Cat among the pigeons Read online

  Published by Struik Nature

  (an imprint of Penguin Random House South Africa (Pty) Ltd)

  Reg. No. 1953/000441/07

  The Estuaries No. 4, Oxbow Crescent (off Century Avenue), Century City, 7441 South Africa

  PO Box 1144, Cape Town, 8000 South Africa

  Visit www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za and join the Struik Nature Club for updates, news, events and special offers.

  First published in 2018

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  Copyright © in text, 2018: David Muirhead

  Copyright © in illustrations, 2018: Patricia de Villiers

  Copyright © in published edition, 2018: Penguin Random House

  South Africa (Pty) Ltd

  Publisher: Pippa Parker

  Editor: Helen de Villiers

  Typesetter: Deirdré Geldenhuys

  Illustrator: Patricia de Villiers

  Proofreader: Glynne Newlands

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner(s).

  Print: 9781775845133

  ePub: 9781775845140

  CONTENTS

  KILLER WHALE

  SPRINGBOK

  WATERBUCK

  FIREFLY

  ELEPHANT

  BAT-EARED FOX

  DRAGONFLY

  BANDED MONGOOSE

  TREE SQUIRREL

  AFRICAN PENGUIN

  WILD DOG

  HADEDA

  PYTHON

  VLEI RAT

  COCKROACH

  SPRINGHARE

  CARACAL

  CUCKOO

  VERVET MONKEY

  RHINO

  ALBATROSS

  LION

  MARABOU STORK

  GOLDEN ORB-WEB SPIDER

  AFRICAN BUFFALO

  LEOPARD

  LAMMERGEIER

  PANGOLIN

  NIGHTJAR

  BROWN HYENA

  COELACANTH

  GORILLA

  GEMSBOK

  HEDGEHOG

  WASP

  WILDEBEEST

  GECKO

  RAIN FROG

  PREFACE

  If you happen to have read The Bedside Ark you’ll know what to expect in this book. If not, and you thought you’d picked up a novel by Agatha Christie; you’re probably browsing in the wrong section. This is not a murder mystery, although many of the characters in the following pages are adept at killing, deception and detection. Mrs Christie’s book, on the other hand, despite sharing the same title, has nothing to do with cats or pigeons; so if you are in fact interested in wild creatures, rather than murderers, perhaps you’re in the right section after all.

  The creatures that feature in these pages were chosen on merit, not because of their name or family connections. Nepotism has no place in a seriously tongue-in-cheek work and due deference has been paid to the natural order – i.e. there is none. Coelacanths are randomly wedged between gorillas and nightjars and you’re unlikely to detect the slightest hint of embarrassment or discomfort due to such intimate proximity.

  As before, the stories are delivered in carefully measured doses and are guaranteed not to keep you awake at night. In the preface to The Bedside Ark I expressed the hope that the book would provide an antidote for the barrage of horrors on the evening news. Sadly, the amount of bad news seems to have substantially increased in the past two years, both for us and the animals that share our planet. Once again there’s talk of nuclear-tipped missiles whizzing back and forth and the seas are in danger of becoming a plastic sludge. Some of you may now find it necessary to read at least two stories at bedtime before turning out the light.

  I’d like to thank Pippa Parker and her colleagues at Penguin Random House for letting me and my menagerie loose once more on an unsuspecting public. I’d also like to express my special thanks to Patricia de Villiers for her truly remarkable and inspired drawings. She has succeeded in injecting a little fun into each rendition without impinging on the integrity and dignity of the creatures themselves. I hope I have accomplished as much with my words.

  * * *

  ‘Animals are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time.’

  – Henry Beston

  KILLER WHALE

  Orcus was a monster originally invented by the Etruscans to stoke the fires of Hell. He later emerged as the ogre of fairy tales, fond of eating the flesh of children, among other bad food choices. The slobbering orc in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is probably the most recent manifestation of this archetype.

  With all this in mind, ‘orca’ is an odd choice of name to give to a new best friend, but the alternative, ‘killer whale’, seems even more defamatory to their many admirers.

  Outside of the ranks of sailors and whalers, little was publicly known about Orcinus orca until the mid-1960s, when young orcas began to be captured alive for aquariums. Up until then most folk would probably have gone along with the view expressed by Pliny the Elder, who long ago dismissed them as ‘mountains of meat with teeth’.

  When the first captive orcas were installed in tanks and harbour enclosures, the biggest surprise for aquarium directors, apart from the large amounts of money to be made from having one as an attraction, was just how docile and friendly the toothy giants turned out to be. It was even possible to plop scantily-clad young women into the same pond without fear that they would be touched inappropriately, let alone snapped up like canapés. This was precisely the kind of ‘man-bites-dog’ story that appeals to the popular press, and word soon spread. Ticket sales soared and, to meet the burgeoning demand in the 1960s and ’70s, more and more orcas, virtually all juveniles, were snatched from the sea.

  This sorry episode in the inglorious saga of humancetacean relations came to an end at about the turn of the century. Audiences and keepers alike began to realise that orcas weren’t just titillating monsters but highly intelligent and sensitive creatures, with moods and emotions as complex as ours. Despite their cruel confinement, they behaved far better towards us than we did towards them. Keeping them in swimming pools was a very bad idea.

  Public interest helped inspire and fund intensive research, and one of the first major findings was that there were far fewer killer whales in the world’s oceans than had been supposed. The population in the Pacific Northwest, which had been the aquariums’ principal source of young orcas, amounted to a few hundred at best.

  Killer whales are not whales of course, but the largest member of the dolphin family. Despite their being black and white and found all over, we are also now told that there are several different types. Recent research, particularly in the Pacific, has suggested that at least two variants exist: the transients and the residents. Transients seem to wander the seven seas and prey mainly on marine mammals, especially other dolphins, porpoises and whales. Residents, as the name implies, are committed homebodies, stay in the same locale year-round, live in larger family groups or pods, eat mainly fish and never ever take a vacation. The different types seem largely to ignore each other and have even evolved their own dialects of the orca language.

  Whatever the cut of their jib or the tone of their voice, killer whales are apex predators, with nothing to fear in the sea. Killers they certainly are, but no more so than a lion or a tiger. The enduring mystery, especially given how we’ve behaved when we’ve met them in the wild, is that they haven’t taken every available opportunity to chow down on some of us.

  It’s not as though they’ve never been exposed to terrestrial food. They’ve been k
nown to grab seals from pebbly beaches, dislodge penguins and polar bears from ice floes, and even snap up the occasional astonished elk swimming a Canadian river. Flipping a canoe, or even a sizeable yacht, to get at the titbits with the quivering jelly centres they contain, would be no real challenge. But they’ve never, barring the occasional aquarium accident, so much as nibbled a single one of us.

  A possible answer is that they see us as kindred spirits, or at least as useful idiots. For several decades prior to the demise of the whaling industry, killer whales in the seas off the south coast of New South Wales, Australia, herded humpback whales into a bay near Eden so that whalers could more easily kill them. Their reward was the tongue and the lips, seemingly their favourite cuts. It’s difficult to decide who was using whom in this instance, but the relationship went sour when the whalers eventually reneged on the deal and the orcas went off in a huff. Similar stories have arrived from other parts of the world, with the embellishment that orcas occasionally fend off sharks when they try to attack shipwrecked whalers and fishermen.

  Putting our conceit aside, in these latter cases (if they happen), it’s more likely that the orcas were after the sharks anyway, a favourite prey species. An unspecified number of killer whales recently weighed into the population of great white sharks in South Africa’s Walker Bay, much to the consternation of the proprietors of the local shark cage-diving industry. They killed at least three great whites, eating their livers and discarding the rest, proving, if nothing else, that they are choosey about their food, and sometimes wasteful eaters.

  They have that in common with most of us and, despite the huge physical disparities, a lot else besides. Other than humans and short-finned pilot whales, orcas are the only known species in which females go through menopause. Various theories have been developed to explain this strange evolutionary quirk, but it seems to be linked in a complex way to longevity, cognition and the importance of familial relationships for survival and success.

  Like all dolphins, in addition to their excellent eyesight, killer whales use ultrasound to form a detailed picture of the world under water. Captive orcas, like other dolphins, have purportedly been able to tell when a woman swimming in their tank is pregnant, even if she is in the earliest stages. With such skills, they probably saw through our species long ago. Given their affable attitude towards us, we can only assume that they discovered, in a dark recess, the seed of something worth preserving.

  * * *

  SPRINGBOK

  Old Africa knew the springbok by other names, all of which loosely translate as ‘ray of the sun’. The gazelles were especially favoured by the sun god who imbued them with magical powers. One happy outcome is that dreaming about a herd of springbok cavorting on the vast, ethereal plains of the Great Karoo yields the dreamer a promise of great wealth.

  When it comes to sheer good looks, there’s no doubt that the springbok is a crowd pleaser. If there ever were an event as bizarre as an inter-species beauty contest, many a lass, alas, would run home to her mother in tears. Graceful, slender and long-legged, with a snow-white face, a golden coat and bold side stripes, as well as other more subtle cosmetic touches, these antelopes seem to know they were really born for the swanky salons of Paris, London and Milan.

  When excited or frightened and sometimes, it seems, just because there’s an audience, they repeatedly bounce into the air, 2 metres and more, back arched, hooves bunched and legs held stiffly together, as though they’re on pogo sticks. As part of this dramatic routine, the flap on their rump inverts into a fan of dazzling white hairs, more than worthy of a headline act at the Moulin Rouge. The whole performance is known as ‘pronking’, derived from an Afrikaans word which, if you ignore the professorial chit chat, means ‘showing off ’.

  According to one theory, this may be exactly what they’re doing. Vanity aside, such displays advertise the buck’s fitness and agility. An approaching predator, duly impressed, gets the message and turns its attention to some other unlucky couch potato. If not, the buck can further prove its point by streaking away at up to 88 kilometres per hour.

  Perhaps Nature knew her design department had hit the bullseye when it came up with the springbok. In earlier times she churned them out by the million. Accounts from awed and trapped rural observers in the 1800s record how galloping masses of springbok, tightly packed mega-herds stretching further than the eye could see, took five days and more to sweep past lonely Karoo farmhouses. Their sharp little hooves left much dust and devastation, including a swathe of corpses belonging to small creatures unable to get out of the way. Casualties among the antelope’s own ranks provided additional free meals for the carnivorous camp followers puffing or flapping along behind.

  Uncontrolled hunting and the spread of barbed wire put paid to such grand migrations long ago. They still happen on occasion in parts of Botswana and Namibia, albeit as mere shadows of the big events of yesteryear, triggered now, as then, by local droughts and the distant scent of greener pastures.

  Springbok are grazers and browsers, nibbling on selected grasses, shrubs and succulents and can obtain virtually all the water they need from plants and morning dew. Depending on local conditions, they seldom, if ever, need to visit a pond or a stream. This was just as well in days gone by because perennial surface water was practically non-existent in their preferred habitat, the huge arid plains of south-western Africa.

  Springbok are relatively prolific breeders, with births tending to cluster around the onset of the rainy season when food is at its most abundant. Females first come into oestrus at six to seven months and a single calf, rarely twins, is born five to six months later. In theory, and often in practice if a young calf dies, females are able to produce two offspring in a single year. The calf usually stays with its mother until she gives birth again, something that can occur in as little as six months. When this happens adolescent males are inclined and encouraged to leave and join a bachelor herd.

  Males reach breeding age only when they’re about two years old. They need a further year to mature and bulk up sufficiently to engage in the potentially injurious or fatal contests necessary to secure a territory. On average, a successful male manages to hold onto his patch for six months to a year, though during that time he repeatedly has to fight off home invasions. He demonstrates his pride in possession by strutting about and ostentatiously urinating and defecating, rear legs akimbo, on the same chosen boundary spots, exactly the kind of thing that would rapidly get you arrested if you tried it on your suburban borders.

  The springbok has long held centre stage in southern Africa. Many of the Bushmen’s stories and mystic customs revolved around them. They were living symbols that all was well with the world, their honey-coloured flanks symbolising good health and abundance; a thinning in their numbers, or their total absence, heralded troubling times for their diminutive hunters.

  This emblematic role has continued into modern times. The springbok is South Africa’s national animal and the totem of the country’s rugby team, whose members are not above a little imitative pronking themselves, notably in the lineouts. Although now mainly confined to game farms, their numbers remain buoyant. In that we can take comfort. According to old tribal lore, the death of the last springbok will be a day of doom for all the peoples of southern Africa.

  * * *

  WATERBUCK

  It might cost you in lost party invitations, but having a reputation for smelling and tasting disgusting is a major advantage if you want to stay alive in the bush. Even if there’s a big white target painted on your rear end, no problem: a charging lion will likely pull up short and mutter that it mistook you for something less revolting.

  Despite taking regular baths, waterbuck are famous for having a personal hygiene problem so ferocious that other animals stay a million miles upwind. That’s a bit unfair, of course, not to mention a wild distortion, but not wholly devoid of truth. They do indeed have a strong, musky smell, somewhere between turpentine and a pair of socks on St
age 10 of the Tour de France. Even when they’ve pedalled away, you can still pick up the odour in the places they’ve been.

  The source of this pong is an oily secretion exuded from glands in the skin. Its purpose is not completely understood but there’s strong evidence that it acts, among other things, as an insect repellent. Tsetse flies, to name but one insufferable bug, stay well clear of waterbuck. This has not gone unnoticed by cattle farmers in Kenya. As an experiment, they tried replicating Eau de Waterbuck and hanging the concoction in dispensers around the necks of their cows; tsetse fly bites reduced by up to 90 per cent.

  Bugs are one thing, but Nature never hands out totally free passes; the notion that waterbuck don’t get attacked and eaten by lions and crocodiles is a myth. When the menu is being passed around out on the veld, lions might rest their eyes a little longer on the zebra kebabs and buffalo steaks but they will opt for waterbuck cutlets now and again. Crocodiles gave up being picky millions of years ago; if you live in a pond that 20 hippopotamuses use as a toilet, it doesn’t seem to matter.

  Odoriferous issues aside, waterbuck seem to be on the wrong continent. A thick grey coat with a shaggy ruff around the neck seems more appropriate for Aspen or Chamonix than tropical Africa. Perhaps that’s why they usually hang around rivers and streams where they can enjoy the cooling waters and the welcoming shade of riverside trees. But the thick, hollow hair around their necks does have a sensible purpose: according to one theory, it provides buoyancy when they go swimming, helping to keep their heads above water.

  The common waterbuck’s most distinctive sartorial feature is, of course, the white ring on its backside, the subject of tired jokes about wet paint and toilet seats. This is smudged on the rear end of the defassa waterbuck, into more of a patch than a circle. Where their ranges overlap, the two animals interbreed and are essentially the same species, so variations inevitably arise. In southern Africa, the common waterbuck is prevalent, and the posterior markings are usually at their most distinctive. The antelopes were revered by some southern tribes, at least in part because the circle of white hairs was thought to symbolise the genitalia of the Great Earth Mother.