South Africa - a close shave

This post is dedicated to my fellow biologist Hannah - only she will ever understand what we went through!

Naturally our work on this field course had to be assessed, which was done via a test at the end of the trip, along with projects we designed in groups, and had a few days to collect data for. Our project was based on the effect of vegetation burning on bird communities. Sections of the reserve are burnt each year to provide young, nutritious shoots, a variety of habitats and to prevent bush encroachment. Although this meant we were often up a couple of hours before breakfast to do our surveys before the heat drove off the birds, we did get to see a spectacular sunrise - an orange-pink sun striped with heat haze. One morning we drove over a hill and found ourselves in a dip with countless antelope, zebra and wildebeest together. We also saw a secretary bird – a huge, impressive bird that can run at quite a speed on the ground.

 Hannah and I were walking a route and managed to lose sight of the rest of our group, including our bush-savvy chaperone, Jason. We left a Hansel and Gretel trail of orange tape tied to branches, in case they should come looking for us, but we decided to finish our survey before heading back. Getting into some long grass, we had a shock when a tiny antelope (probably a duiker or a dik dik) sprang up in front of us. It must have been hiding in the grass hoping we’d move away. Although we only saw it in a blur it was incredible to be so close to it.

The sight still sends shivers down my spine

Having finished our survey, we started to make our way back to the road and the jeep, continuing our trail of tape, but veering towards where we thought the group would be. We soon caught sight of Jason and started to run towards him waving and shouting, relieved that we’d found them. It wasn’t until we were closer that we realised the two huge boulders in front of him were, in fact, rhinoceroses. We froze in our tracks, uncertain of whether to keep going or to turn back. As Jason and the rhinos were a fair distance from us he waved us to keep going as quickly as we could towards the jeep, while he dealt with the rhinos.  We started to walk the other side of a small thicket, as Jason ran towards the rhinos to scare them off. Unexpectedly, rather than running straight ahead, the rhinos veered and began to come around our thicket in the opposite direction.

 Before we could comprehend what was happening, the ground was trembling as the two huge, horned creatures charged towards us. For a second we froze in shock and terror. All I could think was ‘I am going to die. I am about to die – what can I do? If I don’t get speared by those huge horns I’ll get trampled and crushed”. I had been told that if you’re chased by a rhino, you’re supposed to climb a tree or hide, as their vision is very poor. There were no climbable trees in the vicinity, only small thorny bushes and, trust me, when 4000kg of flesh and horn are running towards you, it’s hard to believe a small bush will save you. Even if they lost sight of us, they could still trample us. Once my survival instinct kicked in, we paced as fast as possible, without running, around to the other side of the thicket. Luckily for us, the rhino’s stopped charging as we turned the corner, and just watched us go. Our response was a collapse into hysteria. Hannah, understandable was crying uncontrollably but it turns out my response to a near-death experience, is uncontrollable laughter. I guess it must have been the sudden rush of adrenaline coupled with a disbelief of what I’d just been through and the relief that I was still alive!

 No one else believed the story until they saw the hysterical state of us when we returned. We also had to go straight into our end of field course test, to which the last question was, ‘which species of tree should you climb if chased by a rhino’, to which the hysteria set in again, although I resisted answering ‘you’d be lucky to find anything suitable to climb’.