CHAPTER

3

A thousand buffalos running full-out wouldn’t have made the ground thunder like this one rhino. But even with the earthquake beneath my feet, I was glued in place.

With a grace I didn’t know he had, Foghorn grabbed my arm. He spun both of us around like a cape in front of a raging, charging bull. The rhino missed us, but dashed by so close to my back I could feel a rush of wind.

He stopped about ten feet away as if to say, “Where did they go?” His tail stuck straight up in the air. His ears were cocked like radar antennae. I could see him sniffing the air, trying to locate us. I hoped I didn’t smell sweaty.

Before I could have time to scream or run or climb back into the plane, Marty shouted:

“Macho, stop that, you hear! Is that any way to treat guests?” He stepped in front of the beast, who had whirled around, and raised his hand. The rhino slid to a stop and turned into a pussycat. Marty rubbed his nose, and you could almost hear him purr. “He likes his nose scratched.” Marty laughed, and I started to breathe again.

“Good instincts, Foghorn,” said Sam. “You did exactly the right thing.”

Foghorn looked at me and grinned. “No thanks necessary for saving your life, C.C. Could I pet him, Mr. McQuire?”

“Sure, son. Come around here, though, so he can see and smell you. You wouldn’t want to startle him. He might be fool enough to charge again. I’ve seen Macho take off after butterflies. Black rhinos are probably the most nearsighted animals in Africa. At fifteen feet they can’t even tell a man from a tree.”

Sam laughed and patted me on the shoulder. “They seem to charge everything just to be on the safe side.”

“Great,” I said. “Macho probably thought Foghorn and I were a couple of bushes.”

“I read that scientists think they have such bad eyesight because their ancestors lived in dense forests. They didn’t really need to see well or very far.” Foghorn walked around in front of Macho and petted him on the nose. “How much does he weigh?”

“About twenty-five hundred pounds, we figure. We haven’t had him on a scale for some time. He’s getting close to full grown, which will be around three thousand pounds.” Marty stepped back and looked the rhino over carefully, running his hands over Macho’s body.

I followed Foghorn and felt the big rhino’s side. It was rough, like an elephant’s skin.

“Betcha didn’t think you’d be petting one of these little hummers, did you, kids?” said Marty.

We shook our heads no. Foghorn and I had gotten to travel a lot with our father, and we’d done some strange things, but petting a rhinoceros was going to rank right up there with the best of them.

I stepped back and took a lot of pictures before the light faded. The pose I liked best was when Foghorn spoke to Macho. The rhino turned and looked at my brother as if to say, “Eh? What was that? You have a really strange voice.”

“See there, Foghorn, even rhinoceros think you’re weird,” I called to him.

Everyone laughed, and then we started toward the ranch house. It was getting dark fast. We were all tired and hungry and thirsty.

“Tell you what,” Marty suggested. “Let’s go have that drink and get the talking done tonight. We’ll make an early tour of the ranch tomorrow when the light is better. Then you can watch us crate up your fellow travelers for your afternoon flight.”

Reality was fast getting the upper hand over any fantasy I could have about this trip. And Foghorn wasn’t a fan of fantasy. He said real life was strange enough for him. Tonight I had to agree.

Here we were shaking hooves with one huge rhino and tomorrow we’d accompany two more to Africa—Kenya, to be specific. How was I ever going to get to sleep in a strange bed with all these strange, but true, events to think about?

Next morning a clanging sound woke us up. I moaned and stretched. It was barely light. But I reminded myself I was on a ranch. Work started early. At least they ate breakfast before “riding the range.” The McQuires’ cook stirred up a meal of Spanish omelets—eggs all smothered in tomatoes and hot sauce—and thick, buttered Texas toast that could have held its own beside Mrs. Briggs’ biscuits.

I felt nearly human by the time we piled into Jeeps and headed away from the ranch house. There was a soft morning fog down closer to the river. The mesquite thickets looked silver in the early sunshine. I clicked a couple of photos of the Texas habitat. I’d see if Kenya was similar.

“I’m looking for Macho and Chula’s babies,” said Marty, standing in the slow-moving Jeep. “They’re going back to Africa with you today.”

“What do the rhinos eat down here?” asked Dad. “Do you have to feed them or can they browse?”

“They like this local bush called huisache.” Marty pronounced the plant “wee-saatch.” “It’s a relative of the African acacia. But they eat forty pounds of it a day, so sometimes we have to supplement what’s in the area.”

“I’ll bet you eat forty pounds of food a day, C.C.,” teased Foghorn. “You may look like a rhino by the time you’re twelve.”

I punched Foghorn, but didn’t have time to worry about his remarks. I was holding my camera ready for when the baby rhinos showed themselves.

“Mia,” yelled Sam, who was driving the Jeep. “Pablo, come.” He cupped his hands around his mouth and made a high-pitched crying sound.

“Will they come when you call them?” I asked.

“Usually. They must be napping already.” Sam stopped the Jeep and backed up. He headed for the small muddy stream. “Pablo, Mia,” he called again.

Suddenly there was a crashing sound in the mesquite behind us. I pointed my camera, then nearly dropped it.

“Those are babies?” I asked, shooting pictures as fast as I could.

“What did you think they’d look like? Kittens?” asked Foghorn. “Rhino babies weigh about seventy-five pounds when they’re born.”

“I guess you could call these teenagers.” Sam laughed. “Pablo probably weighs in at over a thousand pounds. Maybe fifteen hundred. He’s a year older than Mia, but Mia is catching up fast.”

We didn’t even have to get out of the Jeep to pet Mia and Pablo. And I wanted to be sure they knew me before I stood on the ground in front of them. They came right up to the car. They liked being rubbed and talked to. I patted Mia’s nose. It felt rubbery. Her skin was all wrinkly like a ninety-year-old woman’s. She stared at me, and I started to laugh. With her bottom lip tucked up under the top, she was so funny-looking, and so ugly, she was cute. She nibbled my sleeve with her pointy lip.

“She has a prehensile lip,” Foghorn pointed out. “It’s like a big finger. She pulls off twigs and shoves them into her mouth. Or she eats grass, but they prefer bushes.”

I resisted sarcastically thanking Foghorn for the lesson. I did want to know what he was telling me.

“Isn’t it risky, Mr. McQuire, to have them this tame? Will they survive in the wild?” Foghorn rubbed Pablo’s nose. “Seems to me that they’d just walk up to poachers and be easy prey.”

“That is a concern we have, Foghorn. But where these little fellers will go will be fenced and protected. They’re so easy to tame, there’s no way we can raise and feed them and keep them wild. Even wild rhinos can be tamed in just a few days.” Marty jumped out of the Jeep and checked Pablo and Mia over. “Ready for your trip, little fellers?”

It was obvious that Marty was very fond of his “babies.” I hoped they would survive the trip and going back into their native land.

Each of the rhinos had two small horns growing out of the top of their skulls. The rear horns started up over their eyes. Their front horns stuck up above their nostrils.

“They’re the only animals on earth that have horns on their noses,” said Sam. “Unless you believe in unicorns.” He looked at me when he said that. Maybe he already knew that Foghorn would never stoop to believe in a mythical animal.

“The name means that.” Foghorn continued to show off his research. He must have sat up all night every night before we left. “Rhino means nose and ceros means horn. In the ancient Greek language.”

“Do you speak ancient Greek, Foghorn?” asked Sam, winking at me. He had sure caught on to my brother’s personality in a hurry.

“Not yet. As I understand from my reading,” Foghorn said, totally unaware that Sam was teasing him, “they aren’t very smart.”

“Son,” said Marty McQuire with a smile, “the black rhino is an odd mixture of inquisitiveness, stupidity, and nervous irritability. When the brains were handed out, they were probably eating.”

Foghorn laughed and punched me in the ribs. I knew what he was thinking without his saying it. I poked him back.

The whine of a truck sounded. It was coming toward us. Pablo’s ears cocked. He raised his head and his nostrils flared as he sniffed the slight breeze.

Mia snorted, each sound a blast of air. She looped her tail over her rear and trotted away with a zigzag motion. She dashed between two mesquite bushes, then wheeled around and stared at the noise of the truck. Snorting again, she kept going toward the water. Within seconds we could see her and Pablo, who had followed her, rolling in a mud hole. They had already forgotten that something had frightened them. It was easy to see how rhinos could be killed by poachers so quickly. They weren’t even smart enough to keep watching or go hide from what scared them.

The cowboys in the truck had two large crates for the rhinos. Marty filled us in on what was going to happen. “They’ll herd Mia and Pablo into the cages and load them onto the truck with a winch, pulling them up that wooden ramp.”

As the cowboys herded her into the crate Mia made a loud, high-pitched noise that sounded like “Miya, miya.” The men put themselves in front of the door of the cage, then dodged as Mia charged. She rumbled right into the wooden enclosure. Then she stood inside it squealing in a high, shrill voice.

“That sound she made is the contact call of a rhino. It would bring her mother running in the wild,” said Sam. “Rhinos are among the best mothers in the animal world. In the wild they sometimes keep their young with them for years. The baby nurses for two years. We had to take first Pablo, and then Mia away from Chula so she’d have more babies.”

“Poor Mia,” I said. “She must feel scared and confused.”

“Yes, that squealing noise is the noise they make when they’re really scared. Usually they just snort when something bothers them.”

While Foghorn joined the dodge-the-rhino game to get Pablo into his cage, I went over to Mia. “You’ll be all right, Mia.” I rubbed her nose. She looked at me as if to say, “Are you sure? I want my mother.” I had to laugh at the idea of a thousand-pound baby calling for her mother.

When both rhinos had been pulled up into the truck, we hopped back in the Jeep to return to the ranch.

“Anybody hungry?” Sam pulled to a stop at the front gate. “I heard the cook was serving enchiladas for lunch.”

“Wonderful.” I pretended to swoon. “I think I could eat forty pounds, at least.”

Everyone laughed as I washed and hurried to the table to eat my fill. It was my way of getting ready for the long flight to Kenya.