The Elephant Whisperer: My Life With the Herd in the African Wild by Lawrence Anthony (the ebook reader txt) 📕

Soon after Brendan had settled in I received a surprise call from David. He had just landed in Johannesburg.

‘It didn’t go well in England, boss. I’ve just got back to Johannesburg. I’m stuck in a traffic jam and I hate it. Can I have my job back?’

‘But I’ve just employed someone else.’

‘I don’t care. You don’t have to pay me, I’m cominganyway. I’ll be there tonight,’ he said, putting down the phone before I could reply.

He certainly meant it. The summer rains had fallen in torrents over Zululand and the Ntambanana River had burst its banks, cutting off Thula Thula from Empangeni. The roads were quagmires and virtually impassable.

David’s father drove him as far as he could, just past the Heatonville village where the Ntambanana was in full spate and completely swamping the concrete bridge. No problem for David; he somehow forged the raging river in the dark on foot and then hiked a sodden twelve miles until he reached Thula Thula.

He arrived sopping wet and covered in mud but ecstatically happy to be back in the bush. Brendan took one look at this drenched, muscular apparition and then shook his head, laughing.

‘OK. I’m handling the scientific side and will concentrate on the environmental studies – which you really need to get done. He could have his old job back.’

They complimented each other extremely well and in time they became the closest of friends, so much so that the staff nicknamed them ‘Bravid the clone ranger’.

chapter twenty-two

Late winter, with its mantle of copper, chocolate and straw, had cloaked the land. The bush had shed its dense summer foliage and game viewing had soared magnificently for the increasing number of guests who were discovering Thula Thula.

‘We must put in burns this year,’ I said to David and Brendan, ‘we have to open up some of the thicker areas.’

All game reserves burn sections of the land in late winter, primarily because the act-of-God fires that have raged through the countryside since time immemorial are nowadays always extinguished as soon as they take hold. A wilderness needs fire for a variety of reasons, not least to regenerate itself. Dead growth is burnt off and the land is reborn as green shoots take root among the fertile ashes.

We always burned our lands late in winter as all smaller life forms were hibernating and thus safe underground. Burns are done in selected blocks usually defined by roads and rivers which act as natural firebreaks. They are called controlled burns, which is a misnomer for I’ve yet to see a fire that could safely be labelled ‘controlled’. Fires have an inconvenient habit of jumping breaks and wind shifts can switch their direction in an eye-blink. Thus even ‘controlled’ burns often end up with a lot of people chasing one crisis after another.

Malicious fires – arson, in other words – are even worsebecause by the time you reach them they are already at inferno stage.

David and Brendan nodded at my instruction. ‘When do you want to burn?’ asked Brendan, eyeing the skies. It was vital to pick the weather just right, with a mild wind blowing in the direction you want your fire to run.

‘Let’s select the areas, and if the wind is right do it the day after tomorrow.’

Within hours, the decision was wrested from our hands.

‘Fire!’ shouted David into the radio with binoculars fixed on the highest hill on the reserve. ‘Fire behind Johnny’s Lookout! Code Red! Code Red!’

Even with the naked eye I could see the first wisps of smoke streaking crazily into the sky.

Every able-bodied man on the reserve responds immediately to a Code Red: rangers, guards and work teams instantly stop what they are doing and rush to the main house as fast as they can. Those close by sprint; those far off leap into the nearest truck.

Within minutes we had about fifteen men assembled and David and Brendan gave a quick briefing and organized them into teams. They clambered onto the vehicles grabbing as many bottles of drinking water as they could carry. They knew from experience it was going to be a hard, thirsty day.

David was in the first truck and braked briefly to pick me up. ‘This was started on purpose,’ he said as I got in. ‘Three men were seen running away. I’ve sent Bheki and Ngwenya to the other side of the reserve to check for poachers in case it’s a diversion.’

Arson was a new poaching tactic – or at least new on Thula Thula. One group had cottoned on to the idea that starting a fire on the far side of the reserve would suck up all our manpower and thus they could hunt on the other side at will. It had worked, but only once, as we soon wised up. Bheki and Ngwenya were experienced veterans andwould be more than a match for any thugs they came up against.

It was a mild day and as we already had plenty of firebreaks set up in preparation for the controlled back-burns to arrest the fire, I wasn’t overly concerned and expected we should wrap this one up quickly. Our teams split up with Brendan’s group driving a half a mile or so in front of the blaze, ready to set the first back-burn where fires are lit across the front of the approaching fire in order to destroy anything inflammable in its path. It’s called back-burning as the fire is set to burn backwards into the wind, towards the main fire coming at it.

‘OK, everybody is in place,’ barked David into the radio. ‘Go!’

Brendan’s team immediately lit clumps of grass and started dragging the back-burn along the edge of the road, spreading it out wide in front of the fast-advancing flames.

We couldn’t have timed it worse. Ten minutes later the wind switched and a squall came screaming out of nowhere, sweeping the back-burn away from us to join the main fire already flaring rapidly across the veldt. Instead of one fire to fight, we now had