Cry of the Kalahari Read online

  A tiny grass seed lay waiting in its moist, subterranean bed. Bursting with life, it finally split. A pale sprout emerged from within, and then, turning and shouldering its way between sand grains, it grew toward the surface. When, straining with turgor, it shoved aside a cinder and reached toward the sky, the sprout was not alone. It stood with millions of others, a hint of green on the sands.

  Within three weeks after the fire, luxurious shocks of short grass blades had flushed from the blackened bases. Herds of springbok and gemsbok ambled over the faces of dunes near the riverbed, cropping away at the succulent greenery.

  We stood together for long minutes on the dune, after Bergie’s crew had left, and then drove silently back to camp. We had been living on nervous energy, not thinking about the reality of our situation. There were certain facts we had to face: Our money was gone and there was little chance for a job in Maun, because the safari hunting companies hired mostly native laborers, for only two or three dollars a day. Prospects in South Africa weren’t much better. It would take us months to make enough to get home, find jobs with higher wages, and earn enough to come back again.

  We still had several weeks of food and fuel stocks left in camp, and if we stayed longer in Deception Valley perhaps we could find out if a brown hyena study was really possible. By rationing our food and water, we could keep making research observations until we had just enough of everything to get us back to Maun. Foolish as it may seem, we decided to do it.

  The day after the fire had passed our camp, curious about the animals’ reaction to the fire, we drove west to the fire line to watch them. Few antelope or birds showed alarm: A small herd of gemsbok galloped onto a stony area, which had only a little grass, and let the flames pass by. A group of springbok milled about, pranking—leaping stiff-legged—high into the air 100 yards from the fire. Plovers and pheasantlike korhaans flushed ahead of the burning grasses, squawking.

  Most of the animals stayed surprisingly calm. A family of five bateared foxes slept in the grass until the flames were several hundred yards away, and then they roused themselves, evidently not because of the approaching danger but because of the thousands of insects flying and crawling for safety. They stood, yawned, and stretched as usual, then began foraging through the grass, eating one large grasshopper after another. There were always a few bare spots or areas of short, sparse grass on pans and fossil riverbeds. When the fire burned too close, lions, springbok, gemsbok, and hartebeest strolled through these avenues of escape to places that had already burned. Many creatures, including squirrels, foxes, meerkats, mongooses, snakes, and even leopards, took refuge in underground burrows and waited for the fire to pass. Since the fire line moved so fast, there was little danger of asphyxiation inside the dens. The only victims of the fire were some rodents and insects and a few reptiles.

  Captain, the black-backed jackal, wasted no time in taking advantage of the situation. At his usual fast trot, he bounded over the incinerated dunes, crunching up dead grasshoppers, beetles, mice, and snakes. He also fed on unfortunate insects and rodents who had lost their cover and were scurrying about fully exposed on the barren sands.

  Our fears that our research would be mined by the fire proved groundless. In fact, the burn opened interesting new lines of investigation and made it easier to observe and follow animals. We tried to measure how quickly the grasses were growing back and how the diets and movements of the jackals, bat-eared foxes, and antelope were changed. Like the other animals, we tried to take advantage of the situation. There was a great deal to learn about jackals, and a great deal to learn from them.

  Our decision to stay in Deception until our supplies ran out did not come easily. For many weeks, even before the fire, we had been living mostly on mealie-meal, oatmeal, and pablum mixed with powdered milk. I had lost nearly thirty-five pounds and Delia had lost fifteen. We were persistently weak and lethargic, and I was sure Delia was anemic.

  In late July, some days before the fire hit camp, I had been awakened by the sound of the truck’s back door opening. I found Delia outside on the ground, doubled over with severe stomach pains. Though this had been happening for several weeks, she had managed to keep it from me. I was sure that her sickness was due not only to our lack of a proper diet but also to the stress of not having the funds either to continue our research or to go home. I lay awake that night trying to think of some way I could get something more substantial for her to eat.

  The next night we were following a jackal through the sandveld, when a steenbok suddenly appeared in the spotlight. Quite naturally, with no second thoughts or feelings of guilt, I drew my large hunting knife from its scabbard, slipped off my shoes, and slid quietly from the Land Rover, ignoring Delia’s whispered protests. Taking care not to get between the steenbok and the spotlight, I stalked toward the twenty-five-pound antelope. Its large emerald eyes glowed in the light, its nose twitching, trying to take my scent, and the veins stood out on the inside of its big ears, perked to catch the slightest sound. I felt a heightened sense of awareness, the sand cool on my bare feet as I stepped quietly around the grass stubble, my eyes locked on the animal. At the same time, I stood apart from myself, watching with interest this unfamiliar part of my nature that had so long lain dormant.

  Finally, trembling and sweating heavily, I crouched no more than five feet from the steenbok, the knife raised in my right hand. Gathering myself, I sprang forward, driving the blade toward a spot just behind its shoulder. But it had sensed me, and at the last second it dodged me and ran away. I sprawled in the sand, pricking my arms, legs, and belly on devil’s keys—sharp, three-cornered thorns. Stinging all over and feeling foolish, I walked back to the truck empty-handed.

  There were other similar attempts to get protein for us, none of them successful, and we continued to subsist mostly on cereal. Delia’s condition did not improve.

  Studying the jackals through July and early August, we realized that we could identify them by the distinctive black tail patch each carried midway down its tail. There was no need to risk injuring or alienating them with the immobilization rifle. Since both they and the brown hyenas scavenged, we guessed that the jackals must compete with browns for carrion. If we followed them often enough, surely they would lead us to the reclusive hyenas.

  Each evening all along the valley, the jackals called to one another in a type of reveille before beginning their night’s hunt. Unlike blackback jackals in the Serengeti (also called silverbacks there), where mated pairs stay together year round, Kalahari jackals often foraged alone in the dry season. We took compass bearings on their cries to help us locate individuals to follow. Captain’s hoarse voice, which sounded as though he had chronic laryngitis, made him easy to identify.

  In the three months since we first set up camp in Deception Valley, there had been no rainfall, and there was no drinking water in the entire Central Kalahari. Captain and the other jackals survived on the moisture in the rodents and birds they killed, on maretwa (Grewia spp.) berries they picked with their teeth, and on wild melons they found scattered over the duneslopes.

  Like an American coyote, Captain was a superior hunter and an opportunist par excellence. In the cool of the evenings, just after sunset, he often trotted along the riverbed below Cheetah Hill, pausing now and then to lap up termites from a column hauling grass stems toward its colony. A dive into a green clump of grass usually paid off with a large, homy grasshopper, a spider, or a beetle, which he quickly chopped up and swallowed. Then he would rush forward with his nose to the ground, curling his lips up tightly, and showing his front teeth as he deftly nipped at a scorpion. Snorting, shaking his head, and grinning widely—lest it sting him on the nose—Captain would toss the arachnid into the air. On the third try he’d bite it in two and swallow the brittle prey. As he trotted along, he often dodged this way and that, hopping off his back feet to snatch large sausage flies and flying termites from the air, crunching them up like appetizers.

  By about eight-thirty or ni
ne o’clock, when colder air rolled off the backs of the dunes into the valley, the insects stopped moving. Now Captain turned to the more rewarding task of catching mice. Trotting from one clump to the next, he would wade into the grass, holding his head high and cocking his ears forward. After smelling out a mouse’s exact location, he would rear to full height on his hind legs, his paws drawn together against his chest. Then, launching his feet like javelins into the grass, he’d pin the rodent to the ground and seize it from under his paw. If he missed, his prey would sometimes jump straight up, only to be snatched in midair—three or four quick chomps and it was down. He might kill as many as thirty or forty mice in a three-hour hunting period, catching one in every four attempts. Even when his sides were bulging, like garbage bags, he still went on hunting, catching mice and rats in small holes that he dug in the sand with his forepaws and covered over with a quick push of his snout.

  Captain was having his usual round of successes one night, trotting across North Pan, killing and burying one rodent after another. Now he was prancing around another patch of belly-high grass, sticking his nose in one side, then the other. He was just about to rear for the strike when he looked back along his line of caches. What he saw made him bristle: Another jackal was trotting from one cache to the next, uncovering and gobbling up his rats. She stood in full view, pilfering the stores of the male who was dominant in this part of the valley.

  Captain rushed at the little thief, but she held her ground, her sleek head lifted high, her blonde neck and rufous shoulders standing proud. He was almost upon her when his charge fizzled. Somewhere inside him a circuit had shorted, he was powerless to attack her. It was as though she stood behind an invisible shield.

  Instead of routing her as he normally would have, he began trying to impress her: His neck arched, his chest swelled, his ears perked forward, and his nose twitched. He strutted toward the slender female until they stood face to face. Slowly, gently, he touched his muzzle to hers. She stood stiff and tense. Captain’s nose roamed from her nose to her cheek, up the side of her face to her ear, along her neck, then light as a whisper over her shoulder. Suddenly he flung his body around and bumped her hindquarters. She stumbled sideways, regained her balance, and froze under his roving nose. Then she abruptly sidestepped him and trotted off, coyly depositing her scent on an herb upwind from him. He smelled her mark for long moments as he watched her disappear into the bush of Cheetah Hill. Then he followed after her.

  An indelible impression had been made, and Captain met the female again the next night. After a ritual greeting of nose-sniffing and gentle hip-nudging, the two stood, their necks crossed, sealing the bond. They hunted together, with Mate—as we called her—in the lead. She often paused to mark territory by cocking her leg against a shrub, or to advertise her femininity by squatting to scent-marie. Captain followed in her steps, and, watching her attentively, covered her every mark with his own, telling the other jackals that this female belonged to him.

  While the night was still warm, together they plundered the insect population on the flat riverbed. Then, as the evening cooled, they took to mousing at a rodent colony in the sands of Cheetah Hill, poking their noses into one warren after another, snorting and snuffling, trying to find the most likely place to begin excavating. Captain suddenly began to dig excitedly, his front feet churning the sand like a waterwheel, spraying it through his spraddled hind legs, his tail waving like a flag as he tore at the burrow. Mate watched him for a while, and then trotted to another colony nearby, where she began her own dig.

  Burrowing frenetically and biting big chunks of sod and sand away, Captain was getting close to his quarry. But the excavation had become too deep for him to keep a proper check on the warren’s other exits. He began digging in short bursts, then quickly backing out of the hole and looking from one escape route to another, intending to catch the rat either in the burrow or when it ran into the grass above ground.

  After eons of predation, rats apparently have figured out such strategies, and this one wouldn’t leave the warren until the last moment. Now the hole was so deep that precious seconds were lost to Captain each time he backed out to check the other exits. It was at this point that he displayed a touch of jackal genius and showed us a behavior pattern that, to our knowledge, has never been seen before in mammals.

  Faced with the problem of digging underground and keeping watch at the same time, Captain stood on his hind legs, his head outside the hole, and began drumming with his forepaws on the ground near the entrance, snatching quick glances at one exit after another. After a short pause, it was back underground for another burst of four or five strokes of actual excavation. Then he stood and began “sham digging” again. From the vibration, the rat must have thought the jackal was getting very close, for it scurried from one of the exits. Captain leapt from the hole, snatched the rodent in his jaws, and ate it, his eyes closed and ears twigging sweetly.

  By 10:30 P.M. it had become quite chilly and the rodent population had holed up for the night; bird hunting would be more profitable for the jackal pair. Abruptly they quit hopscotching from one grass clump to another in search of rats and mice. Now they headed back to the riverbed, where they began jogging much faster, circling and zigzagging, their noses glued to scent trails on the ground.

  Near Acacia Point, Mate stopped, her front paw held to her chest, her tail rising. She stalked forward, step by step, her nose pointing straight ahead, ears perked, toward a kori bustard not fifteen yards ahead. At twenty-five pounds, with a twelve-foot wingspread, a male kori bustard is one of the heaviest flying birds in the world. In the Kalahari, lone jackals usually didn’t tackle such large prey, but with Captain to back her up, the odds were better for Mate.

  The big turkeylike bird flared its wings and its neck and tail feathers and made a short, threatening dash toward her. The cock outweighed her by about ten pounds, but without hesitation Mate charged him. The bird bluffed her once and then took to the air, his enormous wings whipping up swirls of dust. He was straining to gain height when Mate leaped more than six feet up and caught him by the thigh. Both were suspended in the air for an instant, the jackal clamped beneath the kori, the broad wings beating against their combined weights. Then, in a tumble of feathers, they crashed to the ground. While Mate fought to hold on, Captain sped in and crushed the kori’s head in his jaws.

  Both jackals began feeding furiously. Their tails wagged aggressively, and they glared at each other with blazing eyes, their faces smeared with blood and feathers. They had been feeding for two or three minutes when a brown hyena began circling at a distance, obviously wanting to challenge the jackals for their kill, but wary, as always, with us sitting nearby.

  The hyena moved closer. We sat perfectly still, not making a sound. We could just make out a blaze of white on her forehead and hear her feet stir the grass. Then she charged. Captain and Mate scattered. The hyena seized the bird, hoisted it off the ground, and began moving quickly into the bush of West Prairie. We tried to follow, but she loped away and disappeared.

  Captain and Mate had lost their meal, but they would easily find enough to eat among the insects, mice, birds, and snakes in the grass of the riverbed, and there was always the chance of scavenging something from a larger predator. Unlike the Serengeti jackals, which sometimes kill prey as large as gazelles, Captain and Mate, even hunting as a team, would not be likely to tackle anything larger than the kori they had just killed. When we would next see them hunting together, however, their intended prey would be much more dangerous than the kori had been.

  To conserve our dwindling supply of gasoline, we often followed Captain and Mate on foot, just after dawn, before they lay up to rest for the day. One morning early in September, Delia was taking notes while I described the pair’s lazy journey back to Cheetah Hill. We were picking our way carefully through thornbushes along the riverbed, when the droning of a small aircraft engine sounded from over the dunes. It was the first plane we had heard since arriving in
Deception. The area was so remote that the Botswana Department of Civil Aviation restricted pilots from flying over it. We were sure the aircraft would be coming to our camp because we were the only people for thousands of square miles. Excited by the prospect of seeing other people, we raced onto the riverbed, waving wildly at the little blue-and-white Cessna zooming by just above us. I stripped off my shirt and held it up so the pilot could see the wind direction.

  The plane circled, lost height, bounced across the riverbed once, twice, a third time—then took off again. As it flashed by I could see Norbert Drager, the German vet from Maun, his tense face bent over the control wheel. He circled low over the dunes, made another approach, bounced a few more times, and took to the air again. It was his first cross-country flight as a student pilot, and he was trying to land in a gusty crosswind. As he passed us the third time we could see his wife, Kate, beside him and their daughter, Loni, in the back. On his fourth try he came in much too fast, and the plane hit the ground hard, just missing a fox’s den. Then it swerved toward a stand of brush. With its wheels sliding, and leaning down hard on its nose wheel, it managed to stop just a few yards shy of it.

  “You get more out of a single landing than any pilot I’ve ever seen,” I kidded him. Norbert was a slight, blond Bavarian with a broad grin who was in Africa with German Technical Aid.

  “I’ve just about had it with flying,” he grumbled, switching off the plane’s systems. “It’s ninety-nine percent boring and one percent sheer terror.”

  Kate climbed out with a large wicker picnic basket filled with homemade bread, small meat pies, fresh fish, cheese (all the way from Rhodesia), salad, and cake. Red napkins and a checkered tablecloth were neatly folded over the food. We must have looked like two vultures eyeing this feast. We thanked them profusely for this kindness, one of many yet to come from Maun people.