.

  Sunset . . . the heat broke and the wind fell. The desert stood in numbed silence. The red sun, looking bloated and lop-sided in the blowing dust and sand, sagged ponderously behind West Dune. From the woodlands in Captain’s territory, the stirring cry of a jackal lifted across the valley. We knew why we had come back.

  From here on, our entire study would depend on making the radiotracking equipment work, but as had been the case with the darting, neither of us had had any previous experience with it. Radio telemetry was still in its infancy, and other field researchers had found the system temperamental and, in many cases, more trouble than it was worth.

  “Test the equipment under conditions that resemble as closely as possible the actual field situation,” read the instructions. Delia paced off 400 yards from camp, strapped on one of the radio collars, and began crawling on her hands and knees across the riverbed, simulating the movements of a foraging hyena. I was spinning dials and flicking switches on the new receiver, pointing the antenna in her direction, when I heard the soft scraping of Mox’s feet behind me. We had driven to Maun and brought him back to camp several days after returning to Deception.

  I turned to where he stood, broom in hand, about to sweep out the tent. A curious look came over his face as his sharp eyes focused first on Delia in the distance, and then at the receiver and antenna in my hands. I put one of the large collars around my neck, “Radio—wireless—for peri—hyena—inside here.” I showed him the lump of pink dental acrylic that molded the transmitter to the heavy belting.

  Mox looked from the collar to Delia, then back at me. “Wireless!” I said urgently, holding up the receiver and pulling the whip antenna out from the collar.

  “Ow! Missus . . . peril Peri. . . music?” he asked quietly. He shot another look at Delia, and his hand went to his throat. The comers of his mouth struggled against the faint beginnings of a smile; he sniffed and turned. Despite the times Mox must have wanted to laugh at us, he had always managed to control himself—afraid, I think, that we might take it as a sign of disrespect. “Huh,” he sniffed again. Shaking his head, he walked into the tent. I was reminded of his views on backtracking hyenas.

  No matter how I held the antenna or turned the receiver, at distances of more than 400 yards—far less than the mile-and-a-half range we had been led to expect by the manufacturer—I could not hear a sound from the transmitter on Delia’s neck. We sat on the riverbed, our heads on our knees. This was a critical defeat for our research. Though it meant a special trip to Maun and months of delay, all we could do was send the radio equipment off for tuning and readjustment. We boxed it up and gave it to a bush pilot, who flew it to South Africa.

  Meanwhile, we turned again to our old method of searching for brown hyenas. But knowing how limited our chances were of finding one that way, it wasn’t easy to motivate ourselves for the long hours of driving over rough ground, watching the light sweep back and forth across an empty riverbed. We sang and recited poetry to stay awake.

  The beginning of the rains in early 1977 brought welcome relief from the heat. The antelope herds filtered back to the valley, and our clucking flock of hornbills arrived from the West Dune woodland early one morning, landing on the tea table and begging for bread crumbs. Delia was out of her chair and getting a bowlful of yellow mealie-meal almost before they had landed.

  A lion roar awakened us one morning, and from our bed we could see a large male sauntering down the riverbed toward camp. Propped up on our elbows, we watched, through the mesh window of the tent, a herd of 1500 springbok split neatly down the middle, the antelope ambling aside to let him pass. They knew he was not hunting.

  When he was thirty yards from camp we could see the orange ear tag, number 001. Once more Bones had come back to Deception Valley after the dry season. Pausing at the acacia bush beside our window, he gave us a casual glance and, lifting his long tufted tail, shot urine and scent into its lower branches. He roared again, then listened—head high, ears perked—looking far up the valley to the north, where a chorus of lions answered. He walked quickly in that direction, and we followed in the truck.

  At the water hole on Mid Pan he stood looking across the valley at the approach of a long single file of lions. Delia raised her field glasses. “Mark, it’s the Blue Pride!” Bones walked a short distance toward them, before casually lying down. His pride trotted up, each rubbing cheek to cheek with him and then sliding along his body in greeting. Afterward Sassy, Spooky, Gypsy, Spicy, and Blue headed straight for the truck, and after smelling it thoroughly, they chewed on the tires until I bumped the starter to make them quit. Chary, her back sagging lower than ever, remained aloof from all this tomfoolery and watched from a safe distance.

  We sat with the lions for a while, then headed back. When we pulled away from the pride, Sassy, still as fascinated with the turning of the wheels as she had been as a cub, trotted along with her nose close to the rear bumper, while the others followed in a long line behind us. Wearing one of his rare smiles, Mox came to the edge of camp and stood there drying a plate. We must have looked like Pied Pipers.

  With Sassy leading, the lionesses invaded camp. Bones lay down near the fireplace. As always, Mox slipped out the back of the island, circled around, and joined us in the truck. By now he was quite used to these surprise visits by lions, leopards, and hyenas, and thoroughly enjoyed the Blue Pride’s traveling circus. Sassy grabbed the hosepipe from the water drum. Holding her head high as if she had killed a prize snake, she pranced out of camp with her trophy. Grunting, sprinting, dodging, and turning, their claws tearing at the grass, the others gave chase in a great game of keep-away. Blue pounced on the trailing end but Sassy kept pulling, and the hose snapped in two. Spicy and Gypsy grabbed at one of the pieces and soon the thing was reduced to mere bits of green plastic. Leaving us to figure another way to conveniently get water from our drums, the lions marched off to sleep the day in “Lions’ Rest,” the bush hedge 200 yards to the west.

  We observed the lions whenever we could find them near the riverbed, but early one morning in late May 1977, we followed the Blue Pride when they passed camp and went hunting, north up the valley. It was the last we saw of them that year, justifying our fears that they would leave the valley before our radio telemetry equipment came back. An entire season of lion research was lost.

  When our radio equipment was returned for the third time, it worked no better than before. There was nothing to do but go ahead and improvise with it on the brown hyenas, since the lions were already gone. We had neither the money nor the time to purchase another system.

  The only way to increase the range of the collar transmitters was to increase the height of the receiver’s loop antenna. Holding it at arm’s length from the window wa
s not enough, so we tied it to a tent pole section, and by adding other lengths beneath, we could raise the antenna to twenty or twenty-five feet above the truck. Delia and I stood in the back of the Land Cruiser, developing and practicing a technique for getting the antenna up and down quickly in order to keep up with a moving hyena. Meanwhile, Mox noted every detail of the operation from wherever he happened to be working.

  One night we immobilized Star, bolted a radio collar around her neck, and laid her gently beneath a ziziphus tree in Bush Island, a thick clump of bushes close to camp, where we could keep an eye on her recovery. We watched her until dawn, anxious for her to regain her senses and move off into the bush so that we could try out our radio-tracking technique.

  After a quick bite to eat at camp, we went back to find that Star was gone from Bush Island. We didn’t panic. She couldn’t have gone far, and we should be able to find her easily with the radio collar. Delia climbed into the back of the truck, and began swinging the loop antenna, while I switched the receiver to Star’s frequency. I immediately heard a beep-beep-beep in my earphones. “I’ve got a signal! Null—back left—now right—a little more—peak! That’s it. Get a compass bearing and let’s go.”

  We drove west into the thick bush of the sandveld, scanning ahead for any sign of Star. A couple of minutes later we still had not seen her, so I stopped and held up the loop antenna. “She must really be moving out. I can barely hear her signal now.” I climbed into the back of the truck, stumbling over the clanking pile of tent poles, and began putting segments together. When the antenna was up about fifteen feet, the winds, which begin with clockwork regularity on dry-season mornings, suddenly sprang to life and set the antenna mast in dramatic motion, its middle bending and swaying. I struggled to hold it up while Delia, a tangle of guy ropes in her hands and her face red and rigid with determination, began running back and forth through the thorn bushes, shredding her clothes and scratching herself on the wicked briers as she tried to guess which way the pole would veer next.

  A gust of wind set the rickety affair careering toward the west like a piece of spaghetti. “Get on this side—hurry, I can’t hold it!” I growled.

  “I am—I AM!”

  “Hold it. Okay, I’ve got a fix. Let’s go.” We unhooked the bits and pieces of our jury-rigged antenna mast and drove through the bush in the direction of Star’s radio signal. But after several hundred yards we could hear nothing but thick static on the receiver. “We’ve got to get this damned antenna higher.” I began adding more poles to the mast while Delia tried to control the reeling head of the antenna with the guyropes. By now she was nearly in tears and I was mad as a snake—not at her, but from the frustration of it all.

  The antenna was about twenty-five feet above the truck and barely under control, and the wind was getting stronger by the minute. Suddenly the worst happened. With an almighty wiggle, the mast crumpled and the antenna soared off into a thornbush. Delia stood holding the limp guy ropes, tears welling in her eyes, while I glared at the doubledover, soda-straw mast.

  “Let’s get to the top of the dune!” I spat. “If we can’t get her signal from there, we never will!” We threw the antenna pieces into the truck again. Bouncing and bashing through the bushes, we drove to the top of West Dune, more than 120 feet higher, and stuck the unbent sections of the antenna pole together. Still no signal. We were absolutely deflated. We had waited for this equipment for months, and it was useless.

  A stony silence filled the cab as we drove toward the riverbed. When we neared camp, Mox was standing next to the tent, waving his arms and pointing east, an ill-concealed grin on his face. Not 100 yards away, Star was walking across the riverbed in full view, headed opposite the direction we had taken.

  We gave up on raising the antenna. Instead I would hold it out of the truck’s window and monitor the signal while trying to stay within range of the hyena’s transmitter. Without any idea where Star slept during the day, we tried unsuccessfully to locate her with the radio gear, driving long grids for several miles east and west over the dunes from the river valley. When that didn’t work, we went back to our old method of searching the riverbed for hours every night. Once we had found her with the spotlight, we were able to use the radio receiver to follow her through the sandveld bush savanna. So long as we stayed within 200 or 300 yards of her, we could hear her signal and, in spite of the limitations of the radio equipment, we were able to get some useful service from it.

  The night after she was collared, we found Star on North Bay Hill. We were determined to stay with her wherever she went, though we had no idea how far she would take us from camp, or in which direction. We had packed the truck with extra food, water, and other camping gear. For all we knew, we might end up fifty miles from camp by morning.

  She turned east and disappeared in the tall grass and bush of the sandveld. It was the last we saw of her for the next twelve hours. We followed her weak signal through a nightmare of thorn thickets and dense woodlands to East Dune, then north along its crest through heavy underbrush. We drove over logs, around stumps, and through walls of thornbush often ten feet high and so tough and impregnable that the front wheels of the truck were actually lifted off the ground at times. After two or three nights of this, the Toyota’s electrical wiring, exhaust pipe, and brake lines were tom away. We drove without them for a week or two, until I found the time to encase them in heavy rubber hose and wire them solidly against the chassis. Twigs, bark, and whole branches would shower onto the hood when the brush screeched along the sides, clawing at the truck. Whenever I could, I held out the spotlight or the radio antenna, to see what was ahead or get a new fix on Star’s signal. Delia took compass bearings, mileage readings, and notes on the habitat and behavior of the hyena. I never could understand how she handled the flashlight and compass and wrote legibly, all at the same time, in the pitching truck.

  Since there were no lion kills to scavenge, Star sought out the thickest cover, where her chances of surprising a leopard, civet, serval, or jackal with a fresh kill were much better than in more open habitat. She never stopped to rest, so neither could we. The scratches and bruises from a night’s follow would last for days after. But for the first time since our study had begun, more than three years earlier, we were getting the details of how a brown hyena lived away from the riverbed during the dry season.

  It was just after dawn one morning that Star came out of a woodland and into an open glade of tall grass on a duneslope. We could see her from the crest above. She was smelling her way through the grass when two tall, thin forms loomed directly ahead, like lampposts rising out of the grass and scrub. Star froze, then lowered her head and stalked forward. The necks grew longer, until two ostriches stood up, ruffling their wings and peering around alertly. Suddenly the female dashed away, her feathers flickering. But the large black male fanned his wings and swept toward Star, his big homy feet clipping through the grass and stomping the ground. She bristled and rushed forward to meet him. When they were still a few yards apart, the ostrich broke to his left and, dropping his wing, dragged it along as if it had come adrift from his body. Then he fell in a tumble of black and white feathers. When Star didn’t fall for the ruse, he stood up and started turning in circles, his “broken” wing hanging limp. It was a spectacular deception, but Star had been around too long; she wasn’t fooled. She roamed over the area, her nose to the ground, until she finally found the nest. It was a brown hyena’s dry season bonanza.

  She stood among the eggs—cream-colored globes the size of summer melons—and opened her jaws wide, trying to get her mouth around one to pick it up. Her teeth lost their purchase on the smooth shell, and the egg popped out of her mouth, her jaws chopping together. She tried again, standing over her muzzle, driving her weight down upon her canines until the shell gave way and the succulent nutriment was released. She lapped up three eggs at the nest, and then carried off and cached eight others in separate hiding places for future meals.

  The sun fo
und us sitting on a dune top miles from camp, munching biltong rolls and sipping cold coffee—strained through a cloth to get out bits of our broken Thermos. I patched two flat tires while Delia reviewed her log of compass and odometer readings to work out a course to camp. Star had led us over a twenty-two mile zigzag trek. We had no idea how long it would take us to get home.

  We learned so much from our first follows of Star that we soon put radio collars on Shadow, Patches, and Ivey. After each night’s tracking, we would rest as best we could in the heat and then try it again the next night. Several days of this and we were ready to feed each other to the lions. Two nights of rest usually quelled these atavistic desires, but because the heat made sleep during the day impossible, we were constantly fatigued.

  From the beginning, we had been fascinated by the many mysteries surrounding brown hyena ecology. The bits of information about their range movements, social behavior, and feeding habits that we had managed to get by following them with a spotlight during the rainy season had only raised new questions that whetted our appetites for more. Inadequate as it was, our radio equipment gave us an inside look at the dry-season world of the hyenas. By following their signals, we quickly gained a great admiration for the ways these tough, adaptable scavengers manage to grub out a living in such a harsh and unpredictable environment.

  We were continually amazed at how Star survived the rigors of drought. Since carrion items are so widely scattered in the dry months, and since brown hyenas scavenge most of their food, they must expand their ranges to nearly twice their wet-season areas and walk formidable distances to find enough scraps to eat. Including the zigs and zags she made while foraging, many nights Star covered distances of more than thirty miles while searching for food. The energy she needed to push through thornscrub and to muddle through loose sand during these nocturnal marathons must have been considerable, yet she often ate very little or nothing at all. Some nights she fed on nothing more than a single horn, a hoof, a flap of parched skin, or a few sun-bleached splinters of bone—perhaps a pound or two of carrion—all from carcasses picked over and discarded months before by lions, jackals, vultures, and other hyenas.