Thus in a tick country a zebra's ears, the lids and
corners of his eyes, his nostrils and lips, the soft skin between
his legs and body, and between his hind legs, and under his tail
are always crusted with ticks as thick as they can cling. One
would think the drain on vitality would be enormous, but the
animals are always plump and in condition. The same state of
affairs obtains with the other two beasts named. The hartebeeste
also carries ticks but not nearly in the same abundance; while
such creatures as the waterbuck, impalla, gazelles and the
smaller bucks seem either to be absolutely free from the pests,
or to have a very few. Whether this is because such animals take
the trouble to rid themselves, or because they are more immune
from attack it would be difficult to say. I have found ticks
clinging to the hair of lions, but never fastened to the flesh.
It is probable that they had been brushed off from the grass in
passing. Perhaps ticks do not like lions, waterbuck, Tommies, et
al., or perhaps only big coarse-grained common brutes like zebra
and rhinos will stand them at all.
XX. DIVERS ADVENTURES ALONG THE TANA
Late one afternoon I shot a wart-hog in the tall grass. The beast
was an unusually fine specimen, so I instructed Fundi and the
porters to take the head, and myself started for camp with Memba
Sasa. I had gone not over a hundred yards when I was recalled by
wild and agonized appeals of "Bwana! bwana!" The long-legged
Fundi was repeatedly leaping straight up in the air to an
astonishing height above the long grass, curling his legs up
under him at each jump, and yelling like a steam-engine.
Returning promptly, I found that the wart-hog had come to life at
the first prick of the knife. He was engaged in charging back and
forth in an earnest effort to tusk Fundi, and the latter was
jumping high in an equally earnest effort to keep out of the way.
Fortunately he proved agile enough to do so until I planted
another bullet in the aggressor.
These wart-hogs are most comical brutes from whatever angle one
views them. They have a patriarchal, self-satisfied, suburban
manner of complete importance. The old gentleman bosses his harem
outrageously, and each and every member of the tribe walks about
with short steps and a stuffy parvenu small-town
self-sufficiency. One is quite certain that it is only by
accident that they have long tusks and live in Africa, instead of
rubber-plants and self-made business and a pug-dog within
commuters' distance of New York. But at the slightest alarm this
swollen and puffy importance breaks down completely. Away they
scurry, their tails held stiffly and straightly perpendicular,
their short legs scrabbling the small stones in a frantic effort
to go faster than nature had intended them to go. Nor do they
cease their flight at a reasonable distance, but keep on going
over hill and dale, until they fairly vanish in the blue. I used
to like starting them off this way, just for the sake of
contrast, and also for the sake of the delicious but impossible
vision of seeing their human prototypes do likewise.
When a wart-hog is at home, he lives down a hole. Of course it
has to be a particularly large hole. He turns around and backs
down it. No more peculiar sight can be imagined than the
sardonically toothsome countenance of a wart-hog fading slowly in
the dimness of a deep burrow, a good deal like Alice's Cheshire
Cat. Firing a revolver, preferably with smoky black powder, just
in front of the hole annoys the wart-hog exceedingly. Out he
comes full tilt, bent on damaging some one, and it takes quick
shooting to prevent his doing so.
Once, many hundreds of miles south of the Tana, and many months
later, we were riding quite peaceably through the country, when
we were startled by the sound of a deep and continuous roaring in
a small brush patch to our left. We advanced cautiously to a
prospective lion, only to discover that the roaring proceeded
from the depths of a wart-hog burrow. The reverberation of our
footsteps on the hollow ground had alarmed him. He was a very
nervous wart-hog.
On another occasion, when returning to camp from a solitary walk,
I saw two wart-hogs before they saw me. I made no attempt to
conceal myself, but stood absolutely motionless. They fed slowly
nearer and nearer until at last they were not over twenty yards
away. When finally they made me out, their indignation and
amazement and utter incredulity were very funny. In fact, they
did not believe in me at all for some few snorty moments. Finally
they departed, their absurd tails stiff upright.
One afternoon F. and I, hunting along one of the wide grass
bottom lands, caught sight of a herd of an especially fine
impalla. The animals were feeding about fifty yards the other
side of a small solitary bush, and the bush grew on the sloping
bank of the slight depression that represented the dry stream
bottom. We could duck down into the depression, sneak along it,
come up back of the little bush, and shoot from very close range.
Leaving the gunbearers, we proceeded to do this.
So quietly did we move that when we rose up back of the little
bush a lioness lying under it with her cub was as surprised as we
were!
Indeed, I do not think she knew what we were, for instead of
attacking, she leaped out the other side the bush, uttering a
startled snarl. At once she whirled to come at us, but the brief
respite had allowed us to recover our own scattered wits.
