Wild Pets, Smelly Professors & A Legend

We have just returned from a trip to the northern parts of South Africa, namely Mpumalanga and Limpopo. The main purpose was to visit this regions world famous Kruger National Park and surrounding area, which is nothing short of spectacular.

The other night I was lying in my sleeping bag inside our tent, pitched at a campsite in the heart of Kruger National Park, surrounded by wild animals. As I lay there I could hear something, a ritual that has been going on in Africa since the beginning of time itself. Humans cooking a meal over an open fire, the alpha male was rustling up something for his family to eat in this case a bar-b-q. Also as long as time itself, the alpha male delivered snippets of information and wisdom to his family. Historically there were no books or written matter and so the only way to communicate knowledge was by word of mouth. This alpha males family sat eagerly hanging onto his every word and hoping to get some food to eat soon.

Now from where I was laying I could not see the said alpha male, but from his voice I could tell that he was a middle aged, white South African and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. But, I could also tell that he was without doubt what I used to call when I was working, “A Complete Nob”. I drifted off to sleep in both wonder of his wisdom and puzzled from his description of the meal he was cooking, as to what exactly he was planning to feed his family on this night.

The next morning I came face to face with the said complete nob, who was prowling around our vehicle, as he saw me approach him he started to stare at another tent parked nearby and repeatedly lifted his binoculars to his eyes as though spotting wild game. As I got closer he stopped me in my tracks with a firm hand signal and said, "be careful there’s an African Wildcat". I initially panicked, a bloody wildcat here in the camp! Now at this point I was actually thinking more lion than riddles, but tiddles it turned out to be.

Now I am no expert when it come to wild or domestic cats, but this one looked exactly like all the other tabbies I had seen a million times, either licking themselves in outlandish positions or stuck up trees looking hopeless. This one in particular did not look wild, it didn’t even look annoyed.

As my initial panic subsided considerable the wild one walked up to me and rubbed its side against my leg. I said to nob that it seemed tame, he said it had probably got used to humans. As a joke I said, “what to eat”? Nob said "no" and explained it’s more than likely its because its had lived here all its life.

Surprisingly, there is just such a thing as an African Wildcat and it lives here in South Africa and it looks a lot like a domestic cat. It seems the cat evolved from various other species about 130,000 years ago and just 10,000 years ago some of them became domesticated in the Middle East and from there our domestic cats evolved, leaving pockets of Wild Cats across the globe.

But you know I think the nob may have something, because here in the National Park in order to monitor vulnerable or interesting animals, rangers often attach tracking collars to selected animals in order to track their movements and learn more about them. Would you believe it, but about an hour after I had my first African Wildcat experience, I walked over to the camps restaurant and there I came across another Wildcat. It looked exactly like the one the nob had pointed out to me and this one did indeed have a tracking device around its neck. It was a kind of light pink nylon strap, with what looked like a small chrome bell hanging off it.

To be honest I don’t think any of these cats were wild, what I think had happened was that I had disturbed nob whilst he was having a good nose around our kit. On being discovered by me he quickly came up with this cock and bull story about bloody wildcats. Actually the nob was not the first person I have come across who has come up with something stupid to get them out of a difficult spot. One such incident stands head and shoulders above the rest.

Many years ago when I was working, Tony Blair the then UK Prime Minister came to Birmingham University to make a whistle stop visit. However, due to some major event that had taken place somewhere in the world, he took the opportunity to make a key note speech regarding this major event. The press were alerted and all the TV channels turned up to cover the speech, which was perfectly timed to be filmed, edited and ready for the lunchtime news bulletins.

The speech was to take place in front of a small invited audience, mainly university bods, Professors, Doctors, graduates and a few cleaners to make the numbers up. A little stage was set up in front a about 20 rows of chairs and behind those was the roped enclosure where the press were safely corralled. The audience started to arrive and took their seats and bang on cue Blair walked in, stepped onto the stage and started his speech.

Within seconds a university professor in the front row, grabbed his chest, started to moan and slumped off his chair and started wriggling about on the floor. Well this completely stopped Blair in his tracks and as we rushed him off the stage and into a safe room, the camera’s and indeed everyones attention switched to the twitching professor of the floor.

The paramedics rushed in swinging into action and moments later they had summoned an ambulance to take said twitching professor to hospital as quickly as possible. After some preliminary treatment the professor was put into a wheel chair and pushed to the reception area to await the arrival of the ambulance. It was at this point that the truth started to emerge.

It seems the good professor had spent the night before in one of Birmingham’s famous curry houses and by all accounts he had a great night knowing he had a day off the next day. When he got home presumably full of curry, he found a message on his answer machine inviting him to this talk by Blair. He felt he couldn’t miss this and so feeling a little worse for wear, managed to get himself to the speech and claim a front row seat.

As Blair was walking in to deliver his key note speech, the professor’s stomach started to bubble and churn and he felt an uncontrollable need to go to the toilet for a number two. He realised that he could hardly just get up and walk out the second Blair started to deliver his speech as that would be terribly bad form. So he tried to tough it out and failed and so the professor soiled his lecturers trousers. Then in order to cover up the impending smell, he simply faked a heart attack.

Brilliant, but don’t forget he was a professor and its his job to be brilliant.

Anyway as the person in charge, I decided that the good professor may have been hallucinating as a result of his possible heart attack and so should go to the hospital for a full examination and explain everything to the nurses, just to make sure he was in good health, even if he was starting to smell.

Wildcats and smelly professors to one side, Africa has yet another wild version of something we are happy to call a pet, the African Wild Dog or Painted Dog, named because it looks as though someone has splashed it with various colours of paint. These are very rare animals and the only real place to see them in South Africa is the Kruger National Park, where there are probably no more than 350 of them. They are highly sociable animals living in packs and hunting by day and night.

They have been introduced to other parks within South Africa, but have either failed or failed to establish themselves in any numbers. Smaller private game parks have had them, but have found that they cannot sustain them as they are such efficient hunters. A good pack of dogs can kill up to 300 animals a year, which for a small private game park is a lot and if you add to that the fact that they are so elusive, then the numbers just do not stack up. The dogs cost the park owners a fortune in animals and they get very little payback, as their guests hardly ever get to see them. Lions are a much better business proposition as they kill fewer animals and spend most of their days just lying around waiting to be looked at by tourists.

As you can image the Painted Dogs are not easy to find in an area the size of Kruger and I have spent many days over various trips to Kruger trying to find them. I have spent hours in very small areas combing every inch looking for them, just because someone had said they had seen them there the day before. Usually when I got back to camp I found out they had been spotted a short distance away.

So early in the morning on our very last day in Kruger for this visit, driving towards the Orpen Gate to exit the park, 1.9 kilometres from the gate was a pack of about 10 Wild Dogs. They were all lying in the short grass, about 5 meters from the road and in full view.

At that very moment one of my life ambitions got ticked off the list.

We sat and watched these dogs, they looked more Hyena than dog mainly due to their big rounded ears. We watched for about 45 minutes almost completely on our own and they did proved to be very sociable towards each other. They lay in the grass almost forming a circle with each dog having at least one part of its body touching the next, often one would groom the one next to it.

I am sure there is a rank structure within the pack, but in the early morning sunlight, lying here on the grass there was no sign of it. They appeared to be a pack of perfect equals.

From time to time we were joined by tourists in their hired white Toyota cars, who pulled over took a quick snap and drove off. You could see them mouth, “Oh its just dogs”. As quick as they arrived they were off in search of what they had really come here for, Elephant, Lion maybe even Rhino. They just didn't realise how special the event was they had just witnessed and that try as much as they want they may never see these wonderful animals again.

Of course Africa is home to many wild versions of animals we are happy to call pets, from wild horses to rabbits and tortoises. Although like the rabbit and tortoise wild doesn’t necessary mean dangerous to us.

The Kruger is in an area known as the Low Lands and just outside the park is the start of the vast interior plateau known as the High Lands. Running along the outside of Kruger is something called the escarpment, which is where the high lands very dramatically meet the low lands with a ribbon of tall vertical cliffs.

Along the escarpment during the 1880’s a store man, prospector’s assistant, journalist and ox-wagon transport assistant, named Percy Fitzpatrick had as his pet a Staffordshire Bull Terrier called Jock. Jock became very famous in these parts, loyal to Percy, bravely seeing off intruders and wild animals.

One day Jock was kicked in the head by a Kudu, which eventually lead to Jock going deaf. When Percy had made his fortune he settled in town and because Jock was unable to hear the traffic, Percy thought it was safer for Jock to live out of town with a store owner, who was having trouble with thieves and dogs attacking his chickens.

In Jocks absence and to heal the pain of being separated, Percy started to write stories about his adventures with Jock. In 1907 the stories became a book, a very popular book. Percy’s friend Rudyard Kipling took part in bedtime reading sessions of the book for Percy’s children and the book was illustrated by Edmund Caldwell, the brother of Mary Tourtel who created Rupert Bear. Then in 1986 like all good books, it was turned into a film.

Sadly Jock’s deafness was to be his downfall and directly lead to his death. The store man whose care Jock was now in, one night had dogs in his pens killing the chickens. He called Jock who did not hear him and the store man shot and killed Jock thinking he was the offending animal. Unbeknown to the store man, Jock had already seen off the attacking dogs and had in fact killed one of them himself.

So there you have it an area of South Africa with strong connections with wild animals and surprisingly strong connections with animals we consider pets.