Strange Animals

Zambia
April 2019 

It was exotic, beautiful, majestic. So much that when the first traders and explorers from distant lands arrived in Africa, they thought to immediately capture it and bring it home because it was unlike anything they knew. And so they harnessed the exotic under equipment carts, on work sites, and for royal procession. The beautiful went into zoos, where most of us now learn about endangered species, conservation, and biodiversity. The majestic awarded as a stunning prize, an homage, a trophy to the great diversity roaming in foreign jungles, the curiosity that ventured forth to see it for the first time, and the callous presumed superiority.

The elephant ears that flap like banners in the breeze. The guttural belch of hippos as they twirl their ears at water’s edge and crunch a salad of local field grasses that would make any vegan red with envy. Dainty pointed giraffe faces atop towering necks and stilts that trot stiffly through foliated savannas. Daring romp and roar of frisky giant felines playing to mate (or mating to play?) every five minutes. Swallows darting faster than automobiles on the open road, returning to chicks with empty stomachs in grassy dewdrop nests like delicate lanterns on tree branches.

So unusual, so strange these animals. Some with hair and skin so prehistoric. Or markings like a child’s finger painting. Playful banter reminds us of our children, too. We feel like distant biological cousins – then they charge or pounce, the same biology drawing rich red blood, horrifying before our domesticated human eyes. These iconic animals make their home throughout the temperate climates of sub-Saharan Africa. We celebrate them as we hoist the flags of our athletic mascots. We smile joyously behind zoo barriers. We stare in a stupor at National Geographic films, in awe of this kaleidoscope of mammals in motion that pass before our eyes while we’re slumped on the couch. We feel small. We expand our homes, our suburbs, our farms to give us space. We don’t like to feel small.

Frustrated hunters that pursued them on foot in decades past were captivated by the Big Five. But they and countless others all face issues of endangerment and threatened survival due largely to territory loss and human contact. A carpet of green and gold grass and trees that covers the continent – and beyond – once hosted them. Now they occupy nothing more than the carpet’s coffee stains. The rest has been cleaned.

But they do roam the incomplete barriers, disobeying human boundaries. Intercity auto traffic and cargo carriers rumble past the craned necks of giraffes in the distance. Confused zebras stare at the passing matatus, their munching jaws muted by the ruckus from the tarmac just beyond. Jaunty warthogs trot away to a growing mudhole behind the new shopping center. All on gradually fading scraps of land, searching for a shriveled circle of life made smaller still by human psychological inferiority. Humans paying for territory, paying for industrial products manufactured from land slashed and scraped and abused, then paying to view the Big Five - exotic, beautiful, majestic animals - where we’ve prescribed them. Strange animals, indeed.