World Wild Vet Page 3

  Much as I loved the outback, it was time to head back to school and my exams. I eased back onto the pavement and in a few miles turned onto the wide-open, pitch-dark highway that would return me to the east coast and civilization.

  After putting more than five thousand miles on my rental and using it as my ride, my hotel, my production studio, and occasionally my creature keeper, I returned the filthy, beat-up vehicle in Darwin, then flew back to Sydney to take my final exams. A week later, I was on a flight home, a box full of videotapes in my carry-on and a host of first and once-in-a-lifetime experiences under my belt.

  I wasn’t sure what I was going to do next, but my time in Australia had shifted my perspective. My road trip had given me confidence and made me hungry to see more of the world and its wildlife. The travel bug inside me was gnawing away, eager for the next opportunity.

  2

  Tanzania

  After my semester in Australia, I sifted through the University of Colorado Boulder’s semester abroad options until I found a program in what sounded like the next most exotic place in the world: Tanzania. A few months later, I arrived in the regional capital of Arusha, ready to dive into a four-month wildlife ecology and conservation program.

  For me, going out on a safari in Africa for the first time felt like being turned loose in a world that existed only in fiction or movies—like landing smack in the middle of The Lion King. There I was in Tarangire National Park at dawn, riding in the back of a Range Rover and trying to use the few Swahili phrases I’d learned with a guide who spoke little English. My digital camera dangled on a wrist strap, and my camcorder hung from my pinkie. No matter that my entire collection of AV equipment was budget basic: I was prepared to document the world in photo and video.

  The scenery was everything I’d imagined Africa would be—open plains, wide grasslands, brushy vegetation, and a landscape punctuated by baobab trees, with their barrel-shaped trunks crowned by angular, nearly bare branches. These trees can live more than a thousand years, and their massive trunks (so big that people have carved out shelters in them) can store tens of thousands of gallons of water in the dry season. Because they’re a source of water when it’s scarce, baobabs have become the center of entire ecosystems. Insects, birds, snakes, small mammals, primates, and elephants are just a few of the creatures that rely on this “tree of life” to get through the dry season. If you’re hoping to spot wildlife on an African safari, these trees are a great place to start looking.

  Over the years I’ve been lucky enough to travel with some incredible, intrepid, and knowledgeable guides. This particular guide, though, seemed like he was none of those things. From the moment he pointed out a “hyena” up ahead that was clearly just a big rock with a mottled pattern, I figured I was on my own for spotting. Turns out, expertise wasn’t necessary to see what I’d come for.

  This was the beginning of the wet season, so the vegetation was getting a little green, and when I spied a group of black-and-white-striped bodies out on those plains, I knew we were in for an amazing day. At first I thought we were nearing just a few zebras, but there turned out to be hundreds of them. When we stopped to take pictures, I switched back and forth between my two cameras, narrating for video and taking still shots.

  I was in video mode the first time one of the zebras, the one closest to us, opened his mouth and started to … bark? laugh? hiccup? cry for help? I wasn’t sure what the hell he was doing. As a newbie to zebra sounds, I guess I’d been expecting the kind of sound a horse makes—a whinny, maybe. Or a neigh. A snort. But this guy stretched his neck forward, opened his mouth wide, curled his top lip just enough that I could see some teeth, and started making a high-pitched, stuttered, coughing sound. His whole body seemed to be involved. I didn’t know whether to laugh or take cover or get ready to resuscitate him.

  “Is he sick?” I asked my guide, without taking my eyes off the zebra.

  “Oh no,” he replied. That kind of answer is a little problematic. Even with my limited travel experience, I knew that a generic no to a question asked in English might mean no, but it might also mean I have no idea what you’re saying.

  I rummaged around among the Swahili words I’d learned and landed on the only other one that mattered to me at that moment.

  “Hasira?” Angry?

  “No, no,” the guide answered, shaking his head.

  A moment later another zebra in the herd answered my question with a similar call, and then a third chimed in. Turns out that this strange, strained sound is just run-of-the-mill zebra talk. I’d like to think that in the years since then, I’ve gotten good at mimicking a lot of animal calls, but zebra-speak remains way beyond my skills.

  Thirty minutes into the trip we approached a wide, low hill with a worn path that led up over its crest. It was still early, and the sun cut across the hill and shone into my eyes. I blinked a couple times to be sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing. Walking up the hill, single file, each equidistant from the next, was a herd of giraffes. They were cruising along on a majestic morning parade. The scene was so beautiful it looked staged, but only Mother Nature could stage something that spectacular.

  When you see giraffes at a distance in the wild, the first thing you notice is how gracefully they glide along—all legs and necks. Their bodies are shaped like one big taper, from the tops of their heads to the bottoms of their tails, and at a walk they move both right legs together, then both lefts. The gentle, loping gait is mesmerizing to watch. I sat with my mouth open for a minute before swinging my camcorder into position to film the show and wing a narrative for it.

  “This is one of the most gorgeous scenes in the African wild,” I began. “The first people to try to classify these creatures seem to have struggled with what they were, ultimately landing on the species name camelopardalis. ‘Camel leopard.’ These majestic animals look like they’re hardly moving this morning, but once they get going, even at a casual trot giraffes can move at twenty to twenty-five miles an hour. And if they feel threatened? Thirty miles per hour or more.

  “Speed is not the giraffe’s only defense. They may look spindly and vulnerable at a distance, but a giraffe is a fierce fighter when it needs to be. When the only animal that dares to prey on an adult—the lion—attacks, a well-planted kick from those powerful hooves can be deadly. That’s why, for the most part, these giraffes have the run of sub-Saharan Africa. They go where they like, do what they want, and fear almost nothing.”

  I dropped the camcorder and started taking pictures, capturing as many as I could before the last of the giraffes cleared the rise and moved out of sight.

  As we drove away, I spotted a brown snake eagle on a low, bare tree branch and motioned for the guide to stop. Flipping the camcorder up again, I talked while I admired the big tobacco-colored eagle with the hard-looking yellow eyes.

  When we think of predators in the African wild, usually lions, leopards, and hyenas come to mind, but when you get right down to it, the snake eagle is as hard-core as anything on the continent. It may look like other raptors, but this bird has a special skill set. The snake eagle doesn’t just eat snakes; it eats venomous snakes. It spots its quarry, then swoops in and grabs it, relying on the extra-thick scales that cover its feet and legs to buy it a few seconds before the snake can attempt a bite. Even as it soars into the air with its prize, this bird protects itself from bites and venom in the most brutal way possible: it uses one powerful talon to shear the snake’s head off and drop it to the ground. Once that nasty job is done, the snake eagle makes a quick meal of what’s left—usually swallowing the body of the snake whole—often while still on the wing.

  That is one big, bad bird.

  I swung the camera down and caught a movement in my peripheral vision. A hundred yards behind us, an elephant stepped out from a thicket and onto the road. It was a massive bull, wider and taller than the Range Rover, with a single tusk. He stopped moving and stood staring at us, and I couldn’t believe my luck as I started sna
pping pictures. A full-on view! The elephant took a few lumbering steps forward and lifted his huge ears, flapping them slowly back and forth. Elephants do that to cool off, but there was nothing casual about this move. This guy was trying to get big and, man, was he pulling it off.

  I was beside myself with excitement. Without looking away, I started filming. Behind me, I heard my guide mutter under his breath, and then I felt the truck slip into gear. At that moment, the bull’s walk turned into a trot and he started making a low, ground-shaking growling sound. The truck lurched forward. I was too caught up in what I was getting on my camera to think about being in danger and shouted, “Stop!” but we kept picking up speed. I said it again in Swahili: “Kouacha!” Dude, Kouacha! No response. The guide was hauling ass, the bull was giving chase, and there was nothing I could do but look back at the charging behemoth and keep filming.

  When the bull ceased chasing us, the guide slowed to a stop, then turned around and looked at me like he was seeing me for the first time—and realizing I was out of my mind. The bull could have stomped us and our vehicle to a pulp if he’d caught us—and by the looks of him, he’d been in the mood to do just that. I realized that day that there are more important qualifications in a safari driver than the ability to tell a hyena from a rock—like making sure your passenger lives to tell the tale.

  It had been a peaceful day until we’d met the bull, but he’d changed the whole vibe. In the few minutes we’d interacted, he’d vividly, forcefully reminded me of the order of things in his world. “You’re in Tanzania now,” he seemed to say, “and this is MY territory.”

  Houseguest from Hell

  I try to be a considerate traveler, to be respectful of all cultures, and to learn something from everyone I meet along the way. Despite my best intentions, though, I suspect the family that had the mixed fortune of getting me as their visiting student probably doesn’t look back fondly on my stay.

  After arriving in Arusha, my classmates and I moved on to Bangata, a small town of about seven thousand people in northern Tanzania. Each student was assigned to the family who would host them for a few weeks. Some of the families gave their students more responsibilities than others. A couple of my peers even ended up cooking and cleaning around the clock. I got lucky. My family was composed of a grandmother, her daughter, and her three kids. There were two boys, one slightly older than me, the other younger, and a three-year-old girl named Clara. The grandmother was nurturing and kind, and she took care of the children and the house. She also took care of me and didn’t make me do any chores—very much like my own grandmother.

  The living quarters were spartan. The house was a cinder-block rectangle with metal sheeting covering the exterior, an iron gate for a door, and windows with mesh screens but no glass. We had limited electricity and no running water inside. The water source was a curved metal pipe coming out of the ground in the backyard, operated via the spigot on its end. We drew the water into buckets and carried it inside to bathe and cook. Locals who had grown up drinking there had the digestive flora to handle it just fine, but I had to drop iodine tablets into my glass to keep from getting sick.

  The kitchen was a separate hut constructed from a haphazard mix of clay, brick, and metal sheets. The heat source was an open wood-burning fire that was kept going day and night, with a couple of iron pots placed directly on the fire. Someone was always tending the fire, and a pot of something was always cooking. Most of the time it was a carb source, such as rice or ugali, a corn-based starchy substance that has the consistency of puffy Styrofoam mixed with mashed potatoes. It tastes as bland as it sounds, but it keeps you from feeling hungry.

  All the beds in my family’s house were raised off the dirt floor, which was a plus. Many people in that part of the world sleep on mats on the floor, risking encounters with the scorpions and venomous snakes that can easily make their way into the houses. Elevating the bed off the floor even a foot makes you ten times safer. The bathroom was a separate structure about twenty feet from the house, and the “toilet” was a hole in the ground, as are most toilets in that part of the world.

  Our teacher told us from the beginning that as per the local culture, we’d be associated with who we hung out with. If you hung out with the women, they’d think you were feminine. If you hung out with a leader, they’d associate you with leadership. If you hung out with just the other students, you’d remain an outsider. Looking back on my time there, I realize that my early choices—innocent as they were—set up my host family to see me in a questionable light. I love kids and am playful by nature, so I started almost every day by horsing around with little Clara and the other small children who lived near us. I’d race them, wrestle with them, chase them around, and toss Clara up in the air and catch her—which made her squeal with laughter every time. When I wasn’t playing with the kids, I spent a lot of my time out looking for reptiles, many of which were feared by the locals. After a few days, I’m pretty sure the people of Bangata had me pegged as a giant tree-climbing, rock-flipping American man-baby.

  Not exactly the image I’d hoped to project. Unfortunately, it gets worse.

  When I realized how fearful the local kids were of some of the harmless wildlife in their environment, I set up a two-pronged plan to teach them about it. First, I did some hands-on stuff, showing them that the creatures they’d been told were dangerous were safe to get close to and even handle if they use proper technique. Second, I started making short videos of local wildlife, narrating the facts about each creature’s history and dangers. I would eventually translate my narratives into Swahili, and they’d be my big independent project for the semester.

  I thought I was working for a noble cause. I started by trying to save the reputation of the much-maligned chameleon. Maybe because they look so exotic, chameleons are the focus of a lot of fear and superstition in much of Africa. The family I stayed with believed they were venomous, and legends about them range from suggesting that they control the rain to believing they can cause a miscarriage.

  I wanted to show the kids that these creatures are harmless, so I caught a chameleon in a tree. Since Clara was my favorite, I took him over to her to show her. Her eyes got huge; then she jumped back, screamed, and ran away. That was one time I got the evil eye from the sweet grandmother. Rather than bring the chameleon any closer to the house, I moved a little farther away and filmed a short video with him in which I explained that these beautiful, colorful creatures are neither venomous nor dangerous. When I was done, I put the lizard back exactly where I had found him in the tree, keeping my disruption of his day to a minimum.

  A couple days later, I walked back to my host family’s house after class to find the chameleon’s tree gone, chopped down so only a low stump remained.

  There’s a lesson here, one it took me some time to learn. Sometimes it’s better to offer education about wildlife in small steps (rather than, say, taking the chameleon straight to the baby). Not only had I upset my host family, I’d made life worse for the creature I’d thought I was helping. I still feel bad that I unintentionally screwed that chameleon over and cost him his home.

  The next step in making myself the houseguest from hell was the result of a mistake I’ll never make again: failing to purify water from a questionable source before drinking it. If you’ve never had dysentery (and I hope you haven’t), it basically boils down to having a case of diarrhea that is so horrific, painful, and unending you wish you could hurry up and die.

  I carelessly drank the unfiltered “tap” water one day at dinner, started getting terrible cramps by morning, and went downhill from there. It is a challenge to significantly foul a hot outhouse like my host family had, but as I sat in there, doubled over and moaning, sunlight streaming through the cracks in the walls and flies lighting on me like I was already decomposing, I pulled it off. I stepped outside to find the kids who loved playing with me every morning watching from a distance, looking concerned. I was too damn sick to be embarrassed or care what any
body thought. I summoned every bit of strength I had left, oriented myself toward the school building—the only place I knew of that had air-conditioning and clean running water—and started walking.

  There was one guest room in the school, with a single mattress, reserved for visiting teachers and honored guests. My semester leader took pity on me and let me stay there. While I was in residence, I destroyed the men’s bathroom first, then moved on to the women’s (the use of which was a first for me). I had never been so sick in my entire life, and after hours of relentless misery, I started to think I might actually not survive.

  Finally, the leader tracked down an antibiotic, and after the first couple doses I was able to sleep, then drink, then eat. I was going to live.

  I did what I could to clean up the disaster I’d made of the school’s restrooms, showered, and walked back to my host family’s house. Clara came running, and I tossed her high in the air while she squealed, “Tena! Tena! Tena!” “Again! Again! Again!”

  As a veterinarian, I often see animals who are desperate to tap out. When they’re sick or injured, they want nothing to do with the animal hospital, the exam table, or me. Thanks to my merciless bout of dysentery during my semester abroad in Tanzania, I know just how that feels.

  Grumpy, Grumpy Hippo

  Finding yourself between a hippo and water can be a death sentence—and that’s exactly where I ended up when my semester abroad group visited Serengeti National Park. We’d been divided into groups to study indigenous species, and I was in the group devoted to what is one of the most temperamental animals of the Serengeti: the mighty hippopotamus.

  Camping was amazing. At night, we could hear hyenas laughing and lions roaring. Sometimes baboons would come around when we were cooking, but they kept a respectful distance. One night a giant bushpig was less polite, racing through the campsite. He slit open a tent with his tusk, stole my classmate’s midnight snack, and dashed out of sight. Mercifully, the only casualty was the tent.