‘Now … where were we?’ he enquired jovially.
Relieved that the ordeal was over, I quickly reverted to professional mode and started my examination.
‘It looks to me like a simple upper respiratory infection,’ I concluded after completing my inspection. ‘Mind you, you wouldn’t realize it from what’s just happened. I fear this little escapade won’t have helped it, though, so I think we’d best start him on a course of antibiotics.’
‘Right you are. What form will they be in?’ he asked, as he and Tim gingerly returned Kevin to his container. ‘Are you done with him?’
‘Yeah, thanks. Liquid form – you should be able to syringe it into his food.’
‘Great, that’s what we normally do.’
I calculated the appropriate dose, printed off a label, and went to find the bottle from the carnage-strewn floor in the pharmacy.
‘Thanks, Jon. Hopefully this’ll do the trick. See you again – though hopefully not too soon,’ said Rich, as he and Tim carried Kevin out of the room. ‘Oh, and Jon?’ he added. ‘Do us a favour?’
He paused as I wandered back into reception after him.
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
‘Get some sleep.’
Kangaroos: fast facts
Macropus giganteus: The eastern grey kangaroo
Distribution: Southern and Eastern Australia; Queensland, NSW, Victoria and Tasmania.
Names: A male is called a ‘buck’, a female a ‘doe’, and the young a ‘joey’. A group of kangaroos is called a ‘mob’.
Life span: 8–12 years.
Habitat: Woodlands or forests by day, and grasslands or scrublands by night.
Diet: Kangaroos are nocturnal and crepuscular herbivorous grazers, favouring grasses, in particular the young green shoots, which are highest in protein, though they will also eat a range of other plants.
Gestation: 36 days, after which the joey takes an incredible journey to migrate into the pouch where it attaches onto a teat and lives for a further 9 months.
Weight: A mere 0.8 grams at birth, reaching 42–85 kg as adults.
Growth: At 9 months a joey will start to leave the pouch for short periods; at 11 months they leave the pouch completely, but still suckle till 18 months, when they are fully weaned. Females are sexually mature by about 22 months, and males at 25 months.
Body temperature: 36.2–37.3 °C.
Interesting facts: The eastern grey is the fastest of all kangaroos, able to travel up to 40 mph. Females tend to be permanently pregnant, mating soon after a joey has migrated into the pouch. Although during time of drought or food shortage, males won’t produce sperm and females will go into embryonic diapause, in good seasons it is quite possible for a female to have 3 offspring at once, all at different stages: one joey out of the pouch nursing, one in the pouch nursing, and one foetus in arrested development, waiting for the pouch to be vacated. A female is also able to produce two different types of milk simultaneously to meet the requirements of each joey.
Conservation: The eastern grey kangaroo is now protected by law in Australia, after a period of prolific hunting when Europeans first settled in Australia. Estimates in 2010 put their population at 11 million across Australia, one of the most numerous of all marsupials, and the IUCN do not consider it to be of concern. In fact in some areas they are so numerous that they need to be culled as part of a population control programme to minimize disease and starvation within these groups. However, many other species within Australia are not as fortunate, with over 1,700 species of animals and plants in Australia threatened with extinction, which is why the work of the Australian Wildlife Conservancy is so vitally important: www.australianwildlife.org.
18
ZEBRA
‘I asked the zebra, Are you black with white stripes? Or white with black stripes? And the zebra asked me, Are you good with bad habits? Or are you bad with good habits?’
Shel Silverstein
‘We’ll have to use the helicopter.’ Cobus’s distinctive voice crackled across the two-way radio on the dashboard of my Ford Ranger. ‘We’ll never catch them now! Let’s reconvene at the office for a coffee and I’ll call Jacques.’
At a fee of 6,000 rand per hour, a helicopter vastly increased the cost of any capture operation, but with wildlife work there were so many potential pitfalls and complications that if you wanted to have the best chance of success, then realism, practicality and efficiency had to count above expense. Having eyes in the sky simply made sense and had so many advantages, the main one being that the terrain and vegetation in the bush often left huge areas inaccessible by vehicle. Going in on foot could present dangers when working with wildlife animals, and most large mammals never fear an aerial attack, so are often much more approachable from a helicopter. So, as long as it could be afforded, and unless the operation was a simple procedure on the ground, a helicopter had become an indispensable tool for wildlife work.
The objects of our search were the two zebra herds on the farm, but in four hours we had only, and briefly, spotted them a couple of times, before they disappeared into dense bush, never allowing an opportunity to dart them. The decision to call in the helicopter was welcome, eminently sensible, and besides, I fancied a coffee. The crazy and immensely frustrating reality was that on every previous day that week we could have darted all twelve zebras with ease. They were always about, whether at the feeding ground, grazing out in the fields, or at one of the watering holes on the farm. But today, the day we’d set out to catch three of the group, they were, of course, nowhere to be found. Conversely, every other animal on the farm was grazing happily and in full view: there were blesboks, giraffes, wildebeest, impalas, ostriches and hartebeest aplenty … but not a single zebra anywhere to be seen. It was almost as if they knew of our plans, and had made themselves scarce.
In Cobus’s long experience, however – and he knew a thing or two – it was always the same. No matter how tame the animal, or how easy it usually is to find them, on the day you select for their capture, they instinctively vanish. Changes in behaviour, vehicles, people, noises, feeding regimes – it can be any number of things, but no wild animal will hang around to take a chance.
One of the skills of wildlife capture is therefore to minimize an animal’s exposure to the unfamiliar, always approaching in the same vehicle with the same driver, and from the same direction, for example. However, there are times when such a strategy simply isn’t possible, and it is then that a proper understanding of different species, and an anticipation of how they’ll behave, becomes vital to success. Combined with a bit of talent for the job, this will always give you a fighting chance, and after that it largely comes down to luck.
That morning we had set out early in three vehicles, with the objective of darting and relocating three of the twelve zebras on the 60-hectare farm where we were staying – a very small game reserve, by African standards. The topography was undulating, with several high, barren, rocky peaks, where true grazing and browsing areas were limited. These factors restricted the number of animals the farm could successfully sustain while the type of flora determined the species that it would support.
There were plenty of acacia and mimosa trees to keep the four giraffes well fed, being the only browsers on the farm, but when it came to the grazers, there was more competition. Although different grazing species have slightly varied foraging preferences, they still compete for grasslands. The choice is therefore between having more of a few fauna species, or less of several. The greatest biodiversity an ecosystem can sustain is always preferable to a monoculture, so in order to allow for impalas, wildebeest, blesboks, hartebeest, rheboks and ostriches, as well as the zebras, the calculation was that ten adult zebras were the optimum number for this particular area.