Twenty. That’s how many rhino are being lost to South Africa every month through poaching. A creature that first emerged during the Eocene and lumbered through the aeons to walk the Earth today is being shot and hacked in numbers that are truly terrifying. The horn that makes it among the most distinctive creatures on the planet — the one we knew instantly back when the icing on Iced Zoo biscuits was applied with greater finesse — is also the mark that sentences it to death.
It’s not as easy to get emotional about rhino as it is about elephants or cheetahs. They’re not exactly the Tobie Cronjes of the animal kingdom, with their expressionless faces and mysterious silence. The only way to tell what a rhino is thinking, roughly, is to look at the tail: down, good, curled up, bad. Rhino calves are incredibly, surprisingly cute, running around like puppies and squeaking, but when they reach maturity they become great grey masses forging through the the bush like Sherman tanks.
But rhinos can be creatures of gentle calm (I am speaking of white rhino; the black rhino is aptly named given its generally foul disposition). During the 1990s I was lucky enough to get to know a tame white rhino who had been rescued as a calf and hand-reared. Named Timbi for the Timbavati nature reserve, she was later released into the wild and could wander where she pleased.
She always enjoyed the company of humans though. I could walk up to her in the middle of the bush and feed her apples. She would hoover them out of my hand with her broad, spongy lips and crunch them contentedly; it was like feeding a cow (or, more correctly, a horse: both being odd-toed or perissodactyls). Her skin was thick and rough like sandpaper from the mud and her ears would flick back and forth, noting the sounds and dislodging flies. Land Rovers made useful scratching posts and she’d often follow people like a dog. Once, when she felt lonely, she cuddled up next to my aunt’s big old 7 series and left a rhino-shaped dent in the side. It was so easy to get used to the idea of having a two-tonne pet; I once approached a wild rhino thinking he was Timbi; luckily he fled when he picked up the sound of my footsteps through the grass.
Eventually she mated with a wild rhino and produced a calf. We were thrilled, though she became very protective of the baby and would not allow us to approach her. We watched from a distance, so proud that “our” rhino was doing so well. But it was destined to end in tears, as so often happens with animals. Timbi came down with pneumonia, and though she was tame enough to be treated by a vet without being darted, the powers that be elected to leave her where she was instead of bringing her back into her old camp to be kept under supervision. Unbeknownst to the game guards, she collapsed at a waterhole and slowly died. The calf, left to fend for himself, was taken by lions.
We were devastated when the phone call came through: it felt as though a much-loved family pet had died. No more tame rhino, not even the calf to raise. My aunt — who has since moved on from her old 7 series, dent and all — is livid to this day that a tame animal was not confined and kept safe until she recovered.
So when I see the pictures of dead rhino after dead rhino, their bodies riddled with bullets and their noses bleeding and mutilated, I weep with rage. There seems to be no end to it: the cruelty of it, and the awful waste. That, and the despicable superstitions of people who live on the other side of the world, and who think that a few grams of keratin will give them a hard-on or reduce fevers and nosebleeds. I hate them all: the men with guns, the masterminds behind the syndicates (Messrs Pronk and Toet deserve to rot in hell), the buyers and the end users. It’s a value chain of the unconscionable.
Will this end only when the last rhino is gone? At this rate, we’re going to end up trumpeting the fact that we have the Big 4 — and that would be an absolute tragedy.
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