There
is nothing glamorous about my job today. I am kneeling in the dirt with my nose
level with a very large lion’s bottom, giving him a bed bath. The air is thick
with the sifting dust of the dry season and the sun is a hot, hazy disc in a
smoky sky as the voracious seasonal bush fires devour the dessicated landscape.
Nduna, one of our beloved rescued lions, has suffered a mysterious head injury and
he is paralysed. The Aware Trust vets darted him and we transported him on an
old door to a hospital pen where he lies on a bed of hay with an eclectic
collection of old bed spreads and blankets tented over him, like a down-at-heel
Bedouin in a desert camp. He is utterly passive, allowing me to massage his
feet and clean him and stroke his face, nibbling tidbits from my hand and
taking water from a syringe. It is heartbreaking to see this magnificent and
beloved creature so helpless and vulnerable – his great golden eyes are full of
bewilderment and apprehension as the muscles in his gigantic body quiver and
spasm uncontrollably.
When we rescued Nduna three and a half
years ago, he was so traumatised he didn’t roar for a year. As his confidence
grew, so an utterly endearing and delightful personality emerged. He is the
Sanctuary clown – always happy to perform for an audience with his collection
of old tyres that he juggles and tosses about with his huge paws, balancing
them on his head and floating them in the water dish so he can leap upon them
with paws extended like a jazzy tap dancer, thriving on the applause and
laughter, his great teddy bear face alight with pleasure. Nduna’s companion,
Kadiki, showed little concern at his disappearance into a hospital pen,
appropriating his toys and sending suggestive little roars and coy tail flicks,
like the lion version of internet dating, in the direction of a rather dashing
neighbouring lion. As can be the case with those creatures blessed with great
beauty and fierce intelligence, Kadiki takes a certain malicious pleasure in
annoying the lesser mortals around her. Lions take roaring very seriously
indeed, and there is a ‘roaring etiquette’ that must be observed. Male lions
always start the roaring, and then the lionesses provide backing vocals. The
song is then ended with the guttural grunting of the dominant male lion. As far
as Kadiki is concerned this is the lion equivalent of the glass ceiling, and
she is going to do everything in her feminist power to smash it. She roars
whenever she pleases, earning herself smouldering stares of rage from her
conservative neighbours and waits, with patent glee, for the males to finish
off their macho display of grunts and coughs before she opens her big pink
mouth, extends her furry brown neck and lets out just one derisory little grunt
– getting in the last word. In order to save face, the males have no choice but
to all get up again and start the whole process over. This entertains her for
hours.
Nduna’s neighbours, Wire and Kimberly (lions we rescued
a year ago) show little compassion for the sick either. Kimberly realises that
every time I walk past I am carrying a bowl of choice morsels to tempt Nduna’s
appetite and she trots along the fence giving her irresistible little “woo woo”
greeting and slanting her beautiful eyes at me beseechingly. It works every
time – I have to stop for a chat and a cuddle, and of course, she gets a treat
too. She pokes her dexterous paws through the wire of Nduna’s hospital pen and
makes off with the blankets hanging on the fence to dry, cavorting idiotically
with one on her head like an over-the-top Ladies Day hat at the races. Kimberly
is our smallest and youngest lioness; a dedicated sun worshipper who bakes
herself on the huge granite rocks in her enclosure every day, letting the
warmth seep into bones made frail by a lack of good nutrition before we rescued
her. Wire charges Nduna’s hospital pen
several times, snarling and grunting and kicking lumps of dirt into the air in
his usual testosterone-fuelled way until we hang tarpaulins to block his view.
Wire is absolutely enormous, with bulging shoulders and a massive head. With
his guttural roar and cowboy swagger, he tries hard to be the bad boy of the
Sanctuary but with a ridiculous punk hairstyle and a tendency to lie upside down
with all his legs in the air, he just cant pull it off.
Tending to Nduna is a challenging and,
initially, rather frightening job. There is no other solution to caring for him
other than for me to provide hands-on nursing and sitting with this massive
predator in the dark each night is surreal. I can hear him breathing beside me,
and every now and then he tilts his head back and gives me a measured yellow
stare, followed by a gigantic, tooth-rimmed yawn and a contemplative grunt.
Each time I can feel my muscles tensing, ready for a frantic scramble out of
reach. I help him to roll from side to
side, essential if he is to avoid pressure sores, and he tips his head back on
my chest with his mouth an inch from my chin and his breath hot on my face and
uses me for support as he pushes himself up. I have tucked a battalion of hot
water bottles along his spine and covered him in blankets; he is as comfortable
as I can make him. I fish about in the gruesome bowl of treats for something to
tempt his appetite – there are heavy lumps of ox heart and slithery,
metallic-smelling slices of liver and several rump steaks pilfered from the
kitchen. He slurps the pieces of meat from my hand, his huge pink tongue
rasping on my fingers and he wrinkles his nose and pulls faces while I wipe his
bristly whiskers and big, hairy chin. When he has had enough he raises his one
working paw and places it on my arm. The claws stay sheathed but the size and
weight of it are reminders of the predator I am dealing with. A guard waits
outside the enclosure just in case Nduna suddenly undergoes a miraculous
recovery and decides to eat me. I am not sure what the role of this guard
actually would be in this event, other than as the bearer of gruesome details
after the event, but Farai and Tatenda wait patiently in the pitch darkness, as
they have done on so many nights outside the enclosures of so many sick and
injured animals over the years. Relations between Farai and I are still
somewhat strained after I insisted on trying to catch an enormous and very
angry puff adder a few nights ago with a feather duster and a dustbin outside
the kitchen. “Madam,” he said to me sternly after I had explained my plan,
“that thing will jump on you like a rabbit and kill you.” With that somewhat startling
imagery in my head I couldn’t concentrate on the task at hand and the puff
adder disappeared.
The Sanctuary is a different place at
night. The round red glow of bushbabies eyes are dotted throughout the trees as
they make their way to the feeding stations in the trees. Bowls of yoghurt,
fruit salad and cereal with honey are laid out for them each night, and the
dinner queue of fluffy gourmands is growing as the word gets out. A genet
unravels its sinuous body like a striped, silken skein and dissolves into the
moon-dappled shadows. The repetitive lyric of Bardot the wood owl sounds from
the mahogany tree as she fluffs up her soft brown feathers against the cold,
and a white tailed mongoose flashes across the road. The abrupt bark of a
baboon from the granite hills behind the Sanctuary signals the passage of
another, larger predator making its deadly way through the night. Our own
little predators, the domestic cats that lie in silky, sleepy heaps about the
tea garden all day are also on the prowl, ears pricked for the furtive squeak
and scurry of rats. Strauss, the senior Sanctuary cat who sleeps in the
klipspringer’s house of his own volition, accompanies me up and down to check
on Nduna, thrilled with the novelty of night- time company, tail bristling to
attention, little white chin raised with self-importance as he trots along
beside me in the pale pool of torchlight. Kimberly executes a rather clumsy
stalk and pounce and Strauss glares up at his enormous adversary and taps her
nose briskly in admonishment through the fence. Small-man syndrome exists in
the feline world too, it seems.
Woody, our mad eagle owl who nurses a
violent, long-standing crush on me swoops upon me with a sudden whoosh of grey
and black feathers out of the darkness each time I emerge from Nduna’s
enclosure. This is followed by a brisk tap dance on my head, accompanied by
manic shrieking and savage pecking at my scalp , an activity that rather loses
its novelty at 2am when I have just been peed on by a giant predator and have
liver all down the front of my shirt. She swoops into the house at all hours
with various gory take-aways for me too – a very small brown mouse, the
grinning, lop-eared head of a hare, a bristly brown rat and proffers them with
a flourish, like a proud hostess with a snack platter.
Every twitch of Nduna’s tail and each
flexing of his huge paws is cause for celebration. He gets up on his chest
three days after the accident, and then a week later he pushes himself up onto
his bottom. The first time he stands we are all holding our breath, and then a
collective groan goes up as he totters and falls heavily and lies disconsolate
in the dust. His first tentative, stumbling steps, leaning heavily against me
for support, make me cry with relief. He makes clumsy, endearing attempts to
play with his battered collection of toys and I spend hours every day rolling
and throwing the tyres and drums he loves in an effort to improve his
co-ordination. When he trashes the hospital and then hides beneath a tarpaulin,
creating mass panic because we cannot find our 220 kilogram patient, I forgive
him because his naughtiness is a sign he is on the mend. It has been a
gruelling and frustrating six weeks nursing Nduna back to health but a
wonderful and unique experience too to spend so much time with such a brave,
determined and noble lion. We hope Nduna will leave the hospital next week and
resume his happy life.
Our rescued serval kittens, Duncan and
Saffron, are thriving. Duncan took a foray into the outside world, fancying
himself an intrepid explorer and sashaying off down the path from the nursery
with a confident swagger of his skinny, spotted hips; all that was missing from
the Great Explorer persona was a pith helmet. The bravado lasted until he met
up with a donkey and the ensuing panic-stricken scramble for safety saw him lodged
behind an old fridge in a chaotic storeroom jammed with a plethora of prehistoric
appliances. I started swearing before I even got through the door and after an
hour or so of wafting tempting treats in the direction of the runaway and
calling to him until I was hoarse, I was fuming. Servals are absolutely
heavenly to look at, and utterly charming when the mood takes them, but
essentially they are the most wilful, mercurial creatures on the planet and many hours of my life have been spent in the
pursuit of various recalcitrant serval residents of the Sanctuary. As I upended
myself in the rusting, sharp-edged entrails of various defunct pieces of
kitchen equipment, the cobra I was convinced I could see in the corner turned
out to be a spool of electrical cable but the giant ginger spider squatting
malignantly above my left ear was the real deal. Eventually I managed to seize
hold of Duncan but as my arms were trapped behind the fridge, holding grimly to
the spitting, writhing serval and my one
leg was in the unrelenting clutches of a giant coil of ancient garden hose, I
had to manoeuvre myself and Duncan out of this hell-hole by dint of kicking
spasmodically with my one free leg and pushing myself backwards with my chin
whilst Duncan bit through my thumbnail with his wickedly sharp teeth, lacerated
my hand with his scimitar front claws and removed a large chunk of flesh from
my wrist with his back claws. As I staggered from the detritus festooned with
cobwebs and dust, with blood dripping off my elbows like some sort of denizen
from a horror film, I fell backwards over a hay bale, still clutching the
furiously hissing serval and landing on my cell phone, making an inadvertent
call to my friend Sharon Nicholls whose voice rose in an increasingly irritated
squawk from my back pocket as I staggered off to the serval enclosure, still
swearing loudly, and deposited the dishevelled but unrepentant Duncan. “Excuse
me,” murmured one of the Sanctuary staff, all of whom had watched my
performance with the same sort of demeanour they adopt observing the antics of
a particularly dangerous animal, “there is a person speaking from your pocket.”
A cockatiel called Sparky arrives – I
should have known this was no ordinary cockatiel when we had to send our two
ton truck to move his house, baskets, feeding trays and other essentials to the
Sanctuary. It’s like accommodating the avian version of Mariah Carey – his
perch must be just so, he only eats certain seeds in a certain bowl, he will
not drink from the water dish because there is a leaf in it...and his singing
is vastly overrated. Two horribly
injured bushbabies come in – one has been clblinded by some sort of chemicals
and after several weeks of trying to reverse the damage, the sad decision is
made to euthanize him. The second one has been savaged by a dog and has severe
injuries but he has regained the use of his legs and is expected to make a full
recovery and be released. Sergio the chicken decides on an alternative
lifestyle and moves in with the rabbits and Rover, our small red dog rescue
dog, falls in love for the first time with the singing, dancing superstar known
as Mommy Dog but it all ends badly when Isabelle, a fluffy sociopath posing as
a poster puppy for cuteness is found in Rover’s kennel one morning and there is
an ugly scene. We rehabilitate and release several owls and our giant eagle owl
Vernon opts for self-catering, lying in wait for rats as they scuttle in and
out of the feed shed and beheading them with a flourish of his gigantic beak.
The mongooses watch this gruesome process with rapt fascination – murmuring and
twittering amongst themselves like the crones with their knitting at the
guillotines of the French revolution.
Many of you knew and loved Eleanor, our
eccentric little black and white dog with the ballerina feet and a passion for
fishing. Eleanor died last month and is in our thoughts every time we head down
to the river she loved so much, where she would accompany visiting fishermen
with such patent delight in their company, barking wildly at the fish, chasing
lures and sharing picnic lunches with them. With her enormous, upstanding ears
and huge brown eyes that she would fix beseechingly on anyone with a packet of
crisps, she was one of the most beloved creatures at the Sanctuary. She had so
many adventures, and so many adrenaline-fuelled trips to the vet, all of which
we were always convinced would be her last. She almost drowned one Christmas
day hunting cat fish in the flooded river, she tangled with a huge python, was
trampled by a zebra three times, almost tore her leg off climbing through a
fence, had a severe dose of biliary and came face to face with a hyena on the Sanctuary
lawn. This time, however, she didn’t bounce back and we buried her beside the
river she loved so much, with a packet of crisps between her paws to sustain
her on her journey to the place where all good dogs surely go when they leave
this life. We miss her.
Joshua and Johanna, the lions we rescued
two months ago, and who have been the source of such heartache and concern, are making a slow but
steady recovery from the neglect and abuse that marked their lives before
coming to the Sanctuary. Johanna is mobile at last - her leg is permanently
damaged and she still drags it sometimes when she is tired, but the pinched,
terrified creature with hooded eyes and broken whiskers has been replaced with
the beautiful proud features of a contented lioness. Her dignity and bravery
are remarkable and sheer willpower has played a huge part in this exceptional
lioness’s recovery. How proud of her we are, and how she has won our hearts. Joshua is out and about in the heavily
fortified enclosure built especially for him. Thick with trees to ensure his
privacy, a sunbathing platform and a view of the other Sanctuary lions, it is a
place he is gradually realising is his own, and somewhere safe. When he emerges
from his management pen, known as ‘the cave’ because it is draped in tarpaulins
to give him a secluded spot to rest undisturbed, he still casts a fearful
glance up at the sky as if expecting something terrible to descend upon him and
both lions cower and snarl at any sudden movement. Joshua snatches his dinner
with a ferocious growl, trembling with anxiety in case it turns out to not
really be for him. His broken teeth often cause him to drop his food and it is
hard to imagine the stress he must have endured competing with several other
lions for limited food. After he has eaten he lies quietly at the back of his
enclosure, watching the other Sanctuary residents go about their business - the
staff heading home down the dusty road, dodging a traffic jam of donkeys and
the majestic bulk of the Brahman cows, the Egyptian geese with their startling
Picasso faces, calling in their rasping voices as they fly overhead, the bright
white stripes of the zebras scribbled against the dusk as they graze on the
lawn. The peacocks take up their roosts
on the roofs in a swirl of psychedelic colour and a deafening cacophony of
mournful cries that echo across the water and bounce back from the granite
hills to mingle with the post-prandial chorus of coughs and howls and roars.
Joshua
and Johanna are among the hundreds of birds and animals rescued and
rehabilitated at the Sanctuary. Restoring these two lions to health and
happiness has been our biggest challenge so far, and it is ongoing. Phase Two
of their new home has begun – another large enclosure that means we can feed
them separately and nurse Johanna without having to contend with Joshua’s
potential aggression. With nine lions
now in our care and several of them in need of lifelong medication and hands-on
care, the lions punctuate our days with their varied demands. From an endless
list of treatments including
antibiotics, pain killers, antacids, tranquilisers, vitamins and herbal
remedies we put together each lion’s daily medication, stashed in chunks of
meat that we hand-feed to them. Planning the menu is complicated - Kimberly
wont eat chicken and Kadiki hates beef. Elsie wont eat unless Johanna is
eating, and Ngozi will only eat next to Mac. Wire wont eat if we are watching
him and Joshua can only eat certain cuts of meat because of his teeth. Nduna
eats anything, anywhere, at any time, including his blankets and the roof off
his house. As with any community, there are alliances and personality clashes,
secret crushes and enduring friendships and sudden, violent fall-outs. It is
our job to monitor all of this and try to keep everyone happy. After dinner
each evening, the roaring of the lions rises into a red sunset sky. The scars of the past are still visible on
their great, golden bodies, but we believe they know that they are safe now,
and loved, and that the bad times are over for them at last.
Our rescue and rehabilitation work would
not be possible without the outstanding and constant support of our friends and
donors. This support has given us the resources and facilities to take on
animals in desperate need, like Joshua and Johanna and given them a second
chance. The response to our appeal for help with this rescue was overwhelming
and we are truly grateful to all the wonderful people who assisted so
generously. We would like to thank David Behr, the SAVE Foundation of Australia,
Johanna (Kat) Biljisma & Cool Galah – Australia, Executive Air, Mogo Zoo
- Australia, and their staff, Sally Padey, Clive Brookbanks, Sandie and Chalkie
van Schalkwyk - such constant friends to Zimbabwe’s lions and to us, Lynne Whitnall and Friends of Paradise (UK),
who several years ago came to our rescue when the Sanctuary was reeling under
Zimbabwe’s economic collapse, and they have come through for the animals once
again, Derek Cottrill, Chris and Maimie
Noon, Trekkers’ Biltong, Rob Noon, Carol Graham, Phileas Fogg Travel, Rooneys,
Fence Africa, Di Fynn - such a dedicated supporter and fund-raiser, Wingate
Golf Club Ladies Section, Golfing & Giving, Sharon Nicholls for whom
nothing is too much trouble, Linda Turnbull, Enid Graves, sponors Penny and
Arthur Harley who will sponsor a Bally Vaughan 2013 calendar to raise funds, the
Aware Trust for relocating the lions and donating considerable time and costs
in the ongoing battle to rehabilitate the lions, Bev Lawes, Whelson Transport
and GDC Africa, Ian Silk, Alro Shipping and Transport, Pomona Quarries,
Exomark, Tusker Springs, Jackie Fingland, wildlife artist Sheena Povall who
donated 3 stunning paintings, Dr Chris Foggin, the Tikki Hywood Trust, Radiator
Services, Dave and Jenny Adams, Sherrol D’Elia, Chippy Duncan and Destyl , Caboodle
Baby Shop, Teresa Gasston, Alexa Volker, the 4x4 Club who arrived en masse to
support the lions, bearing a huge pile of useful items for the Sanctuary, Karen
Bean, Lisa Jackson, J.Mann & Co, the Book Borrowers, Brian Black, Karen and
Stacey Gent and Orobianco, Sue Roberts, Set in Stone – Daniel Themostocleous,
Billy Mannix, Sarah Jackson & Derek Selby, Leanne Byrom, Jenni Ferguson,
Debs and Craig Sly, Garth and Yvonne Nicholls, Nicolle Havell, E-Micro, Richard
& Rhona Harris, Gareth Howell, Gina Everson, Patrick Mavros & family,
Lesley Duncan and Steph Watson of Nguni and Ngwenya, Lindsay Maine, Julie
Barnes & Mrs Gabriel , Kat van Deventer, Chooks Langerman, Sarah
Kenchington, Leigh Revolta who set up our fabulous facebook page, Ashley-Kate
Davidson, Tim Griffith, Clive Wakefield, Adam Root, Kim & Campbell
MacMillan and all the lovely people at 9a Drew Road, Food Lovers’ Market,
Freshpro, Mrs Taylor-Freeme, Mrs Brakspear, Koala Park, Carswell Meats, Montana Meats,
Douglyn Farm, the Khumalo family, Trinity Ncube, James Waddington, Emma
Robinson & Phil Barclay, Mark Walker & family, Cathy Carter, Nicky
Franco, Chantelle Jardine, Jackie Silva, Mr Kasongore, the Cheeseman, Chisipite
Junior School Grade One who sold an astonishing amount of cupcakes to raise
money for the lions, Westridge Junior who held a takkie day for the lions, Mike
Brophy, Mrs L. Regadas, Mike &
Lorraine Thomas , Rose & Rogan Maclean, Ashlee Middleton & family –
thank you for your hugely generous support of our work, Bercol, Jacqui Taylor
who donated her exquisite books to raise funds, Deb Addison, Wendy Robinson,
Butcher’s Kitchen, Elizabeth Worthington, Drake Steele, Telford Mica, Beverley
Bridger, Pauline Visser & Atlas Earth Movers, Jackie Holmes, Rob Hoard,
Sharon Wilson, Samir Shasha, Mike Garden, Sharon Wilson, Spike Kennedy, Harare
SPCA, Anton Newall, Sylvia Carter, Stacey-Lee Cillier, Andrew Revolta, Anoop
Patel who donated stunning licence disc holders featuring our animal family,
Joe Leese, Joe Davies, Motor Torque, Gail Clinton, Signs of the Times, Yo
Africa and Webdev. The Twenty Four Hour Veterinary Surgery sponsored all the
many veterinary drugs required for Joshua and Johanna’s recovery and spared no
expense in treating the lions. Every single animal at the Sanctuary is under
the care of the Twenty Four Hour Vet, and all this treatment is donated. Vin
Ramlaul has been with us every step of the way on Joshua and Johanna’s journey,
and is currently administering various injections each day to an increasing
mobile, and progressively more irritable Nduna the lion. I am sure there are
times when he wishes his wife collected shoes or recipes rather than predators
and that the bathroom was full of nail polish and face cream rather than owls,
and that he didn’t have to share a bed with a large and rather malicious
caracal known, inappropriately, as The Hamster, but somehow he maintains a
sense of humour and is always there for all of us. To all the people who are
supporting the lions and the Sanctuary by visiting and sending messages of
support, and the sixteen thousand people who visited our facebook site last
month - none of this would be possible without you and on behalf of all the
birds and animals that have had a second chance because of you – thank you from
us all.
Contact us – sarah@ballyvaughan.co.zw www.ballyvaughan.co.zw 263 744 312 887 263 733 436 238 or 9
With love and thanks
Sarah and all at the Sanctuary
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