Wild Dog Chase

We race along the washboard road in the predawn darkness.  Salani, our ranger and driver, takes the bumps at speed, rattling our teeth, jarring our bones. Our speed turns the cold night air into a biting wind.  We put on all our layers and pull the blankets tight up to our chins. The wind gets into my inner ears and they throb.   The prize is worth it. We are on the hunt for wild dogs, spotted less than an hour earlier along one of the park roads.

To  the uniformed, wild dogs may not sound very exciting but they are endangered and rare, only 400 in South Africa and only 130 in all of Kruger National Park.   They have a reputation, undeserved, for being cruel and indiscriminate killers so farmers and early colonial game administrators called for their extermination. That and habitat lost have diminished the population to dangerously low numbers.   Fortunately, now there are measures in place to protect them and reintroduce them back into some game parks.  We have seen them only in a breeding program and so are thrilled at the thought of seeing them in their natural habitat.

As we speed along, the eastern sky begins to lighten and color.   The marula trees are stark but lovely, silhouetted black against the brightening horizon, seashell pink and butter yellow.  

 The colors which had drained from the earth the night before begin slowly seeping back in but early-morning pale and thin.   An soft mist hangs in the air compounding the effect.  The grasses appear silver, only the barest of yellows and greens showing through.  The rich oranges, reds and golds still sleep, waiting to come out, till the sun is higher, warmer. 

Salani is single-minded in his mission so we don’t slow even when we come across a small herd of elephants.  We pause, but only just, when we spot the impressive bull a 100 meters later.  Despite our unusual speed, the dimwitted francolins still believe they can outrun us. They sprint ahead of our vehicle, dodging left and right, sure that even if they can’t outrun us, they can out maneuver us.  Finally, they give up, veering off into the bush or taking flight, angrily chirping a warning.  

We pull alongside game vehicles coming from the direction we are going.  In rapid Tsonga, Salani exchanges information with the other rangers.  No one has seen the dogs.   The sun has now come up fully above the horizon, big and yellow and hot. Only the warmth doesn’t reach us, we still huddle beneath our blankets.

By now our pace has slowed.  Salani says he thinks we’ve gone too far, so we double back.  As he drives, he hangs out his window looking for tracks but with no luck.  The urgency is gone.

I know when Salani slows, and cuts the engine at a herd of impala he has given up the hunt.  Without speaking we all adjust our expectations and settle in for what is before us.  Cameras and binoculars come out.   We watch the long horned male in his sisyphusian  task of keeping his herd of 100 females and off-spring in a manageable area, circling, snorting, corralling.  We watch the young ones leap and kick up their heels.   The wind gone and the sun higher, our blankets come off.   In silence, we drink in the beauty of what has been given us instead.