I looked at Thula who was in the corner facing the wall, apathetically swinging her little trunk back and forth. She was also suffering from thrush, which as any mother knows is an extremely uncomfortable yeast infection in a baby’s mouth, and she hated the pungent ointment we spread over her tongue and gums each day.
Johnny was exhausted so I took the bottle from him and tried to ease it into her mouth, with no success. Then Françoise, whom Thula truly loved, tried. She was gentle with her, but Thula still wouldn’t take the bottle.
As Johnny said, she wasn’t interested. From a feisty little fighter, she suddenly seemed to have given up. I had no idea why, except that perhaps the pain she had endured in her courageous quest to live was now simply unbearable.
The next day she took a quarter of a bottle – a fraction of what she needed – but the fact she had even taken that gave me heart. I prayed that her indomitable spirit would resurface triumphant.
That evening she was on a drip. The vet had come out of her own volition. Thula had also captivated her.
Two days later, despite drips and encouragement from the entire staff which would rival cheering at an international rugby match, she sunk into bottomless apathy.
Early the next morning a disconsolate Johnny told us she slipped away during the night while he was with her.
Thula’s death affected everybody, particularly Françoise. I have never seen her sob so bitterly. We’ve had lots of animals living with us over the years and we were close to them all but with Thula it was different. Her cheerful disposition, her refusal to surrender until the last few days inspired everyone. She had shown us how life could be joyous despite pain; meaningful despite brevity. How life should be lived for the moment. The pall of sorrow she left behind was for many days impenetrable.
Her body was taken out into the veldt by Johnny to allow nature to take its course.
I later went out alone, found the herd and led them to the carcass. They gathered around. This time I didn’t speak; I didn’t have to tell them what had happened. For a moment I held my head in my hands; I had let them down. When I looked up, Nana was outside the vehicle’s window, her trunk raised in her familiar greeting pose. Next to her was Nandi. They then moved off.
The remnants of Thula’s skeleton are still there and every now and again Nana leads her family past and they stop, sniffing and pushing the bones around with their trunks, toying with them in an elephant remembrance ritual.
chapter thirty-seven
Cape buffalo are the quintessential African animal. The quandary for the uninitiated tourist is that a buffalo looks like and seems like a cow, an African cow perhaps, but a cow nevertheless, and why would anyone want to spend valuable safari time staring at bovines?
But for the aficionado of African bush there is nothing that quite compares, nothing that better symbolizes Africa, and there is no animal more regal, more unpredictable, or more dangerous. I had always wanted to introduce these magnificent beasts to Thula Thula and today was the day.
It was 4.30 a.m. Dawn was streaking with the first shards of light as we were taking delivery of a prime breeding herd of Cape buffalo. We had been up since 2 a.m. preparing the ramp, positioning vehicles and drinking coffee with excited rangers and a few lucky guests from the reserve. The state vet was there and the seals on the truck door had long since been broken for the animals to be freed but for some reason they were refusing to come out.
Then everything went wrong. Firstly, the state vet announced with all the officiousness he could muster in the very unofficial bush that two of the cows were dead and a formal investigation may be required. That stunned us. Apart from our concern for the welfare of the buffalo, they were very expensive and to lose two was a big blow. Secondly he complained that the truck was late; the herd didnot want to come out; and that ours was not the only game delivery that he had to attend that morning. In short, he was a busy man and the lack of enthusiasm of the buffalo to leave the trailer was impinging on his valuable time. And it was obviously our fault.
By now Hennie had had enough. In between trying to persuade the buffalo to disembark and convincing the unhappy inspector that their reluctance was nothing personal, he climbed down off the trailer roof with deliberately audible curses and walked back to his vehicle dialling his wife to say he would be late. That was when the bull finally left the truck …
Without warning a huge bull came thundering out of the back of the trailer and instead of disappearing into the bush, inexplicably made a U-turn that would give a Spanish matador the heebie-jeebies. But this was no mere toro; this was a one-and-a-half-ton Cape buffalo in its prime. And it was spitting mad. For the briefest moment he took in his surroundings and then focused on the ample figure of Hennie ambling off.
‘Dear God no!’ I thought and watched awestruck as the bull charged at Hennie in revenge for his uncomfortable journey.
‘Oom! Oom!’ screamed a young Afrikaner ranger, calling Hennie by the reverential ‘Uncle’ title Afrikaners give their elders. ‘Die bull kom!’ The bull is coming!
It sure was. Hennie glanced over his shoulder, dropped his cellphone and ran for his life.
I knew he wouldn’t make it. Hennie was a large man, the distance too far and there was no time for us to get a gun out, nevermind load and fire an accurate shot. An eerie stillness blanketed the scene unfolding in front of us
