The men cast clear shadows on the ground as they crept through the bush. Glinting dully in the full moon were the rifle and the pangas (large African knives, similar to machetes) they carried. A twig snapped and the leader’s head whipped round as he silently cursed his noisy accomplice. The moonlight was so bright, the three poachers felt very exposed, particularly as they were in plain view of the Fairy Glen lodge only 500m away ...
Higgins slept as Lady snuffled in the dust a little to his left. She heard the men and turned to face the direction of their approach. The moon cast a perfect shadow of Lady’s horned profile on the sand, and she snorted and stamped nervously. Her fear transmitted itself to Higgins who woke and got to his feet, ready to defend himself and his mate. But the rhinos had no chance: the rifle spat out its first dart, which embedded itself in Higgins’ shoulder. M99 is the anaesthetic drug used by vets to put animals to sleep when they need to administer treatment or move them; it is also widely used by poachers. A second dart followed, again finding its target and pumping its deadly contents into the rhino. Higgins’ instincts were confused – charge his attackers or run? He ran, expecting Lady to follow.
The gunman was quick; as Higgins fled, he reloaded and hit Lady first with one dart then a second. Lady made the other decision and started to charge, then changed her mind and turned to follow Higgins. Her legs had stopped working properly and she collapsed, having staggered only a few steps. Higgins was 90m away when the drug overcame his massive bulk and his nervous system gave up. Forward momentum propelled him into a ditch. The moon’s silver silence was broken only by the laboured breathing of the two stricken rhinos.
The men stood absolutely still, waiting to see if the shots and the noise made by the rhinos would produce a reaction from the lodge. They waited only a few minutes before deciding to go to work. Two hacked at the base of Lady’s horns with their pangas, while the third sprinted to the ditch where Higgins lay. The male rhino had been given a larger-than-normal dose, his heart had slowed and his breathing was shallow as the first cut of the panga bit into his head. Higgins’ attacker was near panic; his two friends were together dealing with Lady while he was working alone. His nervousness pushed him to the edge of terror, and he hacked Higgins’ horn in a mad frenzy of brutality. He missed the base of the horn, hit live tissue, causing blood to creep from the wound, then spurt high as his next blow deepened the cut.
Cocky and confident now, the team of two had finished with Lady and walked, almost strolled, to join their accomplice with Higgins in the ditch. One had the rifle slung over his shoulder and on the other’s back bounced a sack containing Lady’s horns. Higgins’ head was covered in blood, one horn was gone and blood bubbled where the poacher had hacked so deep he had gone into the animal’s sinuses. The leader pushed his man roughly aside and took over work on the remaining horn.
Two hundred metres away the eland woke, sensed danger, panicked and crashed away through the bush. Startled, the men looked up, but it took just three more powerful panga cuts and Higgins’ second horn came free.
A fire broke out at Fairy Glen a day before the attack and is thought to have been deliberately started.
The poachers gathered their prizes and, no longer bothering with stealth, ran to the fence to leave. The rhinos had been easy targets. A day earlier a bush fire had been deliberately started to the northeast of Fairy Glen. The helicopter pilot who dropped water on the fire had been able to identify the four places where it had been started with petrol. Animals will always move away from fire, and so it was that Higgins and Lady were down at the southwest end of the reserve that night, only 100m from the fence.
A farm track runs along the outside of the fence and the poachers had left their vehicle close to where they knew they could cut the wire to enter and flee. They had attacked just after 3.00 a.m. Less than half an hour later they hurried back the few hundred metres to the fence and then to their waiting vehicle. They had left Higgins dying in the ditch and ran past Lady without a glance.
They drove to the west and were most of the way home when the sun rose over Fairy Glen and exposed their grisly night’s work.
To the northeast of Fairy Glen is Inverdoorn, another private game reserve. Inverdoorn’s owner, Damien Vergnaud, hadn’t slept well. Ever since the attack on Aquila and the killing of their animals Damien had worried about his rhinos. Several times during the night he had got out of bed and gone to the window to look at the moonlit landscape. As dawn broke and Higgins and Lady fought for their lives, Damien shuddered without knowing why. In a few hours his phone would ring, his life would change forever, and he wouldn’t sleep for many nights.
Pieter de Jager will never forget Sunday 11 December 2011. At 7:10 a.m. his cellphone rang and Jan, the reserve manager, poured out a torrent of words that seemed to make no sense: Lady, attacked, poached, dying, blood, Higgins, disappeared … at first the words were all jumbled up, but then they came together, bringing their clear and terrible message. Jan had been driving in the reserve, giving ranger Willem de Wee a lift to work. Willem had looked to his left and seen Lady on her side with her legs in the air.
Pieter was in his vehicle within minutes and driving the 9km from his home to Fairy Glen. As he drove he called the police, his vet, and his friend Johan Botma. He asked Johan, better known as Bottie, to meet him at Fairy Glen as soon as he could. His son, young Pieter, had turned 10 the previous day and the family had held a party at the reserve. He was driving, in a vehicle still filled with yesterday’s birthday balloons, towards a nightmare. It seemed insane and surreal.
His feelings of nausea and fear wouldn’t help the situation, so he tried to put his own distress to one side as he drove, and wondered why time always seems to pass slowly when you are in a hurry. If the gate to the reserve had been closed Pieter would probably have crashed through it; he didn’t even notice it was open as he raced past the entrance.
Pieter ran towards Lady, fearful of what he would find. Chantelle, a Fairy Glen ranger, was on her knees next to Lady, crying and begging her, ‘Don’t die’. Those words meant she was still alive and, as Pieter realised this, his whole approach changed. Fear, horror, nausea and despair were replaced by an ice-cold anger and a steely determination that Lady would not die. If he let her die, the poachers would have won. He would not allow that. He saw that her breathing was irregular and weak, and both of her horns had been gouged out with cuts that had gone into her sinus passages. Chantelle continually wiped out Lady’s nose to help her breathing.
‘Where’s the bull, where is Higgins?’ The voice belonged to Bottie, and hearing it added to Pieter’s growing determination and confidence. Lady lay still but her eyes were open and Bottie quickly instructed that they be covered to protect against sun damage. Many people have a particular good friend they would want by their side in a crisis. For Pieter it is his school friend Bottie, who now strode towards where Lady lay, calmly issuing advice and instructions.
The area of flat ground below the lodge had become a hive of activity. Wet towels arrived and were placed over Lady’s eyes, and two rangers ran around working a search pattern, looking for Higgins. It was Sunday so Pieter hadn’t been able to speak to his vet; he had been able to do no more than leave a message. Pieter and Bottie realised they would have to deal with this themselves and act quickly if they were going to save Lady’s life. The wound needed cleaning and sealing, an antidote had to be administered, and antibiotics and dressings were needed fast. The minutes ticked away as Pieter and Bottie worked their cellphones, searching for what they needed to save their rhino.
‘I’ll go to the local hospital. We’ll have to try human antidote, it’s our only chance’, Bottie was yelling over his shoulder to Pieter as he ran to his vehicle. The local hospital is several kilometres away and Bottie went at it like a Formula 1 driver. Johan Botma stands over 1.8m tall, has long hair tied back in a ponytail and weighs over 135kg. He is a large, kind man with a huge heart. That morning as he burst into Worcester hospital he didn’t look at all kind, and nothing was going to stop him from getting the drugs that might give Lady a chance. The hospital staff were immediately sympathetic and helpful, and minutes later he was leaving the hospital again with its entire supply of Narcan, the human antidote, in a box tucked under his arm.
Bottie’s absence seemed like an eternity for Pieter, although in fact he was back in just over half an hour. Pieter prayed as he injected the antidote into the soft skin and the vein behind Lady’s ear. They were worried that if she lay in this unnatural position much longer her organs might suffer damage. An ear twitched, then both ears moved and her breathing started sounding stronger and becoming more regular.
‘Over here, over here, he is here, Higgins is here.’ Pieter and Bottie would never describe themselves as athletes but they covered the 100m to the frantically waving ranger in seconds. The male rhino was in a ditch, which was why they had not seen him before. Bad though Lady’s wounds were, they were not as bad as Higgins’.
The frenzied hacking had gone deeper into his sinuses and blood frothed and bubbled as he struggled to breathe. The sun’s rays were already damaging Higgins’ open and unprotected eyes. Rhinos don’t have good eyesight and, as Bottie gently placed a wet towel over Higgins’ eyes, he wondered if he might not already be too late and Higgins would be blind – if he survived.
Pieter didn’t hear the vehicle approach, but Dr Belstead, his vet, who had by now been alerted to the attack, had arrived and immediately took over tending to Higgins. ‘We’ll need Stockholm Tar, lots of it, to seal the wounds.’ It was Sunday so the local agricultural store was closed and going to Cape Town would take too long. Fate or God started to take a hand and, just as Pieter began to despair, another vet called saying he had enough Stockholm Tar for both rhinos. Bottie and the vet worked hard and within a few minutes Higgins had been injected with the antidote, painkillers, antibiotics and vitamins. As with Lady, the ears moved first, then he struggled to lift his mutilated head. Pieter, Bottie and their vet watched as their brave patient regained full consciousness.
Pieter de Jager
Ranger Chantelle begs Lady not to die.
Constant hands-on care by all at Fairy Glen seems to have saved the rhinos in their hour of need.
Game ranger Riaan removes two darts from Lady.
The sun was high by 11.00 a.m. and the scene was something of a circus as rangers, CapeNature investigators and the police forensic team went about their work. The media were starting to arrive in numbers and the melée was joined by the specialised crime unit, the Hawks. For Pieter, Bottie and the Fairy Glen rangers, the investigation was of secondary importance; what mattered to them was saving their rhinos, and that battle had only just begun.
The full horror of rhino-horn poaching
Bottie watches over Higgins in the ditch.
Higgins is a pathetic sight.
Dr Bellstead treats Higgins’ mutilated face.
Higgins’ eyes are protected from the sun with a wet towel.
Bottie points to where Lady was lying ...
... and stands at the fence where the poachers made their escape.
Higgins – a victim of the poachers’ greed and brutality