A HORSE WALKS INTO A BAR. The barman asks, “So why the long face?”
It’s a great joke that never gets tired because it’s true: horses have exceptionally long faces relative to their overall size, and for very good reason. Along with an extremely long and light springing foot, the other significant physiological adaptation to their original home on the arid Asian steppes was – as the climate there changed – from browsing to grazing; from eating highly nutritious leaves and fruits of bushes to a much less nourishing diet of grass.
The proto-horse Hyracotherium also developed a progressively larger brain as it needed to be increasingly precise in order to efficiently select suitable forage. The small amount of goodness in the stems is contained inside tough cellulose casings which are indigestible for most grazers. To break it down requires a lot of chewing, which is why horses developed such long faces to accommodate large, strong chewing muscles. They also have extremely long teeth with extra thick enamel to take care of the tough cellulose walls and any grit that is scooped up with the grass. A horse will thrive on grasses that would reduce a cow to starvation.
Primitive horses also developed muscular necks and bodies with deep chests and brawny haunches. These animals were designed to flee predators at speed and travel great distances over arid areas to find enough food. These were the very same adaptations that served zebras well as they evolved on the African savannas. While wildebeests and other large grazers eat mainly the leaves of grass, zebras are happy with just the stems.
Zebras have been recorded eating 50 species of grasses but they prefer just a few kinds, most notably panic grass, red oat grass, buffalo and love grasses. These they digest much more quickly than any other grazing ungulates and, unlike cows or buffaloes, can run just as far and fast on an empty stomach as on a full one while the other ungulates have to rest after eating.
There are also around eight types of herbs that have been identified as zebra muti. Some references insist they eat herbs by accident, but if you’ve ever fed a horse by hand you will have felt those large, rubbery, prehensile lips picking at whatever you offer with an almost disdainful fastidiousness. They seldom eat anything by accident. When grass is scarce they will eat wild legumes if they can find any.
There is an African idiom that holds there are no thin zebras. They always seem to be well fattened, even in times of the worst droughts such as the one that gripped the Limpopo Valley while Zulu was running free. The reality has little to do with the fat of the land and more to do with why zebras, and horses, always seem to be farting.
It’s one of the side effects of having a three-stage fermentation digestive system with stomachs containing billions of intestinal microbes. The job of the microbes is to break down tough cellulose and in turn they produce a continual supply of gas that bloats the animals’ guts and forces its way out through the exhaust system with every other step they take.
Zebras and horses do surprisingly well in drought conditions. Eland too, as well as oryx, kudu and steenbuck which are all common in Mashatu. Herbivore species that have large or no home territories can easily pack up and move off in search of better pastures. But others such as bushbuck, waterbuck and impala, with home ranges less than five kilometres square, are the first to go into stress when times get tough.
Warthogs, too, are terminally reliant on water. And indeed they were dropping, some of them stuck like fossilised creatures in the drying mud of congealing waterholes where they lay trapped, encased in hardened clay cocoons. This was also the time when the zebras of Mashatu started coming into oestrus.
As the season of rain approached in his third year on the lam, Zulu noticed the urine of one of his females was milky and strongly scented. She was not a high-ranking member of the harem but had reached breeding age and had begun pursing her lips and bearing her teeth at Zulu, indicating she wanted his attention. During all his years as a horse, Zulu had not had much experience with females, having had a similar upbringing to a boy who is sent off to boarding school from grade one and from there straight into the military.
The previous year when females had come into heat, Zulu had responded instinctively, trying to mate with them before they were ready, which had led to a lot of bedroom skirmishing but no biological success. He had not known that it took around four days from the first hormonal signs until a female became sexually receptive.
This time the stallion played things more cautiously, closely following the female in oestrus, continually sniffing, nipping and nuzzling her. She in turn would run off, kicking backwards, which only made Zulu more attentive. Whenever she urinated or defecated Zulu would cover her discharge with his own, masking her scent in order to deter any other stallions that might try to muscle in on his girls.
As the mare’s hormonal production peaked, Zulu became increasingly assertive, head held high and his tread measured, almost like a clockwork animal. Finally, she gave up running and stood still with her mouth agape. That was all Zulu needed, mounting her with an almost palpable release of tension. For the rest of that day, every few hours, the mare showed him her voluptuous hindquarters and Zulu obliged her.
Zebras are prolific breeders. While they can foal at any time, the majority of births occur in the first few months of the rainy season, November to January. They live on the very fringes of aridity and so have a built-in mechanism to deal with droughts: if the rains hold off they will naturally abort.
Other than a few localised showers and general meteorological misfires, for two years running proper rain had held off and now, well into the third rainy season, things were looking bleak. By the time the first mare was ready to deliver, two others came into heat and Zulu duly covered them according to the droit de seigneur of a zebra liege.
In the first year of the drought the predators had enjoyed a fine time of it, taking the young, the weak and the old. But now, into a third year with scant rainfall, anything that was going to succumb to hard times had already done so. There was no standing water left and Nel’s Vlei was a baked earthenware bowl. The large indents of elephant feet made progress across the ground hazardous for other animals.
The only water available was in wells dug in the sandy riverbeds by the elephants. But they lorded over their precious resource and only when they moved off to go feeding could the other creatures move in to slake their burning thirsts. For predators, these made perfect kill zones and the bleached bones of kudu, eland, giraffe, even zebra littered the surrounding veld.
One day while trudging on the endless cycle between finding grazing and drinking water, Zulu came across a shell of leather and bones that caused him to break his trance-like migration and sniff the carcass. Slowly, he walked around it like someone who has come across a discarded bag in a field.
Among the many ailments that inflict horses, thrush is one of the more common. It is a bacterial infection not related to the yeast infection in humans and usually attacks their hooves and, if left untreated, can render them lame. In the months directly following Cyclone Leon-Eline, Tommy had developed a bad case of thrush and then he got a devil thorn lodged in the diseased, softened frog of one hoof.
Normally thorns, even devil thorns, do not worry animals. But when a hoof or foot pad is already compromised, the woody spikes can pierce the skin. The frog acts as a shock-absorber under the foot and it is also an important part of the circulatory system: each time the frog strikes the ground it acts like a piston, sending blood up that leg. Continued traipsing through the soggy terrain caused Tommy’s by then lame leg to become infected. Following the Bushveld waltz, Tommy went into septic shock and his final performance was the dance of death.
The once-burnished chestnut coat had turned black in the sun and all that was left of the flesh was some hardened connective tissue around the joints. Scavengers had not found the body to rend it asunder, but blowfly larvae had made a good job disposing of all the soft parts. Something stirred inside Zulu and he sniffed and sniffed until his harem grew restless and their calling broke his deliberations.
March saw a cold front coming from the south force its way into the high-pressure system that normally sits over the southern African interior, bringing two days of low cloud and soft rain. Not enough to soak the ground but just enough to tease out a flush of green shoots and quick-blooming flowers.
The fields surrounding Disappointment Koppie, located on a wide sweep of the Majale River near the central part of the reserve, were awash with soft green leaves and butter yellow flowers. But of course, being Africa, this was no host of yellow daffodils nodding their heads in some delicate glade; they were the harbingers of a very painful kind of fruit, the woody devil thorns.
No animals loved the flush of new growth more than elephants. They started arriving almost immediately as though by some secret messaging system. Elephant society is divided into family groups led by a matriarch and bachelor herds of mature males. Older tuskers hang around in small groups, the living embodiments of the potency of Africa. Females will remain with their breeding herds until they die. Only on special occasions will the two come together – for water, for breeding or when the devil thorn plants flower. Elephant catnip, the researchers at Mashatu called it.
First to arrive at the flower fest was the grand old matriarch Herstel and her family of around 30 mature females, sub-adults and calves. It was a large herd for this arid environment but Herstel was a resourceful leader who had never lost a family member for lack of water. She knew every well, seep, spring and reservoir in the greater Tuli expanse and she respected neither fence nor passport control to get to them when conditions required.
Noticeable to the researchers, though, was that there had not been any recent births in her herd. In the dull light of early morning the elderly lady and her group were scooping up leaves and flowers like syrupy koeksisters at a peach-brandy fest in Marico. By mid-morning the congregation had swelled to close on 300 bulky animals, having arrived from just about every compass point – but how did they all get the trunk call?
It has been discovered that long-distance low-frequency rumblings pulse through the elesphere. They can pick up waves in the substrate much like whales communicate across the vastness of oceans using low-frequency singing. When another approaching herd saw Herstel’s group they broke into a run, trumpeting with trunks held high. Was there going to be a Battle of Armageddon of the tuskers out on the open plains below Disappointment Koppie, the likes of which had never been recorded?
As they came trunk to trunk and tusk to tusk, trunks entwined and there was audible squealing of delight as they embraced in a greeting ceremony. Seeing elephant families re-uniting after months apart, each having been engaged in the taxing business of staying alive, is one of the more moving sights of the African plains. The rumbling and trumpeting and squealing could be heard for kilometres around.
Each elephant went about slowly and delicately plucking leaves and flowers with its finger-like trunk tip, knocking each bunch against a foot to get rid of any soil sticking to the roots before curling around and plopping the bouquet into its mouth. Devil-thorn plants are extremely high in minerals and vitamins, and elephants are loath to share them with anyone else.
By midday, the plain had been denuded and the great herd began to move off eastwards on the shortest bearing to the Majale River – the nearest water. They walked in single file, kicking up a line of dust that stretched more than a kilometre from head to tail, like an army of titans on the march to Elysian Fields broadcast by trumpeting audible only to themselves.
One noticeable absentee from the daisy feast was Floppy Ears. Just why she chose to lead such a lonely and belligerent life was discovered only after she was found dead, reduced to a sorry heap of crinkled leather and bones by a poacher’s bullet. Where the ivory thieves had opened up her head with axes to extract her tusks, the horse guides who found her also found the suppurating mass of a grapefruit-size tumour.
For Herstel the flowering banquet was her last great feast. She had been losing condition and although in all her years of leading the herd she had never lost a single member through hunger or drought, as she neared her 50th year her own life was teetering on a riempie. Her last set of teeth was worn down to the dentine and when the others of her herd fed on mopane branches she could only pick delicately at the branch tips that had any leaves left on them.
While the summer solstice marked the highest, harshest arc of the African sun, the grand old matriarch sunk to her knees into the soft sizzling sand next to a pool in the Majale riverbed. When the rest of the herd began to move off, having drunk their fill, she stayed put, unable to raise her enormous bulk.
The normally placid pachyderms became highly agitated, returned and tried to lift her with trunks and tusks, stroking her, pushing her rump with their feet. But try as she and they might, she just could not lift her burdensome form. They stayed with her overnight but by morning the old lady had rolled over onto her side and showed no sign of life. The rest of the herd made a circle around her body, continually stroking her with their trunks. But eventually they had to take their leave, driven by the pressing need of finding food. One other old lady refused to leave her comrade and stayed put.
As the drought extended, herbivores had to travel further and further each day between the two vital resources. It was purely coincidental, and she would not have been able to do anything to prevent it, but within the week of Herstel dying the first calf of the herd succumbed, unable to make the arduous daily journey. It was the first of many that would not get to see the good times return to Tuli.
That night its mother stood vigil over the baby elephant while the rest of the herd headed back to the Majale. As they passed the body of Herstel, already caved in by the ravages of death, each one fondled her head with its trunk as a blind person might gently caress the facial contours of another person in order to see them.
This ritual was kept up for days as the old carcass desiccated in the relentless sun, until about a week later. The cauliflower heads of cumulonimbus clouds simmered in the sky above, rumbling and bruising from white to purple, sending thunderbolts earthwards and unleashing a violent afternoon deluge that swelled the rivers around sufficiently to wash away several tonnes of sorrow and suffering.
A week later, all traces of the old elephant were gone and the only evidence that remained that rain had fallen at all were a few pools in the riverbeds. Once the brief flush had cleared the pipes of the ecosystem, it was back to work for the heavenly metalworker, labouring furiously every day over his anvil to coax the day’s drama to life under the hellish sun.
The entire bushveld montage was like a forge. And out of the workshop came stark baobab and leafless leadwood trees cut from sheets of tin; herds of elephants marching trunk-to-tail beaten in pewter; wildebeest drop-forged from slag iron; giraffes, fine-worked from molten gold with tourmaline insets; a lion cast in bronze with one eye of opal and the other agate, lying under a mahogany tree.
Out on the powdery plain, heads low and bobbing with exhaustion, a herd of zebras seemed to float on puffs of white-hot dust, their shapes jig-sawed from a plank of African ebony and delicately inlaid with slivers of ivory. Except for one that looked incomplete, just a small ivory chip on its one foot.
The heat sucked up all sound. Each patch of sunlight was like a hammer blow from a celestial smith beating the scene into the copperplate ground. Lizards hopped, two feet at a time, to prevent their feet from blistering. Animals gathered in the shade of large trees that had withstood droughts like this before. The few remaining brittle leaves on the rain trees clinked like tortoiseshell chimes in the wind. You could have dragged a bleeding impala carcass across open ground and no predator would have bothered to look up.
But for Zulu his job was not merely to keep his tribe fed, watered and protected. It was mid-summer and the females were again coming into heat. He had to keep all other stallions away and he had to cover each of his females lest an interloper creep in when his guard was down and do the job for him.
Zebra hybrids have been noted in the wilds and zorses (a zebra sire and donkey dam) have been bred in captivity since the 1880s when they were considered an exotic spectacle for circuses and pony rides. Zorses have been recorded in southern Africa in places like the Kalahari where zebras and donkeys live side by side around dusty villages. But a horbra (a horse sire and zebra dam) is unknown in the wilds. Then again, there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamed of in any philosophy we are schooled in.
There is no doubt that Zulu covered his dams, otherwise he would not have managed to maintain his harem intact through four extremely arduous summers. And the females stayed with him. It is also known that he was fertile because he later sired horse offspring. But whether or not he actually fathered any zebroids – as the cross equines are generically known – was debated hotly for many years around the campfires of Limpopo Valley. Some time later, Ruff Stevens would lose some blood and not a little dignity for expounding his views on the subject.
From a paediatric point of view, the mating between horses and zebras is beset by all manner of pitfalls including dwarfism, sterility and the sheer improbability of it. It is like the observation made by Samuel Johnson about women preaching and dogs walking on their hind legs – it is surprising to see it done at all. It was about as unlikely as seeing a black stallion leading its own zebra herd.