Predators I Have Known

  Until I met Felix.

  I had not been in Namibia very long, and I can’t remember who it was who recommended that on my way north to the Etosha National Park I should stop and pay a visit to the Mount Etjo Safari Lodge, but a glance at the map showed that it was not terribly far off the main highway. And at 150 miles from the capital, Windhoek, it would make a nice break in the journey to the famed wildlife reserve. Unsure of the driving time, the condition of the highway, or much else in this strange new land that looked exactly like my home state, I figured I could easily give the place a pass if I found myself running short on time.

  My informant told me that the turn-off was well marked. And so it was. A few hours out of Windhoek and already in the middle of nowhere, I came upon a large sign indicating that the lodge lay about twenty-five miles almost due west of where I was parked. Standing outside my vehicle flanked by mountains, high veldt, and little else, I took stock of my surroundings. Even here, on the side of the most important road in the country, there was virtually no traffic. This is understandable once one realizes that for Namibia the highway connection southward to South Africa is of far more significance than any need to reach Angola by road.

  I was tired, but not exhausted. Should I continue on to Otjiwarongo, or take my casual acquaintance’s recommendation and detour west for a couple of days? Slipping back into my rented Toyota, I turned left and started down the well-maintained dirt road.

  The lodge at Mount Etjo (where on March 21, 1990, the Namibian Declaration of Independence had been signed) was even nicer than advertised. Though the weather was incredibly hot, I immediately signed up to stay over for a couple of nights and agreed to join the next available game drive. Situated amid the Okonjati Wildlife Sanctuary’s 75,000 acres of wilderness, the lodge offered plenty to see, from kudu and Damara dik-diks to hippos and friendly elephants—including one young female that insistently kept trying to purloin an Italian visitor’s camera.

  Hot, sweaty, and tired after the game drive, the other four travelers hurried from the 4x4 to their cool rooms. Hot, sweaty, and energized, I decided to take a walk. Like sex, the prospect of a freshwater shower in a sizzling climate is enhanced the longer it is delayed.

  It was while wandering around the lodge compound that I came upon an enclosure demarcated by a flimsy wall of chicken wire. No more than five feet high at any point, it seemed wholly inadequate to contain anything bigger than a languorous desert tortoise. Wiping sweat from my eyes with the back of my hand, I decided that it was empty. Searching the interior, I noted a few scrubby plants, sand, and some scraggly shade trees. Nothing else but shadows.

  Then one of the shadows moved.

  My eyes widened, and my heart beat a little faster. Off to my left and right beside the insubstantial fence, something sleek and powerful was stirring in the shady indistinctness of a dappled patch of soil. I took a couple of steps toward it. It moved again. Then it yawned. I had a glimpse of teeth, fur, legs. Leopard? No, surely not. Not in that pen, whose fragile barrier any healthy child could easily have pushed over.

  A voice startled me. So focused was I on the softly panting shape of the full-grown male cheetah that I hadn’t heard the guide come up behind me.

  “That’s Felix.” The man with the strong South African accent nodded in the big cat’s direction. The afternoon heat was oppressive, slowing my thoughts as well as my movements. “Would you like to meet him?”

  “Uh, meet him?”

  The guide smiled. “It’s up to you. If you’re willing to go inside his enclosure, I’ll take you in. You can interact.”

  Interact. Under the circumstances, it was a word pregnant with more than one possible outcome. I looked once more at the wobbly fence. Describing it as frail would have flattered it.

  “Can’t he get out?”

  “Oh, sure,” the guide said. “But he doesn’t. It’s his home.” He proceeded to tell me the cheetah’s story.

  Felix’s mother had been killed by a car or truck. Of her two cubs, found alone and crying by the roadside, only Felix was still alive. His sibling had been killed by a mamba. Now Felix was fully mature, and this cockleshell compound was his home. If he really wanted to, he could likely leave any time he so desired, even though, unlike many cats, cheetahs are poor climbers. I looked again at the barrier. It would not have to be climbed. A single leap would allow its sole occupant to clear it.

  Torn between desire and common sense, I debated. “Are you sure this is OK?” Wearing proper safari clothes didn’t make me a shikari.

  The guide shrugged. “Felix knows me. You should be OK as long as I’m with you.”

  Should be. Since childhood it had been a dream of mine to get close to one of the big cats. I think it must be a dream everyone has. If such an encounter came to pass, I had always imagined it would take place at some shopping-mall Christmastime photo-op and involve a well-fed veteran feline performer from the movies or television, or perhaps at a private zoo featuring an elderly people-habituated lion used to having its picture taken alongside giggling children clutching its scruffy mane. Not in the middle of northern Namibia amid heat and sand and far greater variables. I told myself that having been raised by humans, Felix might qualify as half-domesticated.

  Of course, that also meant he qualified as half-wild.

  I had not come to Namibia on a wine-tasting tour. I nodded at the guide. “Let’s go in.”

  Maybe it was only a chicken-wire fence, but once I was standing inside the enclosure, the meager meandering barrier suddenly seemed a lot more substantial than it had from the other side. The guide picked up a well-chewed hard rubber sphere about the size of a volleyball and tossed it.

  “Here, Felix! Get your toy, Felix. Go get it.”

  At the sound of the encouraging guide’s voice, the cheetah lifted his head, looked at the man a moment, and then slumped back down. The guide continued to try to get Felix to play, or just to stand up. Just as studiously, the cheetah ignored him. Standing nearby and watching, I was acutely conscious of still being encased in a veneer of gummy sweat and dust from the afternoon game drive. Shower, I thought longingly. But instead of leaving, I made myself stand there and study the recumbent, somnolent carnivore. Heat be damned: I knew these were precious moments not to be wasted.

  Felix was big, full-grown, but compared to a lion or tiger not at all that intimidating. Acinonyx jubatus resides in its own genus. Famed as the fastest of all land animals, capable of reaching speeds of nearly eighty miles an hour, the cheetah can accelerate from a standing start to seventy miles per hour in three seconds. A Porsche can’t do that. Neither can a Ferrari.

  Felix, it was becoming increasingly apparent, was disinclined to provide proof.

  The guide kept tossing the ball. With great dignity, Felix continued to ignore both it and him. While it was a privilege simply to be permitted to stand in such close unbarred proximity to such a magnificent animal, the afternoon heat was making me drowsy. Surely, now it was time to leave and partake of the refreshing delights of my room. Or to do something else. Anything to alleviate the tedium and the heat.

  Instead of backing toward the exit, I heard myself saying, “Can I get closer to him?”

  The guide shrugged. Was that a smile filled with humor, or a cautioning one? “Up to you.”

  It seemed as if everything and anything was up to me. Handing the guide my video camera and asking him to shoot some footage, I walked slowly over to Felix, never taking my eyes off him. My deliberate and careful approach aroused him not at all. He didn’t so much as twitch. Slowly, I crouched down beside him. From what seemed like a great distance, I heard the guide say, “He likes to be petted and scratched on his head.”

  O-o-o-o-h . . . k-a-a-a-y. Reaching out with my right hand, I began to stroke the fur between the cheetah’s ears, exercising a firm, consistent motion. After all, I kept telling myself, you have six cats at home, and this is just another cat. Each time I slid my fingers forward onto his forehead, I was acutely con
scious of how close they were to that closed mouth.

  Without looking in my direction, Felix lifted his head slightly and began to purr.

  I had no idea what to expect from the encounter, but I did not anticipate that. It was a perfectly normal, ordinary, familiar feline purr. Deeper than that emitted by our cats at home, but unmistakable. It was one of the most beautiful sounds I have ever heard in my life. I am sure the uncontainable smile that spread across my face made me look like a prime candidate for the post of village idiot, but I didn’t care.

  I stayed like that, petting and stroking Felix, until the guide began to fidget. Unnoticed by me, half an hour had passed in the late afternoon heat.

  “Had enough?” he finally asked me.

  Utterly and completely subsumed in the magic of the moment, I would have stayed until my thighs gave out and I toppled over, but his query reminded me of the time and the temperature. “Almost,” I replied. Our cats enjoyed being scratched between their front legs. At least half full of confidence now, I reached forward and began to scratch Felix on his chest, between his lanky but muscular front legs.

  Something whizzed past my face. I felt the slightest brush of wind. It happened so quickly that only after the fact did I realize what had taken place. At the same time, I became aware that Felix had twisted his upper body around, turned his head, opened his mouth, and was looking straight at me. He was holding his right leg up, the paw pointed at my face. For the first time, I could see his teeth clearly. The killing canines were much, much bigger than I would have imagined.

  The guide had immediately lowered the video camera. His voice had tensed slightly. “That’s interesting,” he said evenly. “I didn’t know he didn’t like that.”

  You didn’t know . . . ? You didn’t know?

  I know I flinched. But in a crouching position, with my thighs and calves already thoroughly cramped from maintaining the same posture for so long, I couldn’t do more than flinch without falling down. That would have put me flat on the ground, which I suspected would have been A Really Bad Idea. I stared at Felix. Felix stared at me. Then he lowered his foreleg and resumed facing forward. And did something that in its own way was even more shocking than the warning swipe he had taken at my face.

  He meowed.

  I swear, it was a cartoon dialogue-balloon meow. A perfect Sylvester-the-Cat meow. I knew cheetahs might purr. I knew they barked. But meow? The guide had shut off the video camera as soon as the cat had swung at me, so we missed recording the sound. Mentally, I tried to reconcile what I had just experienced with what I had just heard. Was the cat apologizing? Laughing? Teasing?

  First I’ll rip your face off, then—meow.

  Reviewing the video later, I was able to see what my eyes had not been able to register when the incident had occurred. Felix’s semi-retractable claws (semi-retractable claws are known only in three other cat species) had missed my nose by about an inch. The cheetah had known exactly what he had been doing.

  Don’t scratch my chest.

  I counted myself fortunate. Very fortunate indeed. Had Felix been in a more irritable mood, he could just as easily have taken my nose off. Or bit down on the offending hand. Instead, he had chosen only to warn me. Maybe it was the heat. Maybe at night, or on a cooler afternoon, it might have gone differently.

  Handing my camera back to me, the guide said casually, “You mentioned earlier than your wife is an ex–vet tech, and that you have some land in Arizona with a horse stable and a high fence.”

  “Thirteen acres.” I wiped sweat from my forehead. My eyes were burning. “Why?”

  That half smile again. “We have more animals than we can take care of here. Would you be interested in taking Felix home with you? We could prepare the necessary export papers, handle quarantine arrangements, and so on.”

  He’s putting me on, I thought. Probably plays the same gag on everyone who spends time with the cat.

  But what if it wasn’t a joke . . .

  I gave the offer serious thought. Really serious thought. For about thirty seconds. Not because I didn’t think I could get along with Felix. Not because our thirteen acres of terrain virtually identical to what he was familiar with here at Mount Etjo would be unsuitable for him. Not because I worried that he might scare our own cats inside out. But because I don’t believe in keeping big cats, or any big animal with the exception of a horse or a llama, as a pet.

  I’ve been torn up pretty good by the claws of house cats. They can bite, too. Dogs also bite. So do babies. My philosophy on keeping big cats as pets is twofold.

  First, it’s a silly and unnecessary paradigm of macho self-aggrandizement.

  Second, you can keep a big cat as a pet for years. You can sleep with it, eat with it, play with it, swim with it, let your family nuzzle it while they’re watching TV. And then the cat has one bad hair day. If it’s a house cat, you get a scratch. If it’s a dog, you get a nip. If it’s a kid, you get yelled at and maybe cussed out.

  If it’s a big cat, you lose something else. Like maybe the kid. So I put the idea out of my head permanently, if not instantly.

  Those thirty seconds of serious consideration lingered in my mind for an unusually long time.

  Before I left the compound, Felix stood up and stretched. I can tell you that a full-grown male cheetah standing up is a helluva lot more striking than one that is lying down. The attenuated body and the impressively long legs make for one deceptively large animal. Had Felix chosen to stand on his hind legs and put his forelegs on my shoulders, he could easily have looked me in the eye. But we had already done that last bit.

  So there you have it. A fragment of knowledge you won’t find in the guidebooks and one I inadvertently added to the local lore at Mount Etjo. The next male cheetah you meet, don’t try to scratch him between his front legs.

  Not even for the chance of hearing him meow.

  IV

  THE CUTE LITTLE OCTOPUS AND THE HOMICIDAL SHELL

  East Central Australia, November 1989

  MY WIFE AND I WERE standing on the sweltering tarmac at the little airport in Bundaberg, Queensland, Australia, waiting beside our modest luggage to depart for Lady Elliot Island. I had heard a great deal about the unspoiled beauty of isolated Lady Elliot, usually promoted as the southernmost island on the Great Barrier Reef, and we were both looking forward to a few days’ respite from our planned long drive up the coast from Brisbane to still-distant Cape Tribulation.

  Assuming the well-used aircraft parked in front of us could get us there in one piece, of course.

  I don’t like flying. I’ve had some stunning flights in tiny planes and ghastly flights in big planes and vice versa, but the discomfort and unease in my gut never goes away. The veteran Twin Otter parked before us was already crammed to the gills with supplies for the island’s solitary resort. As the only passengers on this particular flight, we were allowed to seat ourselves wherever we could find space among the stacked crates of biscuits, boxes of canned goods, and cartons of bottled drinks, many of the latter from Bundaberg’s own excellent local brewery.

  “Where’s the rest of the plane?” my wife asked as we prepared to board.

  Fortunately, the air was calm and clear, and the flight itself thankfully devoid of literal ups and downs. Landing on Lady Elliot presented an interesting prospect of its own. There is something unsettling about small island airstrips that extend all the way from one side of your destination to the other. Come in too short, and you end up in the water. Delay touchdown too long or fail to brake in time, and you end up in the water.

  I’ve always been grateful that my love of being in the water tends to cancel out my fear of flying over it.

  We and our minimal baggage were soon settled in our comfortable if basic room, luxuriating in the island’s much-advertised tranquillity, the flitting about of hyperactive sparrow-size yellow-tinged silvereyes twittering in the pisonia trees, and the rhythmic flush of wavelets breaking on the nearby shore. Lady Elliot is not an ato
ll, but an island with a fringing reef, so at high tide the water rolls all the way in to the island.

  While JoAnn rested, I did an afternoon dive with a small group of fellow visitors and one of the more unpleasant dive masters I’ve ever encountered, but I enjoyed myself anyway. I always do in the water. Whenever I’m diving I’m reminded of Peter O’Toole’s statement while portraying Lawrence of Arabia in the film of the same name. When asked what it is that he, Lawrence, finds so appealing about the desert, O’Toole flatly replies, “It’s clean.” In the context of O’Toole’s cinematic characterization of Lawrence, this brief response holds many meanings. I think of it often when I’m diving.

  When the tide is out at Lady Elliot, visitors are permitted to walk on and to explore the shallow fringing reef. As my wife doesn’t dive, this offered her the chance to observe at close range those sea creatures caught in pools left by the receding waters as well as those who dwell permanently in the intertidal zone. Reef walking is something anyone can do, but it’s not as casual or danger-free an exercise as it is often portrayed in tourist advertisements.

  To begin with, you need to have appropriate footwear. Simple sandals, flip-flops, and cheap open shoes just won’t do. Coral can cut like a knife. Your feet need more than a minimal amount of protection. Ragged coral can also slice and dice footgear that is insufficiently durable. One of the quickest routes I know to a hospital is to be caught hiking far out on a reef with inadequate footwear. Coral not only cuts, it infects, and coral infections can be damnably difficult to cure and reluctant to heal.

  Your feet can slip out of cheap sandals. Coral constitutes a rough walking surface whose unevenness is further disguised by the action and visual distortions caused by rippling water. Your favorite footwear may be tough, but if it doesn’t provide proper support for your feet and ankles, you’re better off skipping a reef walk, however enticing it seems. Nothing can bring a vacation to a miserable, screeching halt faster than a twisted knee or broken leg.