Eat and Be Eaten

[docsconz]

Africa. The name means many different things to different people around the globe including the people who live there. There are a few things, however, that I believe are undeniable about the continent. It is incredibly rich in natural resources and these have been incredibly exploited. Despite this history of exploitation, the continent remains rich in natural resources, some of which I recently got to see and experience first hand on a trip to the Republic of South Africa. The specific resources that I am referring to are the continent’s wildlife.

That there remains a significant population of wildlife is testament to the value of wildlife for tourism and the value of tourism for a sustainable economy. I recently had the pleasure of partaking of a three-night safari at Singita Boulders Lodge in the Sabi Sands Reserve adjacent to Kruger National Park in northern South Africa. First off, I will say the Lodge is astounding, providing unparalleled luxury in the bush. It provided for stellar game viewing. The remainder of this article is not a travelogue for Singita nor will it be an accounting of the animals that I saw and checked off on a list. Rather, it is an exploration of some thoughts that my experience at there aroused in me.

The eGullet Society for Culinary Arts and Letters is all about food and this post is all about food as well, just not about food as we typically think about it or discuss it. This is more about to be or not to be – food that is, and the elemental nature of the food chain. This is something that I believe we don’t often get to see, experience or understand in modern, industrialized society. Those with experience with farms and slaughterhouses have some sense of this of course, albeit in the context of the human environment. What struck me on safari, however, was the very elemental nature of the process. Of course, I am not the first to have been struck with these thoughts nor are these thoughts likely to be revolutionary or profound to some other people.

Humans eat for pleasure in addition to sustenance. In the wild eating may or may not be pleasurable, but it is clearly a matter of sustenance. It is not really a matter of “eat or be eaten”. Rather it is more like “eat and be eaten”. This applies from the base of the food chain, all the way up to the massive carnivores and herbivores. Ultimately, everything must eat and nothing escapes being eaten. It is one thing to read about this in textbooks or scholarly journals. It is quite another to see it up close and experience it first hand.

The first experience that got me thinking about these elemental processes was on our first early morning game drive. Our guide, Coleman and our Tracker/Spotter, James, had found some fresh leopard tracks in the road. They set about to find him and in impressive fashion, they did. We found him in the bush on the side of a road that we were taking to cut him off. What was interesting was what was on the other side of the road. It was a large female kudu calmly munching away on some brush. The leopard was well aware of her and intent on stalking her for his lunch. The kudu in her turn was well aware of the leopard and managed to keep the brush that she was eating directly between her and the leopard. The kudu had found a nice lunch spot for herself, yet needed to keep from becoming the leopard’s lunch. We were parked in the middle of the road just short of being directly between the two animals. We sat there for approximately ten minutes watching this drama before us. Our emotions were in an uproar. Were we going to witness a kill? Did we want to? Did we want the kudu to get away? What would happen to the leopard if he didn’t make this or other kills? Despite the intensity of the leopard’s purpose, once he started to get too close, the kudu finally realized that there were other good lunch spots for her and she bounded off safe for at least a few more moments. The leopard, in turn, appeared to take it in stride and lay down to pose for our cameras for a few minutes. Our emotions had been spared this time.

What became apparent here is that the hunter is not necessarily the one with the advantage. Finding the right prey in the right situation at the right time takes work and effort with no guaranteed pay-off. It might be days or weeks in some instances for the right situation to develop. Indeed, it might never occur at all. There was another female leopard we came across. Three years ago she had in the course of her life traumatically lost the use of one eye. It was felt by many at Singita that she probably would not survive long without good binocular vision and that the loss of depth perception would ultimately be her undoing. That may yet be the case, although three years later, not only does she continue to survive she has bred and become a mother of a couple of newly born leopard cubs. Indeed the cubs are still so young they have yet to wander away from their lair and we were kept away from them so as not to disturb them. Still, the mother needs nutrition in order to nurse her cubs. When we encountered the mother, she was on her way back to her lair to check on the cubs. She was coming from a fresh kill of an impala that she made that morning. After spending some time following the mother in the Range Rover, our guides tracked down the kill. The leopard had eaten only the entrails of the impala and had tried but failed to tree the kill to save it for later. The impala carcass lay at the base of a tree so far undiscovered by any other opportunists. After continuing our drive we returned to the kill after nightfall to discover a lone Spotted Hyena eating its fill. Much of the carcass that had been there earlier was already devoured. The hyena was clearly an efficient eating machine, barely noticing our presence. The leopard would not be getting any more of this impala.

The food cycle was observed throughout our stay at Singita. Termite mounds were nearly ubiquitous as were the creatures eating the termites. They provide a nutritious meal for Southern Yellow-billed Hornbills amongst others. Old termite mounds are homes and hunting grounds for other animals such as snakes and mongoose. Cape Buffalo, Elephants and White Rhinoceros would eat plants and brush at their whim, blazing new trails through the rapidly growing brush. Impala, zebra and giraffe did so as well, although a bit more skittishly as they always had to keep an eye, a nose and an ear out for predators. The lions were particularly impressive. We followed one pride of ten lions that included three lionesses and seven cubs extensively. The drama there involved one cub that had gone missing. Had it become some other predator’s dinner? That would not be the case this time, as it had rejoined the pack by the following morning. Another large pride, in the meantime, had brought down a wildebeest and feasted on it to fill their ample bellies. Sooner or later the pride of ten probably would too.

Throughout this time I never felt like prey even amongst the great predators while in our open-air Range Rover. This was partly so because so long as we stayed seated in the vehicle it appeared that we could travel+ amongst these creatures without apparent concern. In addition the guides had a rifle for our protection, just in case. We trusted their experience and know-how. We did have a near run-in with a bull rhino one time, but that was not about being food. It was a question of territory and his poor eyesight. No, I felt very safe, that is until our last morning there. No sooner did we get to our vehicles for our morning drive than our guides spotted fresh leopard tracks that led right through camp. In fact a couple from our Rover group had heard some unusual sounds that morning from their cabin before coming out for the drive. We found the leopard just past the camp not far from our friends, or indeed our own cabin. Was I ever really in danger, likely to become leopard or hyena food? Perhaps. There is a reason they have a big warning sign on the property as well as an admonition not to walk anywhere outside alone at night. It was this connection though that made this a special experience and not just being in a special zoo. Perhaps for the first time ever, I really appreciated my place in the food chain.

[scubadoo97]

I like to scuba dive and spearfish. I have friends that comment that they like to stay on top of the food chain. No argument

[docsconz]

I like to scuba dive and spearfish.  I have friends that comment that they like to stay on top of the food chain.  No argument

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Clearly my preference as well. What fascinated me there was that every animal no matter how lordly was part of the food chain. Even lions and leopards suffer predation, especially if they are weakened by inability to procure their own food supplies. A few years before my visit there was a bull rhino that for some reason attacked a bull elephant. That rhino wound up as some other animal's dinner. The safari experience reawakened a bit of existential thought that had largely lain dormant since I was a teenager.

As for spearfishing, I have a photo from the trip that I will try to post later that awakens the same feelings in that realm.

[docsconz]

Perhaps the greatest meat eater on earth, the great white shark:

This creature certainly provoked my flight or fright response.

[Daniel]

Wow.. Better then National Geographic, Doc.. That truly is an adventure.. Wether its feeling like a speck of dust next to the Grand Canyon, or a lite snack for a shark, nature has away of making you feel irrelevant..

[mizducky]

Fascinating subject--and some really intense photos! (Not complaining, mind you, just observing.)

I've done most of my exotic wildlife observation via TV remote (thanks to a humorous card-based RPG called "Chez Geek", my friends and I have taken to calling Animal Planet et al by the nickname "The Bother-the-Animals Channel"). But even through those, and my observations of nature going about its business in the margins of human habitation, I've been similarly struck by the same fact you bring up, that virtually all wildlife whether prey or supposed preditor winds up getting eaten. Even roadkill. Unless the critter manages to snuff it in the local equivalent of the La Brea Tarpit, something, whether four-legged or winged or unicellular, winds up having it or its remains for dinner.

I am reminded here of a line from one of Jacques Cousteau's documentaries. Over footage of orcas voraciously attacking fish, Cousteau observed that the human tendency to project bloodthirsty viciousness on this kind of typical "killer whale" behavior was in his opinion a misplaced moral judgement, and that what we were viewing was in reality no more sinister than a hungry human enthusiastically laying into his breakfast eggs. Mind you, that wouldn't make me feel any happier personally if I should ever wind up being chomped on. But I wouldn't get all Ahab about the critter somehow having it in for me. (Given that orca attacks on humans are exceedingly rare in any case, it's not high on my list of paranoias. )

[Daniel]

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"Welcome!!

Just a friendly reminder, everything here will kill you.. The animals, well, they will kill you.. The plant life, yup they are all poisonous and deadly.. The insects, well we have freaky looking things you have never heard of that will not only sting you to death, but they will bite you, disease you and then kill you !! Reading this sign too long will kill you.. Just remember everything here wants you dead.. Have a great day...

Edited December 17, 2005 by Daniel (log)

[docsconz]

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"Welcome!!

Just a friendly reminder, everything here will kill you.. The animals, well, they will kill you.. The plant life, yup they are all poisonous and deadly.. The insects, well we have freaky looking things you have never heard of that will not only sting you to death, but they will bite you, disease you and then kill you !! Reading this sign too long will kill you.. Just remember everything here wants you dead.. Have a great day...

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The place really is "to die for", though.

[chappie]

I spent summer 1994 in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Zambia, as part of a group of kids travelling in two geriatric Land Rovers with the late, eccentric British adventurer Quentin Keynes, a great-grandson of Charles Darwin and nephew of famed economist George Maynard Keynes.

Quentin travelled like a modern-day Mr. Magoo, avoiding horrific peril by accident. We slept in the open, without tents (our summer is the southern-African winter), using our bags and storage crates as a "psychological barrer" to wildlife. Nonetheless, we had nightly encounters that put me in my place as an insignificant safari snack.

One night "in the bush" (or "Danger Camp" as Quentin called it) at Mana Pools National Park, Zimbabwe, I awoke to an elephant eating from the tree under which I slept and a hippo grunting 200 yards away from the banks of the Zambezi River. At another camp, in which I had my own private baobab tree as quarters, I was startled at 2 a.m. by a pair of hyenas fighting viciously, oh .... about 40 feet from my tender carcass.

The kicker was when John, the odd kid among us, yanked us all from our slumbers hysterically in the middle of the night, wide-eyed and grinning, with the news that a pair of lions had sauntered up to his sleeping bag, and that the male had gummed his foot gently (to see what it was), then nonchalantly turned and wandered off. At this point of the trip, hyenas seeking discarded scraps on the fringes of our camp were nothing — akin to raccoons rattling trash cans; vervet monkeys had raided our belongings, TP-ing the site like drunk teenagers and stealing my two-month supply of Life Savers. And we were so used to baboons heckling us, I was beginning to understand their doglike barks on a personal level.

Still, there was no way this wacko was telling the truth. "It was hyenas." "You're lying." "Go back to bed!" we shouted. But sure enough, flashlights showed a track of huge feline prints in the dirt leading to his sack — the toe of which dripped with sticky ectoplasmic drool.

Thankfully, impala and kudu were abundant at Mana Pools, and perhaps the lions took one sniff at our Cheeto-fed, MSG-ridden, soda-poisoned American meat and passed on a midnight junk-food binge.

I also have distinct memories of our culinary routine, which consisted of building a cook fire nightly, rummaging through Quentin's ancient "cook box" for the least offensive among a trove of loathsome, South African-label canned goods he had been hoarding — guaging from the wear-and-tear on their tins — since the Boer War. His prized, nitrate bombs, the Gammon Hams. Fray Bentos canned beans. Containers of long-ago solidified gooseberry jam which we slathered on soapy bread, and canned chicken parts — complete with veins and gelatinous bones, drowned in a diarrheal death gravy — so nightmare-inducing we left them behind at a roadside camp, where they likely remain today.

It was all about regiment and rationing, and don't think about getting up before sunrise to scope out first-light at a watering hole. No, we must make porridge and tea for a proper English breakfast. Build the fire, boil the water, stir the oats until they "orgy", as Q liked to say. It took me 10 years to gather the will to taste oatmeal again.

Our only saving grace were secreted tins of curry powder, the wonderful biltong — South African jerky — we purchased in markets, nightly rations of Ginger Nuts (like ginger snaps) and Marie Biscuits (both of which we snuck extra sleeves of from the Cook Box when Q wasn't looking) and the occasional street-vendor meat pie bought in random towns. Kit-Kats were ubiquitous at every store, so be bulked up on those, too.

Still, we loved every minute of it.

I have other culinary memories that summer as well, such as when we pulled up to a dusty, sleepy villa in Zimbabwe and found a creamery run by an older white woman. Seriously the best milkshakes I ever tasted. Or the hot, spicy stir-fry prepared at 1 a.m. as a welcome at the end of a long and frightening drive from Johannesburg, by Yvonne Drewett, wife of the dairy farmer with whom we stayed our first two weeks in the Transvaal. Or sampling blistering chiles (not unlike the tiny Thai hots) given me by remote villagers in Zimbabwe. Or ingesting some sort of brown powdered matter prescribed to me by a witch doctor in Harare because "it make you strong with woman."

Banana-bacon burgers at Victoria Falls; KFC in poor cities; grits and ham in a hospital bed in Tzaneen, S.A. (a long story best told elsewhere); a god-awful fast food chain called Steers that sold drinks bearing an obviously faked and illegal image of Bart Simpson. ... and many, many more.

Thanks for awakening some memories of one of the best experiences of my life with your post.

(A much younger, trimmer and fitter Chappie, crouching at the Great Zimbabwe ruins).

[docsconz]

Now that's an adventure! Thanks for relating it.