Big Game
Authors: Stuart Gibbs
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RHONDA IS NOT THE ONLY RHINO IN DANGER
To my uncle David Holtz and my cousin Albert Sukoff, who both taught me how to think outside the box
I am extremely indebted to
many people for helping me develop this story and for providing great insight into the complicated issue of rhino poaching:
The San Diego Zoo and San Diego Safari Park were a great help to me in researching this book. In particular, I'd like to thank rhino specialists Lance Aubery and Victoria Zahnâand veterinarian Jeff Zubaâfor answering as many questions as I could ask. Also, thanks to Rachelle Marcon for giving me an amazing behind-the-scenes tour. (It was also an incredible treat to get a personal visit with Surat, the San Diego Zoo's Asian rhino, from whom I learned a great deal about rhino behavior.)
Speaking of incredible treats, Hayden Rosenauer and my dear friend Georgia Simon arranged for me to spend several hours with two elephants, which was truly inspirational for the opening chapter of this bookâand for me, personally, as well.
One of my oldest friends in the world, Mark Middleman, introduced me to the world of exotic game ranching, while Joe Davidson was instrumental in helping work out the plot (though I can't say what he helped me with because it'll spoil part of the mystery).
My agent, Jennifer Joel, has been a tireless champion of my work, while my wonderful editorâand fellow animal enthusiastâKristin Ostby, gave me thoughtful notes and clever insights.
Finally, I'd like to thank my wife, Suzanne, and my children, Dashiell and Violet, for their support, their suggestions, and their endless enthusiasm. I love you all more than words can say.
I was helping walk the
elephants when we all heard the rifle go off.
It was a little after seven o'clock on a February morning. We had to walk the elephants early, because it couldn't be done during normal theme-park hours. The elephants were walked
through
the park, and tourists would just get in the way.
In the wild, elephants walk a lot. They've been known to cover more than fifty miles in a day, although the average is around twenty. They're built for walking (they're the only animal with four knees), but even at a massive, state-of-the-art place like FunJungle Wild Animal Park, there couldn't be an exhibit big enough to let them roam that far. So, in the interest of keeping the elephants fit and happy, the staff walked them in the morning, the same way normal people walked their dogsâonly, the pooper-scoopers were a lot bigger.
I wasn't really supposed to be walking the elephants because I was only twelve years old. Any animal that weighs eight tons and is capable of lifting a small car can be dangerous. But since I was the only kid who lived at FunJungle, I'd gotten to know lots of the keepers well, so they cut me some slackâas long as I kept a safe distance and one of my parents came with me.
That was easy to arrange. My father was always happy to bring me. As a professional wildlife photographer, he didn't mind getting up early; that was the best time to take pictures of animals in the wild. Plus, being with the elephants reminded him of life back in Africa. My mother was a famous primatologist, and before my folks had been hired by FunJungle, we'd spent ten years in a tent camp in the Congo while Mom studied chimpanzees. We'd all loved it, but a war had forced us to give up that life. Living in a trailer park behind the world's biggest zoo was probably as close to the African experience as we could get, but it still wasn't quite the same.
For starters, it was really cold that morning. The temperature in the Congo had rarely dropped below seventy degrees, while winters in central Texas could be bone-chilling. I had never even owned a sweater in Africa; Now I was wrapped in a ski jacket with three layers underneath. Our breath clouded the air in front of us, while steam rose off the elephants' warm bodies.
The elephants didn't seem bothered by the cold, though. The whole herd was there, twelve elephants ranging in age from two to sixty. Eleanor, the matriarch, was in the lead, while the younger mothers and their offspring followed. (The park's only breeding male, Tembo, had to be kept apart and did his walks late at night.)
It took five keepers to control the elephants. Two flanked the herd on either side, gently directing them along Adventure Road, the park's main concourse. The keepers were all armed with brooms with the bristles wrapped in towels, which looked kind of like giant Q-tips. These were used to gently prod the elephants along, or to nudge them back into line should they veer off and try to eat an expensive piece of landscaping.
Bonnie Melton, the head keeper, brought up the rear. Bonnie had forty years of experience in zoos and knew more about elephants than almost anyone on earth. She was wrinkled as a pruneâcaring for elephants meant you spent a lot of time in the sunâbut she had the enthusiasm of a kindergartener. While none of her subordinate keepers seemed pleased to be working so early, Bonnie was chipper as could be, even though she had an industrial-size pooper-scooper slung over her shoulder.
“How's school going, Teddy?” she asked me, as we led the herd past the front gates.
“Pretty good,” I replied.
“You making friends okay?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“You guess?” Dad repeated, then put an arm around me proudly. “Ever since Teddy knocked out the school bully, he's the most popular kid there.”
Despite the freezing temperatures, I could feel my face grow warm with embarrassment. “No, I'm not, Dad.”
“The head cheerleader came over for a date,” Dad told Bonnie.
“It wasn't a date,” I corrected. “She only wanted to see FunJungle behind the scenes.”
“Sounds like a date to me,” Bonnie said, stifling a smile.
I tried to change the subject. “If anyone's the most popular kid in my school, it's Summer McCracken.”
Bonnie nodded knowingly. “She would be.”
Summer McCracken was the daughter of J.J. McCracken, the local billionaire who'd sunk a good deal of his fortune into building FunJungle. Summer was only a year older than me, and she was the first friend I'd made in Texas. Until recently, she'd attended prep school on the East Coast, but she'd asked to come homeâso now she was the newest student at Lyndon B. Johnson Middle School.
“Is that why she transferred from that fancy-schmancy school?” Bonnie asked. “So she could be belle of the ball here?”
I shrugged. “Summer said life was more exciting here.”
Bonnie laughed. “Here? We're thirty miles from the nearest city.” She suddenly turned and yelled, “Kwame! Don't eat that!”
Kwame, a three-year-old elephant, sheepishly unwound his trunk from an oleander bush like a kid who'd been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
“There
has
been some excitement here,” Dad pointed out. “A murdered hippo. A stolen koala. An escaped tiger. Those kinds of things don't happen too often at prep school.”
At that moment, Eleanor Elephant lifted her tail and deposited a large pile of poop on the concourse.
“Oh yeah,” Bonnie said. “This place is a thrill a minute.” Then she hoisted the pooper-scooper off her shoulder and hurried off to clean up after Eleanor.
According to Summer, poop had always been J.J. McCracken's biggest concern about letting the elephants walk around the park in the morning. “Oh sure, he'll
say
he's worried about safety,” she'd told me, “but really, it's the poo. He's terrified the keepers will somehow overlook a big old elephant poop one morning and that some poor guest will step in it.”
I could understand J.J.'s concern. Elephants make nearly two hundred pounds of poop a dayâas well as enough pee to fill a bathtub. A janitorial team armed with industrial-strength cleansers had to follow the elephant parade around the park every morning. To that end, J.J. had looked for an alternative way to exercise the elephantsâand had even considered building jumbo-size treadmills at one point. Nothing had panned out, though, so for the time being, the elephants were still walking.
“I'll bet that cheerleader
thought
it was a date,” Dad said.
I turned away from the elephants and looked at him, surprised. “What?”
“She spent over four hours with you,” Dad told me. “I don't think she would have done that unless she liked you.”
“Or she likes animals.”
“What's her name again?” Dad asked. “Daisy?”
“Violet,” I corrected. “Violet Grace.”
“You should ask Violet to the movies sometime.”
“No.” I looked back toward Bonnie. I would have rather watched a person clean up elephant poop than have this conversation.
Dad wouldn't let it go, though. I got the sense this was a talk he'd been wanting to have for a long time. “Why not? She's the head cheerleader and she likes you. Back when I was in middle school, I prayed that would happen to me.”
“I just don't want to ask herâthat's all.” Normally, I didn't like the idea of lying to my father, but at the same time, I didn't feel like telling him the real reason I didn't want to ask Violet out.
However, Dad was savvier than I realized. “Is this about Summer?” he asked.
I turned back to him, caught off guard. But before I could answerâor figure out how
not
to answerâAthmani Okeke came along.
Athmani was a wildlife security specialist from Kruger National Park in South Africa, where he'd worked to protect the animals from poachers. FunJungle had been open only six months, but already its hippo mascot had been murdered and a popular koala bear had been stolen, so J.J. McCracken had decided his animal security needed to be greatly improved. He'd hired Athmani as a consultant right after New Year's, and Athmani had been working so feverishly since then, he'd barely left the property. He was wearing a camouflage uniform from Kruger, because he still hadn't made it to town to buy any new clothes yet.
