The Impossible Five. Justin Fox
extra layers and lit a braai fire. The wind was sniping and low clouds poured in from the west over Middelberg. I opened a bottle of workmanlike Shiraz and sat beside the fire staring at the living darkness. There was no moon and the stars hissed quietly in the icy firmament. The stream grumbled loudly, wind whooshed in the bare branches, the mountains pressed closer. Somewhere nearby was my leopard, up there among the crags, perhaps hunting, perhaps taking refuge from the elements beneath an overhang. Maybe she was watching me.
Sitting beside the pyramid of flames, I thought about how the Cape mountain leopard has become a creature of legend and a symbol of what the Cape has lost. Three-and-a-half centuries ago, when Jan van Riebeeck stepped ashore to found his little settlement to grow veggies for scurvy-ridden sailors of the Dutch East India Company, the peninsula had teemed with game. Cape Town itself was home to the Big Five. There were leopards on the crags of Table Mountain, buffalos and rhinos grazing the marshlands of Green Point, lions in Oranjezicht and elephants browsing beside the streams of the CBD, while the grunt of hippos echoed around the city bowl. It was an Eden of almost unimaginable bounty.
Settlers and farmers soon began to clear the land. The hippos of Cape Town’s rivers were among the first to be shot. By the end of the twentieth century, there was not a single member of the Big Five left on the peninsula. The slaughter of large game continued throughout the Western Cape. In most places, only the names remind us of what we have lost: Zeekoevlei, Buffels Bay, renosterveld, Leeukloof, Olifants River. Most prevalent is the name ‘tier’ or ‘tyger’. Early Dutch settlers, unfamiliar with wild African fauna, called the leopards they encountered ‘tigers’. Travelling among the mountains of the Cape, it’s never long before you come across a Tygerberg or Tierkop, a Tierberg or Tierkranskop. Of all the Cape’s free-roaming game, it was these secretive creatures that had the best chance of surviving into the twenty-first century. Their ghostly presence in the mountains fringing the city is a reminder of the rich diversity of wildlife we have lost.
After a meal of wors, chops and potato in a skin of tinfoil, I climbed into a bed piled with blankets. Sleep came quickly … and I found myself stumbling along a track in the mountains. There was no moon to light the way, only a softening of the darkness that marked a sandy path. I grew frightened. The rocky crags breathed danger. Crickets filled the night with threatening stridulations. There was a presence, something watching me. Perhaps the spotted night cat, Prince of Darkness? My path snaked into a narrow kloof beside a stream. Tall reeds leaned in from either side. The ground was soggy underfoot; my legs grew leaden. I passed beneath a gnarled cedar tree and paused. Thick boughs blotted out the stars. Fear gripped me. I could not take another step.
Looking up, I saw a shape draped on a branch above my head. A pair of golden eyes bored into mine. His lips were parted and I could make out the glint of fangs. What beauty, what lethal grace. I was transfixed. Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright, in the mountains of the night. All power and sinew and dark fire, a work of art crafted by some immortal hand. He stared at me for what seemed an age, each second torn from the flesh of time. Then a wide grin spread across his face.
‘Which way should I go from here?’ I asked timidly.
‘That depends on where you want to go,’ said the leopard.
‘So long as I get somewhere,’ I said.
‘An aardvark lives in that direction,’ he pointed a claw to the north. ‘A riverine bunny in that direction.’ He waved vaguely to the east. ‘But, my boy, they are both absolutely impossible to find.’
The leopard closed his eyes and rested a chin on those mighty paws. His body began to dissolve, leaving only his wide, Cheshire grin hanging in the air. I walked on into the night, tingling with excitement.
The rusty hinges of guinea fowl woke me early, followed by a spell of utter silence. I got up and looked out the window. The ground was white with frost. The mountains were colourful cut-outs against a dark-blue sky. A hadeda ibis strutted about, drilling the lawn with its beak. After I had breakfasted on muesli and cold boerewors, Quinton arrived to collect me. We picked up Garth and Lorraine, and headed down the Driehoek Valley in search of Max. Gracie the macaw agreed to stay behind and hold the fort: her biting tongue would certainly scare off most intruders. Except, perhaps, a spotted cat.
Quinton soon picked up a strong signal coming from the male leopard’s collar on Sneeuberg, the 2 027-metre massif to our right. Fortunately, he had a key to a private gate which let us onto a forestry track that wound up the side of a kloof towards the peak. We crossed a stream and ploughed through tall vegetation, its fingers brushing the sides of the 4X4. The track grew steeper and more rocky. On a rise above us stood a line of iconic cedar trees, highly endangered and probably on their way to extinction. Prone to fire and ruthlessly felled for timber in the twentieth century, only a few specimens of this endemic species cling on in the high berg.
A pair of black eagles circled above us like patrolling aircraft, ominous shapes etched against the sky. Like leopards, they are apex predators of the berg, and there’s no love lost between cat and bird as they compete for the same prey. Whenever eagles get the chance, they dive-bomb leopards to scare them away from their territory.
We came to a halt at what looked like a stone igloo beside the track. There was a narrow entrance and a metal sliding door that could be triggered to drop like a guillotine and imprison a creature inside. It was a sinister contraption, casting a pall over the beauty around us.
‘This is an old leopard trap,’ said Quinton. ‘All the farms in the area used to have them. Some are more than a hundred-and-fifty years old. Once the creature was caught, you could shoot it from above through gaps in the stonework. Farmers knew exactly where to place these things. So I’ve put quite a few of my own traps around here and had good success.’
He went on to explain that gin traps are still used extensively throughout South Africa to eliminate ‘problem animals’. Thousands of these nasty devices litter the rural landscape. They are indiscriminate, brutal and kill or maim far more innocent animals than rogues. Usually made of metal with saw-tooth jaws, the traps can sever a paw or ensnare the wounded animal long enough for it to starve to death.
‘We are making progress, though, especially in the Cederberg. I’ve persuaded many farmers to change their methods, for instance, by introducing Anatolian sheep dogs. They’re a far better deterrent than traps.’
Then something caught Quinton’s eye. ‘Look there!’ he exclaimed, crouching next to the track and pointing at a vague indentation in the sand. He took out a tape measure. ‘Paw print. Six-and-a-half centimetres. Female. I’m sure it’s F11. We haven’t caught and collared her yet, so she doesn’t have a proper name.’
We walked a little way up the slope, following the spoor. Quinton pointed at the ground again. It was scat. It’s difficult for lay people to fathom the excitement animal droppings induce in zoologists. Quinton fell to his knees like a worshipper and studied the specimen. He explained that usually only half the scat is taken for analysis, as it serves as a territory marker for leopards. Samples are soaked in formalin, washed, and the hair separated from other remains before being oven dried at 60°C.
Then the analysis can begin. To identify prey, the hair length and colour are noted, as well as cuticular hair-scale patterns. The presence of bone fragments and hooves also aids identification. Small rodents are trickier, although teeth found among the remains can help. Quinton explained that through scat research, he’d recorded twenty-three species in the diet of these opportunistic feeders, including everything from lizard to cow. I thought of the many hours Quinton must have spent soaking faeces in formalin, baking them and then the days spent analysing the contents. Dedication such as this must surely be fed by a particular brand of obsession.
We pressed on up the pass, switchbacking through precipitous bends, creeping along the mountain face on a hairline track that led us into a world of jumbled sandstone and bright green fynbos. Clouds cast giant dapples across the valley below. All the while, the bleating transmission from Max’s collar grew more intense. At the top of the pass we got out, and Quinton aimed his VHF telemetry at a nearby koppie. The signal was strong. He switched to a UHF aerial and got a GPS fix from the collar. Max was eight-hundred-and-fifty