Know Thy Neighbour
TOWNSPEOPLE CAN BE naïve at ti mes. Many who live in settlements, village sor towns amid surroundings where wildlife occurs, appear to think the wild animals will just naturally stay away. I once stood in the garden of a distraught couple whose beloved little dog had disappeared. For discretion’s sake, I attributed the dog’s disappearance to wandering or theft while I stood blocking their view of the paw print of a large female leopard in the damp soil. I thought it best not to frighten them.
We also had the occasional blackbacked jackal and spotted hyena coming into the village next to a game reserve on the Zambezi River. Leopard, too, were irregular visitors, and I knew from past experience that these had a taste for domestic cats. Later, the village and its surrounds had a semi-resident leopard which also favoured cat meat in addition to duiker and bushbuck. Lions walked around the perimeter of the village, passing quite close to the houses.
Parks & Wildlife staff and the older residents knew of our animal neighbours and were careful with their dogs at night. One morning, a newlyarrived hotel accountant noticed serious scratch marks across the roof of her car which was parked in the driveway. Suspecting vandals, she called the police and Parks & Wildlife. The conclusion was that a leopard had probably been crouching on her car roof as it stalked her cat, and as it jumped, it used its claws to gain traction on the polished painted surface. Apparently, the lady was all for leaving. The local panel beater successfully removed the scratches. I would have kept them as a souvenir!
“I lived with my husband in the Kruger Park – I know what a spotted hyena sounds like,” said a new resident on a large sugarcane farm in southern Zululand, after being informed that what she’d heard could not be hyena. This intensively farmed area was home to certain antelope and the occasional leopard. I was doing a mammal survey of the district and I must admit I didn’t give her story much credit. A year later, on another farm close by, I found the tracks of a brown hyena. These animals wander over great distances – I knew of some about 50km away. A year later, two farmers hunting bushpigs at night, went to check on their bait and met a spotted hyena loudly whooping and giggling. Their powerful torch enabled them to correctly identify it. It had lived in the district for some three years, the only evidence of it being one call heard by the farmer’s wife and one set of tracks identified during that time – in a region where no sheep, goats or cattle were kept – only sugarcane!
During one of my visits to the various game reserves in northern KZN, I stayed
in a village on the coast. I enjoyed eating my evening meal in a restaurant close to the river where they kept tame sheep for the patrons’ children to pet. I asked the manager if the sheep were secured at night, as they would make a nice meal for a leopard. “We secure them against theft,” he replied, adding that they weren’t worried about leopards; if there were any, they wouldn’t come onto the property. He said there hadn’t been leopards there since he was a boy. I told him there were indeed leopard around and they do go into the village. I advised him to lock up the sheep before dark.
During my next visit, I learned that they’d been late in bedding down the sheep one evening, and the assistant noticed that one was missing. He went back and found it ambling slowly along with a leopard directly behind it, obviously about to pounce. Fortunately, leopard, man and sheep all beat a hasty retreat. I politely reached for my beer to hide my ‘I told you so’ look. Now the manager checks the sheep personally.
When some young British know-itall tourists arrived at Rhodesia’s Victoria Falls, we had to warn them that a bit of exploring around the hotel was okay, but entering the thick bush along the gorges was dangerous. Some found it hard to accept that elephant, lion and buffalo actually lived there, and that tourists leaving the pathways might well walk into them. One bunch, determined to disregard the advice, would wander around even after dark. We developed a simple warning for such tourists. Fresh elephant dung, kept in plastic bags, stays damp and smelly for hours. We would deposit these droppings just outside their rooms late at night, also emptying a bottle of Coca Cola around the dung as imitation urine, which looked extremely realistic. This did the trick!