Happy Endings
2004 ended on a good note. Our fifth calf for 2004 was born to Blackface on the 30th December. I had come across Blackface on the morning of the 29th as she was walking in a shallow part of the Turgwe River. She was acting very strangely, literally stomping along in the water, which was shallow so I could see her entire body as she trudged along.Blackface has always been quite a contrary hippo, the most aggressive of all the Turgwe Hippos, and often will charge humans, or anything that gets in her way! On this particular day though, she was in a very stroppy mood. If a hippo can look unsettled and uppity she was doing her best to look like that. Fortunately she did not notice me as I was sitting on a boulder just up the riverbank, so I could watch without having to be ready to climb a tree. Blackface has often left the water and chased me up a tree, or just made sure I am out of her vision by a loud snort and charge. You would be entirely stupid to hang around and wait to see if it was a mock charge or not, as Blackface weighs in at around one and a half tons and most of that is muscle!
Anyway, she finally found a clump of reeds in a deeper part of the channel and hid herself under them. Later in the afternoon I found her at Bob’s weir next to our home. All I can say is she was acting “twitchy,” swishing her tail around in the water, kind of rolling her body, but without the full turn that hippos often do when they roll in water, then kicking with her legs and generally behaving in a most disgruntled manner. After an hour of this behaviour, she settled down and I left her in peace.
On arriving home, I told Jean-Roger that I believed she was not only pregnant but was about to give birth. Well, it is always nice when one is right, as the following morning I hear a hippo calling at the weir. On arrival, what do I find but Blackface with her tiny little newborn calf next to her. I have named the baby “Five” as he/she is the fifth calf born in 2004. Five calves is the most born in one year to the Turgwe Hippos since my study began back in 1990. Also, back in November 1993, Blackface gave birth to “Three” who was the third calf born after the horrendous 1992 drought. So “Five” seems an appropriate name for Blackface’s new baby.
The baby is totally black around the head like its mother. I believe that morning was the first time it had suckled; as for about twenty minutes mother and calf got to know each other. The calf was obviously thirsty but was not quite sure where mother’s udder was. Every time it managed to maneuver in the right direction towards the udder, it would move away and try approaching Blackface’s body from the wrong angle. After twenty minutes or so, it finally realised that mother’s milk was under her hind legs. Once it got the hang of it there was no stopping and it drank for at least thirty seconds before surfacing for air, and continuing the process for another four or five goes. Calves normally suckle under water, and when they need air come up for a breath, then return to the udder and mothers' sweet milk.
In the meantime, one other female hippo-Cheeky, (Blackface’s daughter) and a young mother of four calves- has gone off, and I believe has also moved away to have a new calf. Her daughter Hope was born back in February 2002 so Cheeky should have had a new baby by now. Hopefully, she will return to the group once her new calf has established the necessary bonding and knows who is Mum.
Perhaps Blackface, being a much older hippo, does not need to spend time alone with her new calves, having so much more experience than her daughter. Within a day of Five’s birth, Abe- another mature female- came along to investigate. She was finally chased away by Blackface, but Blackface did not appear too worried about the presence of another female in close proximity to little Five. A couple of days later young Storm, an eight year old male, arrived, spending the day in the weir pool near Blackface and Five. Then, the next day, along came the bull Robin, as well as Storm and Hope, and Blackface again accepted the presence of the other hippos. She just would not let them near her calf, but that is normal.
2004 also finished with the anthrax disease finally stopping and the deaths of so many animals being over. We thankfully had early good rains with over eight inches falling in early December. This washed the anthrax away and now we just wait to see if it will return once more later in the year. This is a great probability as anthrax reoccurs in many areas where they initially have had an outbreak. At least now that the threat of animals dying in our area is over we can reflect on the ways to try and keep it at bay and we have all learnt many lessons from the outbreak. The people in the north of this conservancy counted over 2000 carcasses of animals during the period the anthrax was killing daily. The main species that died was the beautiful kudu antelope with nearly 80% of all deaths being kudus, (over 1650 kudu carcasses were found), 3 elephants, 9 cheetah, 3 leopard, 19 buffalo, and 6 giraffe were some of the other causalities, then many other antelopes were affected, as well as the warthog and bush pig. These are the animals that the people in the north managed to locate. There were probably quite a number of animals that were not found. No hippos were recorded dead in any of the river systems in the north.
At home we managed, thanks to three men who came here, to vaccinate the majority of the hippos against anthrax by using a dart gun. Clem Coetzee was the experienced man in the field but it ended up with Colin Wenham doing the darting, as his dart gun was the most suitable for the hippos. Colin did a superb job. Clem had an older dart gun, which has a gun powder charge; this meant it would have a loud report when fired. Colin’s dart gun, being gas activated, was practically soundless and hence caused less disturbance for the hippos.
Even so, I think all three men were surprised at the Turgwe Hippos' reaction to the whole procedure. The two of them, as well as Greg Foggin, had brought along three guns, as normally hippos are not particularly easy to work with. They either submerge when afraid, then move off, constantly submerging, or they leave their river pools if there is a place to escape. Being shot at is something no animal enjoys, but in the case of hippos, I think Clem possibly hoped we would be able to dart three or four of them.
On arrival at the pool I explained to the men that I would stand as close to the hippos as I could, without being in the way of the shooting, that as they shot I would talk to the hippos as I believed and hoped that this would keep them calm. After all, I have spent the last fourteen years of my life with these Turgwe Hippos, nearly on a daily basis. One thing they definitely respond to is the sound of my voice.
They still do not accept my scent, or the sight of me: then I am just another human. Yet when I speak, they know it is that creature that is always around them and watching them on a daily basis get on with their lives. They recognise my voice and actually all know their own names.
Some animals respond to a name, others do not. Funnily enough, our vervet monkey family and the baboons that visit our home daily do not know their names. Some of the vervets are so “tame” that they sit on our knees, yet they do not respond to their names.Hippos, however, do respond. I can call, for instance, Surprise, and she will lift her head up, and so it goes with all of them. My wonderful Bob, the dominant bull who died back in 2003, would actually come to me when I called him. Sometimes he would be half a kilometre upstream in the river and I would shout out his name and this magnificent 2.5 ton hippo bull would come rushing down the river and stop perhaps fifteen feet from me as I stood by the river’s edge. Bob was such a special hippo.
Anyway, we arrived at the hippos’ pool to vaccinate. The men got the darts ready (all of this is shown on my new video “A Hippo Haven” which costs GBP30, US$50 or Euro40, sent courier post), then I got close (about forty feet from the hippos) and the men stationed themselves about 70 feet away and the first shot was fired. To say my heart was in my mouth was an understatement. Before we went ahead with the exercise, I had contacted as many “experts” in the wildlife field as I could find who knew about vaccinating against anthrax, trying to find out what I could about possible side effects, etc.
One school of thought stated that there was a possibility of septicaemia from the combination of the needle remaining in the skin for a time and the fact that anthrax is a live vaccine. Septicaemia has been known to kill large mammals like the rhino. Nobody was too sure what would happen with the hippos. So, there was a chance that I might lose some of the hippos that we actually were trying to save from catching anthrax, who would definitely die from that awful disease.
The responsibility of calling in the men and going ahead with this exercise weighed heavily on my shoulders. Apart from my own love for these hippos, there are many people around the world who support them. There are foster parents who adopt a hippo, thus helping us to help the hippos have a future. Some of these parents have been with us now, adopting every year, for the last eight years. To tell them I had just killed one of the hippos, by trying to save him or her was not something I relished doing- apart from what it would have done to my own feelings about the hippo itself. Yet, I felt I had no choice, as hippos are very prone to anthrax, and I knew of five that had already died in another area in the Lowveld, where anthrax had broken out just a little bit before the Save Valley Conservancy’s outbreak.
So, with my knees shaking and my heart pounding, the first shot went off and missed! The hippos panicked a tiny bit as they were not sure what the loud twang noise was. The dart had passed over their heads. It was about eight inches in length, including the needle of two and a half inches. They had seen this strange object but they didn’t have time to think about it as Colin took aim again and this time hit Cheeky, and actually hit her in her cheek where the dart could be seen sticking out. Cheeky jumped but I just talked to her as calmly as I could and, amazingly, within seconds she had calmed down and did not seem particularly perturbed by this foreign object sticking out of her cheek. Then it was literally shot after shot at all the adults. A couple of misses but all of them were darted and then it was onto the youngsters. Colin darted five animals and then the men loaded more and the rest of the hippos were darted. Altogether, 11 hippos were vaccinated, missing only Tacha- a juvenile female who was off with the younger bull Tembia, who also did not get vaccinated- plus young Sabi, who just kept being in the wrong position, but the rest of her family were darted.
The amazing thing was, even when one of the hippos got quite a fright- like lovely little male Kuchek who jumped up in fright in the water and kind of leapt about- my voice calmed him down. Hope actually got her dart in the back of her neck. I saw how difficult it is to hit the animal exactly where you aim. The hippo just needs to move a fraction, or the pressure of the gas in the dart gun is not set accurately because the animal moves, or there is a strong gust of wind, and the dart can go off course. At one stage, Colin was aiming for one hippo and that hippo put its head under the water as the dart arrived, and the dart hit Storm in the neck, as he was behind the submerged hippo. Fortunately, he had not already been darted so did not get a double dose and was fine. Clem had assured me that even double doses would not harm the hippos. Colin at all times was aiming for the neck, but of course hippos do move and so one cannot be 100% accurate all the time.
We had arrived at the hippos’ small pool at just after 4.30pm and called it a day at 6 pm as it was getting too dark for any kind of accuracy and the only hippo left to dart was young Sabi. Most of the experts which I had contacted had told me that the younger animals were less likely to get anthrax than the adults, so we had to hope that Sabi would be fine. We also did not dart any of the four new babies born in 2004. The men were wonderful and accepted my somewhat (in their eyes) eccentric behaviour; they are not used to females who talk to animals! But I think it paid off and they realised that the hippos certainly have trust in me!
Then it was a question of wait and see, and also pray, that the anthrax did not arrive on our doorstep. At that stage, it was only three miles down the river and could arrive at any time. It takes about seven to ten days before the vaccine kicks in and the animal is immune to the anthrax. Also, in that period I would be able to see if they looked like they were getting sick with septicaemia.
Thankfully, all went tremendously well. The needles remained in their skin. All of the dart body with the feathers were gone quickly, but the actual needle stayed in their skin for up to two and a half weeks. Once it fell out, a kind of large sore was left in the area where they had had the needle. It looked like a smallpox jab that we used to get in the UK as children, except larger, as a hippo is a bit bigger than a human! It was probably about three inches in width, and in a circular shape. There was a slight raised bump as well, but I had been told that would happen and would mean that the vaccine had worked.
All this occurred on the 22nd of September and not one hippo became sick from the vaccinating. All are well- none had any side effects. The sore has even disappeared and one can only see a very tiny mark if you look with binoculars. So the vaccinating was, thank God, a success.
Much to our joy, the anthrax never made it to our doorstep. All the kudus and other animals in our area remained alive and not one caught the anthrax. We even had a small herd of elephants, 12 in total, move to the hippos’ island for over five weeks during the height of the anthrax outbreak. The emotional part of me wondered if they knew what was happening in the north, and decided to take refuge with the hippos near us. Whatever the case, they left us when the first rains fell. I also caught them on my new video: they had a couple of tiny baby calves born earlier this year. I personally did not see any of the animals that, sadly, died in the north. I thought it best to not go into the areas, as anthrax can be carried on your clothes and shoes and I was too afraid of bringing it back to our area. We have so many poaching problems with the people who invaded here, that the last thing the animals needed was an outbreak of anthrax.
The December rains finally washed it away, or into the ground, so now we wait to see if it will come back again this year. We already have made plans to purchase a share in a dart gun, hopefully with Clem. Then, if the outbreak does occur again we hope that Clem would come to us first of all, and help us once more with vaccinating these hippos. I cannot thank those hippo supporters enough who took the time to send donations towards the cost of this project, and for us to hopefully have shares in our own dart gun. When things go bad in Africa, it is often something that literally happens overnight. There is no time for too much thought. One has to act, and act quickly and decisively. We have to commit the Trust to expense and to an exercise, hoping that the hippo supporters will be there for us. To those that were, I thank you all.
So 2004 ended on quite positive notes. What 2005 has in store for us is anybody’s guess. I hope to report back at a later stage that we have a new 2005 calf from Cheeky, but the five calves born in 2004 are all well and looking great.
The river now needs some more rain, as a lot of silt was brought down during the initial flood in December. It is so humid at this moment that I hope the rain is going to come down with a vengeance soon, giving us more water in the river, plenty more green and luscious grass, and browse for the animals. I do hope that if you have not yet bought my new video, “A Hippo Haven”, that you will think about buying it. All profits go towards projects for the Turgwe Hippos. Its duration is one hour and twenty minutes.
For those of you who bought my first film “For the Love of Hippos”, you will see how your foster hippo has grown in the last two years, and also- I hope- enjoy my new film, where I have tried to accommodate some of my hippo foster parents’ requests. For example, there is closer photography of the individual hippos, which was especially for Suzie Marsh. She is a tremendously gifted sculptress in the UK. For those of you who collect hippo ornaments, I would suggest you check out Suzie’s web site at www.suziemarshsculpture.co.uk. She has sculpted the Turgwe Hippos from photographs I have sent to her, and one day hopes to come here and work from the live animals. In the film I have also shown some of the other wild animals that live around Hippo Haven, including the Vervet monkeys and their babies that visit us daily, and many other animals that enjoy coming to our home.
The Turgwe Hippo Trust would like to thank DHL Zimbabwe, and Swift Transport Zimbabwe, for their amazing contribution towards the fostering of these Turgwe Hippos. Without Swift’s transport of the parcel from Chiredzi to Harare, and DHL’s fantastic courier service around the world, we would not be able to get our parcels to their respective parents safely and speedily.
Thank you to David Dell of Strachans Photo Pharmacy, Zimbabwe, for discounting the Trust’s photographs and to Chris for his design of the video cover.
Another special thank you to Willy Memper, of Video Promotions, Zimbabwe, who spent from 10 am until 10pm on the first editing of my tape. Then, three weeks later we went through the whole process again. His wife Gaby put up with no husband home for his evening meal, and he accepted me and my determined ways, as well as having Jean-Roger and I in his studio on an overtime basis, without any extra payment for his editorial skills after hours.
I thank all those who in 2004 either supported the hippos by fostering one, or bought some of the Trust’s merchandise or one of my two videos.
Without all of you we would not be able to continue to help these magnificent Turgwe Hippos. I thank you all from the bottom of my heart.A big thank you to Alice Egoyan, of Save the Hippos web site for her assistance with the Turgwe Hippo Trust site and her amazingly efficient help.
Working as we do from the African bush, communications are never easy. Thanks to Alice we have an efficient web site, but our own phone line has delayed us in keeping in contact through e-mail with many of our hippo supporters. Initially, poachers had stolen the wire from the phone line on several occasions. Then, for the last two months the radio part of the phone (as it’s a bush phone it works on a radio) has been faulty. We have finally managed to overcome this problem. With the purchase of a mobile phone, which sadly cannot operate from our home as we have no network there, we can climb up a steep rocky kopje (little rocky hill) of about 200 feet (70 meters) high, then we can get the network. From that perch, we have a magnificent view and now can have regular communication once more.I hope that 2005 will be a great year for all of the world’s animals and Nature, and may Mankind always remember that without Nature and her citizens, we are all nothing.
On 16th January, we got wonderful news: another new baby hippo. Cheeky hippo had
gone off on 24th December and we found her walking in a shallow part of
the river at 3pm on 16th January followed by her new calf. Jean-Roger has
named the calf "Relief" as I was a bit worried about Cheeky, knowing she
should be back here any day, so it was a great relief to see her.The calf looks like Tembia the younger bull and is light coloured and may
be a female, a new sibling for Hope and the first calf for 2005. I
believe it was born in the first week of January.
Karen Paolillo, Founder, Turgwe Hippo Trust, Hippo Haven, Save Valley Conservancy, January 2005. Zimbabwe.
