Most people know what a puppy’s toy feels like, but it’s not often one gets the chance to know what it feels like to be one.
* * *
As I mentioned previously, when great white shark experts and guides Rodney and Andrew Fox put out chunks of tuna or mackerel around their boat to keep visiting great whites interested and available for viewing, the pieces of fish were attached to one or two balloons to keep them floating at the surface. These were not specialized great-white-watching gear, but ordinary party balloons purchased at a local store. I retain a vivid memory of one great white that had taken our bait cruising by my cage with a bright blue child’s balloon trailing on a string from the right side of its mouth. The balloon and the length of twine attached to it soon took their leave of the patrolling animal, but in my mind that particular great white will forever be ignominiously remembered as the clown shark.
Largely because of the plethora of bloodthirsty television documentaries in which they are featured, people rarely, if ever, associate sharks with humor. Of the few artists who regularly draw amusement from the actions of Carcharodon and its relatives, the most notable is Jim Toomey of the widely syndicated cartoon strip Sherman’s Lagoon. In this he was preceded, frequently and to much mirth, by the inimitable Gary Larson’s The Far Side. In addition to sharks, Larson extracted dry and frequently skewed humor from both the animal and plant kingdoms, places where humans were often reduced to little more than bipedal straight lines. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen, and enjoyed, every cartoon Gary Larson ever drew.
I never thought I’d find myself acting in one. . . .
* * *
West Australia, April 1992
MORE THAN HALF THE POPULATION of Australia lives in or near its five largest cities. Not for nothing is the rest of the country called the Outback. The Outback itself is broken down into smaller, though still enormous, subregions with names of their own. The Top End, for example, refers to the finger of land that points toward New Guinea. In the vast northwest of the continent lie the districts of the Pilbara and the Kimberley. An area the size of Great Britain, the Kimberley is home to barely enough people to populate a good-size American or European town. It’s an enormous, often dry, sometimes cyclone-swept region of spinifex scrub, exotic animals, descendents of the continent’s first human settlers, spectacular sheer-sided gorges, unique insects, and a rugged rust-red coastline that is as magnificent as it is unpopulated.
We were heading north along this coast after having paused to photograph and film the famed whale sharks of Ningaloo Reef. The purpose of the voyage was to allow Brent Mills of Nature Films (based in Chattanooga, Tennessee) to produce a documentary on Rodney Fox. Having previously written two articles for National Geographic magazine on this little-known and visually dramatic part of Australia, Rodney wanted to revisit the area without the pressure of having to write to a deadline. This coincided neatly with Brent’s desire to make a documentary about him, and so the expedition was born.
I was invited to participate because—well, to this day I’m not exactly sure why I was invited to participate. Partly, I think, it was because Rodney and I got along well. Partly, because he knew I shared his enthusiasm for such exploration. And partly, perhaps, because on a previous journey he may have sensed that I can get along with most anyone under nearly any circumstances. The latter is a facility not to be undervalued when one is to be packed into a too-small, inadequate boat with a bunch of strangers for an un-air-conditioned tropical journey of a month’s duration.
The rest of the production team was a decidedly mixed bunch. There was a professional underwater photographer, much of whose previous work had been in, amusingly, Antarctica. Joining Rodney was his remarkable wife, Kay. The crew consisted of the boat’s owner and captain plus his irrepressible mate and all-around deckhand. Brent Mills was joined by a good friend of his, Robbie Lauren Kyle Mantooth, scion of another notable Chattanooga family. One of the kindest and most beautiful young women I have ever met, she was also the expedition’s official still photographer. Not long after the expedition, she moved to Hollywood and willingly surrounded herself with carnivores of a species whose predatory habits and lifestyle it is not within the scope of this particular book to describe. Looking back over the years, I have a feeling that deep down she was more at home with the fish.
As for Brent, through no fault of his own, he was a representative of a subgroup of humanity that I often find it difficult to deal with: people who inherit money. However, in his case, a more amiable and almost self-consciously self-effacing individual would be hard to imagine. He was kindly and considerate to a fault, which I think sometimes resulted in people taking advantage of him. But his dedication to the project at hand was assured and unbreakable.
Finding a boat and a captain willing to forgo usual business to take off for a month’s expedition up what many would consider to be the most dangerous coast in Australia, a place that boasts the second highest tidal shifts in the world after Canada’s Bay of Fundy, had proven a difficult challenge even for Rodney. Normally employed for fishing charters, the Nordon left many things to be desired, most notable of which was a complete lack of internal climate control. In the fierce Australian sun, the only relief from the boat’s stifling interior was to be had out on deck while the boat was in motion. And at times, various members of the expedition found the only way they could get any rest was to move outside and sleep on deck.
Brent’s footage of visiting whale sharks at Ningaloo was stunning (Eugenie Clark and a formal National Geographic crew arrived there several weeks after us), and the conditions on board notwithstanding, everyone was in good spirits as we set a course northward along the coast. We paused to visit the Montebello Islands where the British had carried out nuclear weapons’ testing in the 1950s. Rodney and I were the only ones willing to dive there. As I recall, this had something to do with a proprietary concern among the younger members of the expedition regarding the future viability of eggs and sperm. Those who didn’t dive missed little. Rodney and I encountered virtually no life on the bomb-blasted seafloor save for the occasional enormous and isolated oyster. All through the following week, these gargantuan shellfish provided excellent fodder for innumerable jokes focusing on radioactive mutant oysters. Also for a pot of Rodney’s fresh oyster stew, which—I regret to say—came out awful. At least, no one glowed following consumption.
Continuing on up the coast, we stopped at isolated towns and outposts to take on fresh water and fuel. I remember a bikini-clad Robbie and her friend, a distance runner from Virginia, pausing on an industrial dock to take an extended outdoor freshwater shower. This unassuming girlish interlude succeeded in bringing a sizable commercial operation to a complete halt as every goggle-eyed employee within eyeball range (and a couple who hurriedly managed to locate binoculars) stopped everything they were doing to watch.
Eventually, we reached Broome, the only community of any size on the entire Kimberley coast, where we laid over for a couple of days to rest and reprovision for the remainder of the journey north.
Here, I must beg your indulgence for a moment as I find myself compelled to relate an anecdote involving ice cream.
Old-town Broome was largely deserted on the morning I decided to take a sightseeing stroll. Every other member of the expedition was at a local hotel, luxuriating in the presence of air-conditioned rooms and ice and other modern amenities. I found myself wandering alone among the single-story buildings, passed the closed Paspaley pearl showroom, and in the simmering heat eventually found myself confronting a mirage. It had to be a mirage.
But this mirage was open for business.
It was a small establishment, nothing fancy, with a windowless entrance opening directly onto the street. An ice cream shop. Had it been the hottest Hollywood starlet-of-the-moment half-closing her eyes and beckoning to me with pursed lips, I could not have made a more determined beeline for it.
As the owner, a short but stout sunburned Aussie, waited patiently, I
forced myself to take time enough to thoroughly peruse the neatly printed menu board that hung from the ceiling just inside the unshuttered opening.
“You’ve got coffee ice cream?”
“Yes,” he replied, gracefully forbearing from chiding me for vocalizing the obvious.
“Could I get a coffee milk shake? Double-thick,” I remembered to add. In Australia, if you ask for a milk shake, you get a drink made only with milk and flavoring. To have one made with ice cream, you need to ask for a double-thick.
Turning from me, the proprietor began to assemble the necessary ingredients to combine in a tall, steel mixing container. Looking on, I struggled to control my flow of saliva. Those of us on the Nordon had not had ice cream or anything like it for two weeks.
I soon noticed something that gave me pause.
“You’re using vanilla ice cream.”
He looked back at me. “That’s right.”
“But I asked for a coffee milk shake.”
The man nodded. “All our double-thick milk shakes are made with vanilla ice cream, and then we add the appropriate flavoring.”
I checked the overhead menu again, just to make sure. “But it says you have coffee ice cream. Couldn’t you make mine with coffee ice cream?”
He shook his head. “We make all our double-thick milk shakes with vanilla ice cream and the chosen flavoring.”
I implored. “I’ll pay you double. Triple.”
A sorrowful shake of the head. “Sorry, mate. That’s not how we do it here.”
I pondered this solemnly. “Well then, can I get a sundae made with coffee ice cream?”
The owner smiled back. “Sure thing.”
“Good. This is what I’d like to do. I want to order a sundae made with coffee ice cream and a double-thick vanilla milk shake. Take the whipped cream, the nuts, the cherry for the sundae, and throw them away. Take the vanilla ice cream and throw it away. Then take the coffee ice cream for the sundae and put it in the milk-shake container with some milk and chocolate syrup, and mix it.”
A steely-eyed Outback stare met mine. Surely, even Ned Kelly himself never lasered a more unswerving gaze upon an intended victim. The owner’s tone firmed a little but otherwise did not change. “Sorry, mate—that’s not how we do it here.”
I caved. The milk shake made with vanilla ice cream and coffee syrup was refreshing enough—but somehow something had been lost, and not just in translation.
Two days later, fully equipped and laden with fuel, we headed out toward Rowley Shoals. These three perfect isolated atolls lie approximately 170 miles off the northwest coast of Australia. There is no vegetation on the sand cays that lie at the center of two of them. The water that separates Imperieuse, Clerke, and Mermaid Reefs from the mainland is deep and the currents between them strong, so no pollution or river runoff of any kind comes anywhere near the coral trio. Together, the three atolls comprise a marine park under government supervision. Regular patrols by aircraft are vital to ensure the protection of the sea life at the shoals from depredations by fishermen who attempt to sneak down from Indonesia in their sporadic efforts to poach the reefs’ pristine stocks of giant clams (Tridacna gigas) and bêche-de-mer (Isostichopus badionotus) and to fish.
Rowley boasts the clearest water I have ever seen. Hovering just off the sandy bottom at a depth of more than sixty feet, I could easily count the number of fingers someone in a boat stuck over the side and into the water. I’ve experienced “unlimited” visibility in places like the Bismarck Sea, the eastern Tuamotus, and Micronesia, but for perfect visibility nothing compares to Rowley Shoals. Diving there was like swimming in air.
After several days of exploring and photographing, including a couple of amazing drift dives in the six-knot currents that periodically swept into the lagoons, it was decided to try and get some tiger shark footage featuring Rodney. Reports insisted that tigers were frequently seen at the shoals, and this would make an excellent coda to the film Brent was doubtless already editing together in his mind. Rodney, as always, was agreeable to the idea, though I think his wife, Kay, was less enthusiastic.
Nothing was left to chance. The perfectly transparent water minimized the likelihood of a surprise shark appearance. Descending to the sandy bottom at about seventy feet, both cameramen took up positions alongside shielding coral bommies. Situated more than ten yards apart from one another, these setups allowed for two completely different camera angles on their subject. Brent was with one cameraman, expedition still photographer Robbie with the other. Settling himself down twelve yards distant from and midway between the two camera locations, Rodney began steadily waving back and forth the half tuna he had brought with him, filling the otherwise clear water with the powerfully attractive scent of blood and fish oil.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Kay and several others had elected to skip this particular dive and remain on the boat.
I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. I also knew that my sole task was to stay out of the way. While everyone else was positioning themselves, I retreated to a ten-foot-high bulge of coral well to the rear of both camera positions and stayed there, just behind the crest of the ridge. From this position, I had a clear view of both camera setups and beyond them, of Rodney.
Five minutes passed. Ten. A couple of humongous potato cod arrived and proceeded to check out the unusual activity as somberly as a pair of undertakers methodically taking the measurements of a new client. Having examined the bubble-blowing interlopers and found them unremarkable, these impressive fish then took their leave, utterly unperturbed by the human intrusion. Shards of shattered rainbow, small reef fish darted in and out of the chum cloud, glorying in the unexpected source of fresh food.
Fifteen minutes. Still nothing. Not even a resident whitetip shark.
After twenty minutes of this, a visibly disappointed Brent gave the signal to wrap things up. Rodney ditched what remained of the baitfish, and the cameramen started upward with their underutilized gear. Running as low on air as everyone else, I prepared to follow the others up to the waiting Nordon. As I did so, I happened to glance over my right shoulder.
Directly behind me was a full-grown tiger shark. It was maybe a dozen feet away. It was also maybe a dozen feet long.
I would not be surprised if the bubble I released subsequent to encountering this wholly unexpected sight registered on seismic detection equipment hundreds of miles away in Perth. I might have verbalized something short and pungent—I honestly don’t remember. Not that it would have mattered. Remember the advertising slogan for the classic science-fiction film Alien? To paraphrase it, underwater no one can hear you scream “Holy . . . !”
Whether it was the bubble, my sudden exclamation, the goggle-eyed look on my face, or the incredible velocity with which I began kicking backward, something startled the tiger. In a flash, it was gone; a blur of fins and teeth and tail. Collecting myself (just as on land, panic underwater uses air at an accelerated rate), I hovered there, up against the reef. The image of the tiger staring back at me remained imprinted on my retinas, like the colors you see when you squeeze your eyes very tightly shut.
For all I knew, the shark had been there the entire time, watching me watch the film crew watching Rodney. The perfect Gary Larson cartoon come to life.
Nobody else saw it. As soon as I made my turn and reacted, the shark took off. I’m not sure all of them believed me when, back on the boat, I related the story of my brief encounter. But some of them did. I think, for sure, Rodney did.
Maybe it was the look in my eyes.
VII
FLAT TIRES, OLD CANVAS, AND BIG CATS
Tanzania, July 1984
I COULD EASILY HAVE BEGUN this book with several stories about lions. When one thinks of predators, Panthera leo is often the first animal that comes to mind. Humans have been dealing with lions for a long time—usually to the lions’ detriment—but our admiration for them has never flagged. There are heavier tigers, but little in nature is as impressive as a hea
lthy male lion in full framing mane or a pride of sleek, muscular females focused on a hunt.
Years ago, my wife and I were fortunate to encounter the latter activity during a visit to Ngorongoro Crater National Park in Tanzania. Ignoring the flanking safari vehicles, the females were wholly intent on stalking a herd of placid wildebeests. As the pride members padded forward, eyes locked on their intended prey, they spread out in a horizontal line. Occasionally, each would pause to look down the line and check on the position of her sisters. In the end, the alerted wildebeests wandered out of easy hunting range and the lions, seemingly unperturbed by this development, nonchalantly settled down for an afternoon snooze. Those of us fortunate enough to have witnessed this demonstration of leonine tactics will never forget it.
Breaking off a stalk to take a nap is not unusual behavior for lions. They habitually sleep eighteen out of every twenty-four hours. This penchant for dozing can allow careful sightseers to approach a somnolent pride quite closely. Nothing looks more like a housecat than a female lion sleeping on her back, rear legs akimbo and moving lazily back and forth in her sleep while one front leg rests on her chest. It’s the ultimate catnap.
The apparent lassitude is deceiving. Decades of acclimation to and acquaintance with tourist-packed safari 4x4s has led lions, with rare exceptions, to view driver, passengers, and vehicle as a whole. That’s why during close approaches they may seem to ignore the car in which you are riding.
Step out of the car, however . . .
* * *
South Africa, May 2002
WHEN I WAS IN NAMIBIA in 1993, a deadly incident was reported over the wire services that originated from Kruger National Park in South Africa. Coming upon a pride of sleeping lions in the middle of the day, three male tourists from Taiwan got out of their car. (Kruger is liberally peppered with signs advising visitors in no-nonsense terms to STAY IN YOUR CAR.) Believing perhaps that Kruger operates as some sort of open-air subset of Disney World, two of them walked over to the slumbering group and turned around to have their photo taken with the picturesque pride. The lions, not unexpectedly, promptly woke up and ate them both. This outcome was shakily related to the press by the only survivor: the traumatized third visitor. Nominated by his friends to take the proposed picture, he had been close enough to the car to escape back into it. Once he was back inside the vehicle, the lions were no longer interested in him.