 |
|
Rhinos are hard for people to understand. They aren’t furry or big-eyed or easy to pet. They are the Mr. Magoos of the animal kingdom, barely able to see a thing, and their world is dominated by smell and hearing.
Anna Merz, the founder of the Ngare Sergoi Rhino Sanctuary in Kenya, has lived with rhinos for many years. She now realizes that these enormous animals live in a completely different sphere from ours. Anna also realizes that “different” does not mean “stupid.” In fact, the rhinos’ communication system is quite complex. They use body language, a wide variety of calls and even marking with urine or droppings to communicate. Perhaps most interestingly, they use a highly complicated method of regulated breathing—sort of a Morse code—to talk to each other. People may fear rhinos because they do not understand them, but Anna Merz says that fear is very much a two-way street, with most of the traffic coming from the opposite direction. “Most wild rhinos are obsessed with their terror of humans” because people have chased them, separated them from their calves and slaughtered family members in front of them, cutting off their tusks for sale as aphrodisiacs. Barbed wire, bravery and kindness In the course of her work, Anna was lucky enough to raise and release a bull rhino she called Makora, who had never witnessed an attack by hunters and so never learned to fear people as other rhinos have. Over time, he actually came to regard Anna as a friend.
Barbed wire is terrifying to animals. When horses get tangled in even a little piece of the stuff, they invariably go wild with panic. Makora had recognized the sound of Anna’s car engine and had approached her for help. Anna got out of the car, and Makora, although trembling all over, gave her the greeting breathing. Somehow, Anna managed to get a handkerchief between Makora’s eye and the jagged wire that was cutting into it, then took off her jacket and worked it under the wire that was cutting into his huge thigh. Anna and the tracker had no wire cutters with them, so the tracker used his cutlass [a short sword] and a flat stone to cut the wire, while Anna disentangled it as it came free. Anna talked reassuringly to the big bull rhino for the 40 minutes or more it took to get the job done. The whole time, Makora stood stock-still, except for the tremors that shook his body. When the last bit of wire fell away, he breathed a grateful goodbye and moved slowly back into the bush.
Perhaps if we could sit rhino hunters down and get them to see that a rhino is not just an object to line up in their sights, not just a meal or trophy on the hoof, but a living, thinking, feeling player in what behaviorist Dr. Roger Fouts calls the “great symphony of life in which each of us is assigned a different instrument,” it might be harder for them to raise their rifles to their shoulders and blow these magnificent beings to kingdom come. Excerpted from You Can Save the Animals by Ingrid E. Newkirk. Check out PETACatalog.com to order.
|
• Write to: