The farm currently had twelve adults and a foal, and three of the mares were heavily pregnant. It had also been an exceptionally dry summer, and the rains still hadn’t come, grazing was diminished and the watering holes were dry, which meant water had to be being brought in every week. So, although all the zebras were currently fit and well, they were overstocked, and with three foals imminent, their numbers had to be reduced before the intense competition for food became a welfare issue.
A buyer had meanwhile been found, who wanted one young stallion and two mares, and although the zebra numbers would need to be reduced further when the three foals were born, this would temporarily solve the population problem.
All the animals on the farm had their natural grazing or browsing diet supplemented with lucerne hay every evening. This served several purposes: to accustom the animals to human activity so they were easier to catch; to allow for easy monitoring of their health; and to create an incidentally magical evening spectacle. But as our unsuccessful morning had demonstrated, no matter how used to human activity they had become, they were still wild animals.
Cobus handed me and Laura a coffee each.
‘Well, that’s wildlife capture for you!’ He laughed. ‘Hope for the best, plan for the worst. They’re so intuitive.’
‘I saw them several times,’ I said. ‘I even tried to go in on foot, but it was almost as though they knew the range of the dart gun and kept themselves just beyond it with a few handy trees and bushes to make any attempted shot impossible.’
‘We’re always darting within an animal’s danger zone – that’s the area in which they can perceive a threat. And that’s because no dart gun has the accuracy and range to dart outside it. Seventy metres seems to be the key distance, and if you’re within that, the animal knows you’re there, and with the slightest fright they’ll take off. If you can dart them from further away, which we’ve done a couple of times with a trial system, the animal doesn’t react. They treat the dart as a nasty fly bite, give a swish of the tail and then carry on eating. The giraffe we darted dropped under the very tree it was feeding from. It was extraordinary to see.’
As ever, Cobus was a wealth of knowledge, experience and stories, little nuggets of conversation like this were priceless.
‘What happened with the new system?’ Laura asked.
‘Money, politics … It’s a shame. It was a great system, ballistically well designed and thought through, allowing for accurate darting at up to 100 metres. None of this 40 metres and you’re pushing your luck!’
‘With that system we could be sitting in the bar at the lodge and dart the zebra while they graze,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘A rum and Coke for me and some Etorphine for the zebra!’ We all laughed as we slurped our coffees.
‘Where are the students?’ Cobus now enquired.
‘We left them at the lodge, told them to grab a drink and have a rest,’ Laura replied.
‘I told Jacques to come at two … Why don’t we have lunch first? It won’t take long with the helicopter. Although it will depend on your darting ability,’ Cobus added, turning to me with a glint in his eye. ‘Do you fancy having a go from the helicopter?’
I nearly spat out my coffee in shock. I had always wanted the experience, but it had never seemed a remote possibility. What with the expense of a helicopter and the expectations of the client, the opportunity had simply never come up. I felt a churlish excitement but then almost immediately felt my heart racing at the fear of failure and of all the things that could possibly go wrong.
Almost as though he could read my mind, Cobus added, ‘You’ve had plenty of experience on the ground. You know what you’re doing and we all have to start somewhere. These are my zebras, my darts, my drugs, and Jacques will tell you exactly what to do, and will put you on the animal. It’ll be like shooting fish in a barrel. With a good helicopter pilot, and once you get used to it, it can often be easier darting from the helicopter than the ground. I’ve worked with Jacques for over twenty years and they don’t come much better than him.’
His words were reassuring and logically he was absolutely right. I couldn’t wish for a better situation to learn from, and it was as safe and as non-pressurized an environment as I could have wished for … but my heart was still pounding. I would be totally exposed: Jacques, Laura, Cobus, fourteen students and most of the capture team would all be relying on me. Everyone would witness any mistake I made, the fear could be paralysing, but this opportunity had presented itself and I was going to grab it with both hands. ‘When we give ourselves permission to fail,’ I remembered reading somewhere, ‘we at the same time give ourselves permission to excel.’
‘Thanks, I’d love to do it,’ I said now.
Back at the lodge, I was deep in thought as I ate my burger listening to the hive of chatter all around. Rumours were spreading among the students that they might get a ride in the helicopter if there was time after the capture. Great, I thought. Now I’d have a group of disappointed students to deal with on top of everything else if it all went wrong.
It was stepping into the complete unknown that I always found daunting. I remembered the utter fear of my first bungee jump, and the first time I dived onto a crocodile to restrain it, but the buzz afterwards, and the transformation of having those experiences in my memory bank, had always made the initial fear totally worth enduring. So I knew that whatever happened, in a few hours’ time I would be richer for the experience, and that thought added to my motivation.
I was snapped out of my thoughts by the familiar humming sound, and within minutes the helicopter was circling above us, no more than 100 feet up. Seconds later, Jacques landed on the feeding ground in a plume of dust. No matter how many times I had seen this sight before, I always marvelled at it: helicopters truly were the ultimate mode of transport.
The engine cut, the propellers slowed and the dust settled, revealing the R44 helicopter. Taking off his headset and clipping it onto the rack above his head, Jacques opened the door and stepped out, greeting Cobus with a broad grin and firm handshake. Turning to me, Cobus introduced us.
‘I thought we’d let Jonathan have a go today,’ he said.
‘Fine, no problem.’
And with the unspoken understanding that comes from years of working together, they both turned back to the helicopter, removing the four doors and the two jerry cans of extra fuel, placing them by a bush a short distance away.
I headed back to my bakkie to organize myself and gather my equipment. I’d made up a couple of darts that morning and had collected Cobus’s, so I had four darts for three zebras. I wasn’t too confident that would be enough, but Cobus reassured me, adding that it would be easy to land and make up some more should the need arise. The usual procedure was to make up more darts in the helicopter as required, but this would probably be one step too far for my first outing, and I didn’t protest.
With my Dan-Inject CO2 dart gun and container of four darts in hand, I returned to the helicopter where the students had gathered. Borrowing the dart gun from me to demonstrate, Cobus talked through the basic elements of technique, position and safety. Only use the lap strap of the three-point seatbelt so your movement won’t be restricted. Your right foot should rest on the skid, so you are halfway out of the helicopter, and your left foot should lock under the pilot’s seat to maintain balance. Always point the gun out of the helicopter, facing away and down; wait for the pilot’s command to get into the shooting position; aim to shoot in front of the helicopter to minimize the effect of the downdraught on the dart …