The story of SanWild’s logo zebra continues......

Kwakkies was now almost four months old and she had taken over my entire household. Early in the mornings, she would wait for Maria (my housekeeper) to arrive at the gate, as Maria had become her constant companion in addition to Peanuts – a yellow mongrel dog that closely resembles a dingo. Peanuts and Kwakkies spent many hours doing “predator/prey” training where the dog would chase her around my house and in return, the young zebra would turn on its heels and chase the dog in return. Although she seemed happy with this game most of the time, she also needed the comfort of a mother and whenever she started tiring, she would walk into my office that had a door directly onto a large garden, and would lay down at my feet preferably under my desk. As she got bigger, this habit proved to become more and more difficult. As her mother, I got the respect I deserved, but poor Maria, not much taller than the young zebra had a hard time. As she stretched onto her toes to hang our washing, Kwakkies would grab hold of a sheet or shirt and without warning pull it off the clothing line and would then run off with the clothing items dragging behind her. Her next best game was to stand at an open window and wait for the curtain to blow close and then she would take it in her mouth and start chewing. Most of our curtains were left with large holes and I gave up trying to persuade her to give up this habit. The clear and shrill laughter of Maria chasing after the zebra foal to get back her washing will remain with me always and so will the memory of a dear old lady who fondly looked after many of our animals without complaining a single day about the mess they made or the damage they caused. Maria truly loved all of them – especially the zebra foals.

In between raising this young zebra, I also had a job to do and from time to time, I had to return to the capture site to continue marketing the animals, which the game capture unit had removed off overstocked private game farms. By this time, I had taken to helicopter flying and at every possible opportunity I would take to the skies with a game capture pilot, and good friend, who at the time was flying a Hughes 300 helicopter that was used for capture operations. Sitting in the co-pilot seat it was very interesting to observe the different ways wild animals reacted in a capture situation. Zebra herds for example has a dominant stallion and dominant mare and the moment the animals are herded to a capture boma the dominant mare would head up the group and run in front while the dominant stallion protected the rear end of the group. When the animals reached a point where they felt insecure, they would group up and the dominant stallion would run up to the front from where the dominant mare would be calling for his help. From above, one could see her mouth moving. This was the time to pull back with the helicopter and allow the animals to regain their confidence. If the pilot chose to continue driving the animals at this point, the entire herd would split and would run into different directions, wasting a lot of time to regroup the animals. Once the dominant stallion gave the “all clear” signal the herd would continue running in the formation setup initially and could normally be herded into a capture boma without major problems.

It was late in the afternoon on a return flight back to the farmhouse, on the farm our company was capturing, that we spotted a herd of zebra on the neighbouring farm, close to the perimeter fence acting quite strangely and we decided to check it out. As we approached the animals took off and started running away from us, but a very small foal stayed behind hopelessly caught in an old cattle fence. From the air the young foal seemed totally exhausted and us flying over with the helicopter certainly did not help the situation either and as we crossed over her, I saw her collapse on the fence with her back leg still entangled. We flew straight to the landing spot and I called for assistance on our air to ground control. The farmer informed us that his neighbour was not living on this particular farm, but that an African farm manager would meet us at the gate. It did not take us too long to find the young foal as we took a GPS reading in the helicopter when we flew over her. We stopped a short distance away and started walking slowly towards the young foal. This was the first time that I had heard the pitiful calls of a baby zebra calling for its mother while in distress. In the distance, I could hear her mother returning her babies’ calls, but we could not see the herd, but we would hear her mother’s calls all the time and knew they were not too far away.

When we reached her one of our guys placed a jacket around her head to cover her eyes and we started cutting away the wire that held her leg captive. By this time, she had cut herself badly with the razor wire that was used for the old fence. One of her eyes had been badly damaged, possibly a kick from one of the zebras in her herd and the one back leg had been cut open onto the tendons. The signs around showed that the young foal has struggled for some time to free herself. The injuries needed expert veterinary treatment and I realized that this unfortunate baby would not be able to be released back with her mother. She was very dehydrated and infection had already set into the wounds that were covered with blowfly eggs that would within hours hatch into maggots. Sadly, we had no choice, but I could not help wiping down my tears as we drove off away from her family and I knew that within minutes her mother would return to the place she knew her baby was left behind. For many hours, she would be running around calling desperately to find out where her foal was, not understanding what had happened to her.

On arrival at the farmhouse my worst fears were confirmed when we checked the young foal’s temperature - she was running a very high fever and needed antibiotics as quickly as possible. Fortunately, we carried basic veterinary supplies and could put her on an intravenous drip and give her the necessary medication. I also asked for a very small amount of tranquilizer to be given to at least allow her to sleep that night. Both of us settled down shortly – me in the one compartment of the game truck with the door slightly open between us, and she in the adjoining one. Whatever I did to try to get her to settle down failed; she would not lie down and was eventually so tired that she started falling over. I was extremely worried and her mother’s calls repeated inside my head and I eventually gave up and decided to sit down inside her compartment and try and read a book by holding my flashlight.

As I sat there trying to read, my eyes continued to close and eventually I felt that I would fall asleep any moment. By this time, the young foal had walked up quite close and she was now standing with her head hanging touching my shoulder. From the corner of my eye, I could see her legs slowly drooping and I put my arms forward and held her while she went down. Within a second, she was completely down lying with her head on my knee fast asleep. It must have been almost 30 minutes before she jumped up in panic, and stepped all over me and ran to her own corner again from where the “let’s walk up and be close to each other” excise started all over again. For many days afterwards, I was still covered in bruises.

By the next morning, I was totally exhausted, but the foal had finally lain down on her side and she was sleeping like a ghost in a coffin. For three days the game truck compartment was her home and she was given her bottle and veterinary treatment every couple of hours. During this time, I did not even have the time to think about Kwakkies’s reaction when another foal would arrive, but as we drove home on the fourth day, I could hardly contain my excitement!


To be continued...............