‘Are you aware that you can now
do all of this online?’Wild life
Aidan Hartley
Laikipia
I woke with the breath of a leopard a few feet
from me as I lay in my bed. Before he came
there were the sounds of Laikipia’s darkness:
nightjars, insects, a wandering hyena. Then
it all went abruptly silent and I heard him
exhale, just on the other side of the bedroom
door. I got out of bed and listened to him
snuff the air. A hiss came from the back of his
throat, then a deep-throated cough. Our three
dogs sat up in their baskets, ears up, hackles
raised, silent and staring. At dusk I had put
them — Jock, the labrador, Sassy the collie,
and our mongrel bitch Potato — in the bed-
room to sleep close to me because the leop-
ard had been after them for a string of nights.
A leopard loves nothing more than a dog
to kill. The bedrooms of our farm hut open
straight on to the garden and the predator
now began pacing around us, beneath the
bedroom windows. He coughed, he made
the noise they call sawing — a deep pant-
ing — and he caterwauled. I looked out
of the window as he passed below me, the
moonlight illuminating the ripple of his coat
and the onyx of his eyes. A large male, not
quite as heavy as me. I opened the door and
went outside with a solar lantern but he was
already gone. I returned inside, made sure
the shutters were closed and climbed into
bed. As I was getting up at five he loudly
miaowed, a sound of thwarted hunger, and
only when I came back from my rounds
after dawn would I let the dogs out.
Whereas last year humans and their pol-
itics inflicted all our problems in Laikipia,
these days the natural world is after us. We
are all still feeling the death of our neighbour
Gilfrid, killed by the elephant shortly after
Christmas. Elephants were hard hit in the
troubles of 2017 and for months they have
been more aggressive than usual. No won-
der, after dozens were slaughtered in the
past year, shot with assault rifles, speared and
snared in wire. We saw giraffe hacked down
like trees, lion cubs butchered, buffalo car-
casses and the corpse of an aardvark stabbed
to death. Our local population of African
wild dog has vanished and numbers of other
rare species in the district are down.
For this reason I cannot bring myself to
see the leopard harmed. I can seek the help
of the wildlife service but I do not know
how much help that will be. Catch a leopard
in a trap and he must be moved at least 40
kilometres away, or he will simply return —
and I imagine dropping him elsewhere will
impinge on the territory of another leopard
or shift the problem to another farmer.
We already have mongooses eating the
eggs our geese lay. Or Ashe’s spitting cobras
trying to get into the chicken coop. Or oryx
and waterhog nibbling the new shoots of our
planted pasture. Or honey badgers raiding
our beehives. Or catastrophic East Coast
fever brought in on ticks from buffalo infect-
ing our cattle. Farming in Africa is an unend-
ing pastoral tragedy, an exaggerated version
of what Stella Gibbons rightly observed in
Cold Comfort Farm, that ‘things seemed to
go wrong in the country more easily and fre-
quently, somehow, than they did in Town’.
The leopard’s first attack on the sheep
came at twilight, near the kitchen garden
before they were brought into the night
boma. He consumed a lamb whole, leav-
ing only its little hooves. Next, after dark, hehalf ripped out the throat of a baby donkey
in a farmstead paddock — but he was driv-
en off by the brave mother, helped by the
Boran bull Tom. All the sheep were placed
in a night enclosure of high iron gates topped
with razor wire, but another night the leopard
climbed into that and, like a fox in a poultry
house, he began ripping throats out, stopping
only when we reached the scene. After he
jumped out, the carcasses lay strewn on the
ground, 17 of them in all, including a superb
ram with Namibian blood which my friend
and fellow rancher Mark had given us.
Looking at all those dead sheep I felt
like Gabriel Oak in Far From the Madding
Crowd when he loses his flock over the cliff.
Sadly, we cut up the animals. The workers ate
mutton until they were sick. We put 20 legs
and shoulders into the freezer and enjoyed
roast lamb, mutton curry, stir-fried mutton.
We made biltong and hacked up bones for
the dogs. The leopard came and ripped up
the sheep rawhides curing outside. Day after
day we’ve had mutton and now even the dogs
look at their meals with disgust. And as I con-
sider our next move, the leopard — he is still
there and it’s Lancashire hotpot for supper.He consumed a lamb whole, leaving
only its little hoovesBridge^
Susanna Gross
The England ladies trials, two weekends
ago, were as exciting as ever, but also rather
heartbreaking for me and my partner Maru-
sa Basa. We took an early lead and kept it
up until Sunday morning, when our match
against Heather Dhondy and Abbey Smith
(the eventual winners) turned into a car
crash, setting us back five places. We never
recovered after that. Many congratulations
to Heather and Abbey though, and I’m not
saying that through gritted teeth — it was
well deserved and they’re two of the nicest
women in bridge.
As for Marusa and me, time to pick our-
selves up, dust ourselves off, and start prac-
tising for the European women’s pairs in
June. An important part of preparing for
tournaments is not just playing, but also
watching and reading about the way experts
tackle hands. Of course, most of us can only
fantasise about pulling rabbits out of hats in
the same way they do. Take this hand played
by the Norwegian Jan Hugo Lie recently:West led his singleton diamond to the ten
and ace. Lie played a heart, taken by West’s
ace, who played another heart to dummy,
Lie discarding a diamond. A spade to the
ten was ducked by West, and Lie played the
ace of spades and a spade to West’s king. At
this point, Lie held z9, wKJ9654. Dummy
held yKQ9, X87, wQ8. South held zJ5,
X965, wA10. West continued with the nine
of spades, and Jan Hugo let it hold the trick!
West now had to lead away from his king of
clubs, giving Lie his entry to dummy’s hearts,
and the contract was made.z A J 10 5 4
y 7 3
X A 9 6 4
w A 10N
W E
Sz K 9 8 2
y A 10
X 2
w K J 9 6 5 4West North East South
Pass 1 z
2 w 2 y pass 2NT
pass 4 z all passz 7
y 8 6 5 4
X K Q J 10 3
w 7 3 2z Q 6 3
y K Q J 9 2
X 8 7 5
w Q 8Dealer East Both vulnerable