2018-11-03 The Spectator

Wild life

Aidan Hartley

Laikipia
My two Jersey bulls Halcyon and Hosanna
were grazing happily on the lawn in front
of the house when a pride of lion breached
the 7,500-volt high-security fence enclosing
our garden, pounced on the cattle and broke
both of their necks. I am down by 24 sheep
so far this year thanks to the old leopard
who patrols the hillside above us. A chee-
tah boldly tried to grab a calf in the valley
the other day. The pasture grass I planted at
huge expense has attracted great numbers
of oryx, buffalo, zebra, eland, gazelles and
warthog. The electric fences I placed around
the perimeter of the farm have completely
failed to keep out the roaming elephant,
giraffe and plains game. In my lucerne field,
we attempted to get rid of the termite colo-
nies by digging into their mounds until we
found the white slug queens at the heart of
the brain-like masses of fungal combs — but
despite killing several of these the efforts
were ultimately fruitless. Within weeks fresh
mounds appeared, spreading their mud cap-
illaries across the soil, building earth chim-
neys heavenwards — and then in moved the
ant-eating aardvarks.
And so after 15 years of struggling as a
neophyte rancher, losing money and stok-
ing my blood pressure, at last I can say that
I have been remarkably successful at rewil-
ding the African bush. If you looked only
at our farm, and avoided reading the news,
you might find it absurd to hear that there
are only 7,000 cheetah in the world and per-
haps just three or four times that number
of lion. About 70 years ago there were few
zebra left in our county of Laikipia because
they had all been slaughtered to feed Italian

prisoners of war incarcerated on the west-

ern slopes of Mount Kenya. At times on our

plains today zebra seem as common as star-

lings, despite my best efforts to keep them

out of the land. Until a few decades ago, lion

were considered the enemy and ranchers

had a ‘five before breakfast’ club — which

involved competing to shoot as many of the

predators as possible on early Sunday morn-

ings. You might say I was gutted when the

lion killed my two Jersey bulls, but as we

ate their tender fillets week after week, the

thought of wishing any lions dead did not

cross my mind.

I recall how, when we first moved on to

the land, it was like a desert with few trees

and bare earth. There were hardly any ani-

mals at all and almost no birdsong. The first

creatures to return to drink at the springs

seemed to be the elephant, perhaps because

they have such long memories. After that

the herds of impala and waterbuck moved

in and then everything else, from gerenuk to

duikers and striped hyenas. They are not that

timid and generally ignore us if we encoun-

ter them. They graze alongside our cattle

and sheep and not long ago I was astonished

to find a herd of eland right inside the main

barn munching on our hay bales. By simply

leaving things alone, a thick forest of aca-

cia species has grown up in the valley and I

would say it is almost too dense now, despite

being browsed by giraffe and occasionally

hammered by elephant.

Before the natural rewilding began,

I imagine there were always creatures like

Parabuthus scorpions on the farm, and per-

haps I began seeing them only because I

started to know what I was looking for.

They sit about on the rocks absorbing star-

light and glowing electric blue on full moon

nights. As long as they do not come into

the house, we get along fine. We avoid kill-

ing them and we also try to stay nice to the

snakes — apart from the black mamba that

came into the office the other day and rose

up in front of my wife Claire while she was

on a telephone call to Los Angeles. I tried

to persuade the animal to slither out of the

door again but when he refused to go and

sulked under the puddled curtains I had to

fling my gumboots at him and then I bashed

him to pieces with a walking stick.

Near our bedroom window is a gnarly

wild caper tree with an old woodpecker hole

in it. Not long ago, a female hornbill took

up residence in this cavity and imprison-

ing herself with a masticated wall of mud so

that she could lay her eggs inside while her

devoted mate brought her food. They got on

with their lives and ignored us. By just leav-

ing Nature alone, I feel the world recovering

around us.

I tried to persuade the black mamba

to slither out of the door and when he

refused I bashed him to pieces

‘I think she’ll be all right now because it’s
the rule of horses that if you call the vet and
pay the charge they always get well at that
point,’ my friend said, and I agreed.
That evening Tara went down again and
wouldn’t eat, not even a bran mash, so my
friend and I fed her the medication the vet
had left in a feeding syringe, along with some
mash. She was a good patient and afterwards
she lay luxuriating in a fresh shavings bed
with the gloopy mess all round her mouth.
Her demeanour was very much that of
an old person in a care home as their nearest
and dearest gather round. ‘Tara, I love you,’
I told her that night, just in case.

Bridge^

Susanna Gross

For most bridge players, defence is the hardest

part of the game. Not only do you need to visu-

alise declarer’s hand, you also need to visualise

your partner’s — and then you have to make

sure you’re in step with each other. What if

he inadvertently sabotages your plan? Worse,

what if you sabotage his? Nothing stresses me

so much at the bridge table as when I’m part-

nering a top-class player who, midway through

defending, stops to think for ages. I quickly

lose confidence in whatever plan I had formu-

lated; my job now is to try and figure out what

on earth he’s plotting. The longer he thinks, the

worse it’ll be if I botch it up.

Luckily, a brilliant defence doesn’t

always require much from your partner. On

this deal — which has won the bridge press

association’s prize for Best Defence of 2018

— the Norwegian expert Geo Tislevoll pret-

ty much defeated the contract by himself:

South led the zA, and North (Tislevoll)

gave suit preference with the z2. South duly

played the wA and a club to his wK. Three

tricks were in the bag. What now? A trump

shift would appeal to many, given dummy’s

spade shortness. But Tislevoll paused. If his

partner had a natural trump trick the contract

was off anyway. He couldn’t have the XA as

he was a passed hand and had already shown

up with two aces. Nor could he have three

spades or he’d have bid 4z.

There was one hope: that declarer was

3–7–1–2 with the bare XA. A trump shift

wouldn’t work as declarer would win, unblock

the XA, ruff one spade and discard the other

on the XK. If declarer held zJxx, playing the

zK, ruffed in dummy, would set up the zJ. So

Tislevoll played a low spade at trick 4! The zJ

won — but it was a Greek gift: when declarer

now tried to ruff his last spade, South simply

ruffed in front of dummy.

N

W E

S

West North East South

Pass

pass 3z 4 y all pass

z A 4

y 9 8 6

X 8 7 5 2

w A 7 6 5

z J 8 3

y A K Q 10 7 3 2

X A

w 9 8

z K 10 9 7 6 5 2

y J

X J 6 4

w K J

z Q

y 5 4

X K Q 10 9 3

w Q 10 4 3 2

Dealer South Neither vulnerable