Mic Smith
Thandi and calf. Thandi’s calf is a sign of how far the rhino has recovered but her face still hasn’t completely healed from the attack with machetes - PHOTO: ADRIAN STEIRN/KARIEGA GAME RESERVE
There’s no excuse, the ranger says, the two anti-poaching guys had watched the whole birth with plenty of time to get out their iPhones to video the baby rhino’s arrival.
“A wild rhino giving birth and they don’t think to get a picture?” he shakes his head.
“Not just a wild rhino, the most famous rhino?”
Matt, who is the Kariega Game Reserve’s photographer, could also be slightly jealous that it wasn’t him who was witness, but Mirco makes no apologies saying “That’s why I’m an anti-poacher and not a journalist.”
Matt has a right to be jealous. After nine years of working with her he loves the new mother like she was family. Mirco has only been with her six months, but as Matt says Thandi is “his baby” because Mirco is the head of the Reserve Protection Agency, who watches over her every day.
The Southern White Rhino and Matt have shared the best times and the worst; he’s been with her through her gestation and he’s been with her through the most agonizing nightmare that a rhino can endure.
Thandi was poached almost three years ago along with two other rhinos at Kariega Game Reserve in South Africa’s Eastern Cape. The trio had been out in the open plain for days. The poachers came at night, darted them at with tranquilizers, tailed them until they were drugged and defenseless, then moved in and hacked their horns off below the bone with pandas (machetes). Thandi’s injuries were the worst (photos taken on the day show multiple hack marks that didn’t hit their mark) but she was the only survivor. Of her two companions, one bull rhino bled out before the vet arrived and the other bull, Themba, died 24 days later in a waterhole.
The vets and the Game Reserve didn’t find out until Themba’s autopsy that the muscles in the bull rhino’s leg had been slowly dying. The awkward way he had fallen during the attack had cut off the leg’s circulation. Though the rangers tried to hold him out of the water, Themba (which means courage) was too heavy and he drowned.
The morning the three rhinos were discovered Kariega decided to call the media and tell the world.
Though many game reserves try to keep rhino poaching on their properties out of the media, Kariega General Manager Alan Weyer says, “We wanted to let people know what was going on.”
The vet, Will Fowlds, who was first at the scene, says he got the call in the morning from Kariega that a rhino had been butchered by poachers and was still alive. He was in the car when he got another call that there was a second rhino. Another 10 minutes later they called again to say there was a third.
“It was traumatic before I even arrived,” Dr Fowlds says.
“The rhinos were found within a few hundred meters of each other. It was obvious they had stuck together during the attack.”
An Eastern Cape journalist, who has reported wars and natural disasters around the world, says the aftermath of the attack was the “worst thing she’s ever seen with animals”. The scene overwhelmed her and she cried. She says hardnosed journalists were crying, because the animals were “so defenseless” and so obviously suffering such pain.
The TV journalist Sandy McCowen, who is now doing the flipside of the story at Kariega covering the calf’s birth, remembers asking the vets to do something for the rhinos’ pain, but the vets said it was too risky because the pain killers could react fatally with whatever drugs the poachers had used.
“I felt so helpless, so powerless,” she says.
For the crowd of staff, rangers, journos, police and vets running around the top plain that day it was a scene they will never forget.
Amid the chaos Thandi got back to her feet and shambled bubbling blood into the bush. At the same time, her horn was being passed through the hands of a syndicate, moving quickly to its final destination in Asia. The three horns were probably out of the country within two or three days.
Since the story got out to the media of the mayhem and tragedy that occurred, people from every corner of the world have opened their hearts to Thandi.
Shock, helplessness and pity has turned to joy now Thandi has calved; sheltering with her new son or daughter in dense thicket on the reserve. Much to Sandy’s cameraman and editor’s frustration, rhino and calf will avoid the cameras until the calf is four to six weeks old.
The return to motherhood is a return to normalcy for the rhino and a return to normalcy for everyone at Kariega. It’s a sign for everyone around the world who cares, who’s followed her progress on social media, who’s contributed towards the surgery she needed, that rhinos can survive.
Matt, who has the build of a Springbok rugby player and the heart of Aretha Franklin, says what Thandi has accomplished is “remarkable”. He says after the attack he couldn’t speak for a year of Thandi (whose name means “One who is loved”) without crying.
Matt smiles inwardly when he recalls he was there half an hour after the calf was born, “Seeing that little youngster… it was literally just skin and feet and ears.
“The birth is a symbol of… the best word that comes to mind… is hope.”
A member of Kariega’s kitchen staff, Adri, says the whole staff at Kariega were saddened by the attack and inspired by Thandi’s fighting spirit and the birth.
Adri, who like Thandi was attacked a few years ago and left for dead, says when she feels like she can’t cope she thinks of Thandi.
“Thandi is an inspiration that people can survive,” she says.
Thandi and her calf are also an inspiration that rhinos can survive.
Đăng ký: VietNam News
