The Impossible Five. Justin Fox

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СКАЧАТЬ went on to explain that gin traps are still used extensively throughout South Africa to eliminate ‘problem animals’. Thousands of these nasty devices litter the rural landscape. They are indiscriminate, brutal and kill or maim far more innocent animals than rogues. Usually made of metal with saw-tooth jaws, the traps can sever a paw or ensnare the wounded animal long enough for it to starve to death.

      ‘We are making progress, though, especially in the Cederberg. I’ve persuaded many farmers to change their methods, for instance, by introducing Anatolian sheep dogs. They’re a far better deterrent than traps.’

      Then something caught Quinton’s eye. ‘Look there!’ he exclaimed, crouching next to the track and pointing at a vague indentation in the sand. He took out a tape measure. ‘Paw print. Six-and-a-half centimetres. Female. I’m sure it’s F11. We haven’t caught and collared her yet, so she doesn’t have a proper name.’

      We walked a little way up the slope, following the spoor. Quinton pointed at the ground again. It was scat. It’s difficult for lay people to fathom the excitement animal droppings induce in zoologists. Quinton fell to his knees like a worshipper and studied the specimen. He explained that usually only half the scat is taken for analysis, as it serves as a territory marker for leopards. Samples are soaked in formalin, washed, and the hair separated from other remains before being oven dried at 60°C.

      Then the analysis can begin. To identify prey, the hair length and colour are noted, as well as cuticular hair-scale patterns. The presence of bone fragments and hooves also aids identification. Small rodents are trickier, although teeth found among the remains can help. Quinton explained that through scat research, he’d recorded twenty-three species in the diet of these opportunistic feeders, including everything from lizard to cow. I thought of the many hours Quinton must have spent soaking faeces in formalin, baking them and then the days spent analysing the contents. Dedication such as this must surely be fed by a particular brand of obsession.

      We pressed on up the pass, switchbacking through precipitous bends, creeping along the mountain face on a hairline track that led us into a world of jumbled sandstone and bright green fynbos. Clouds cast giant dapples across the valley below. All the while, the bleating transmission from Max’s collar grew more intense. At the top of the pass we got out, and Quinton aimed his VHF telemetry at a nearby koppie. The signal was strong. He switched to a UHF aerial and got a GPS fix from the collar. Max was eight-hundred-and-fifty metres to the west, just this side of a tall ridge. The four of us spent a few minutes scanning the area with binoculars, but saw nothing. Every bush and boulder looked vaguely feline. Every element in the landscape seemed ideal camouflage for a leopard.

      ‘Okay, we’re going to have to hike in after him,’ said Quinton. ‘It could get a bit rough.’

      The two retirees opted out; they said they’d rather sit and watch the view. Out came folding chairs and a flask of coffee. Knowing a wild-goose chase when I saw one, I half-wanted to join them. But I’d come to the berg to bag a leopard, and this was as good a shot as any. Hats, water bottles, telemetry, binoculars – we were good to go.

      Ahead of us lay difficult terrain: a salad of rocks that had been sliced and diced into uncomfortable shapes. Quinton set off at a cracking pace. He has long legs and is used to pursuing feline quarry in the mountains. I have city legs, made for strolling the promenade as far as my local coffee bar. My lack of fitness became painfully apparent about a minute into our pursuit. Quinton was like a Zen walker who never actually seemed to touch the ground. His leather Caterpillar hooves were like wings; my old veldskoens like anchors. I puffed and wheezed in his wake. Where his strides propelled him over gaps, I found myself caught between them. While his breathing remained even, I sounded like a steam engine.

      He crouched behind a pile of stones up ahead. I made a last push, using all my reserves of strength to catch up. He glanced back with a frown and put a finger to his lips. I flopped down beside him, heaving like a turtle that had just lugged its body up a beach. I was as red as a tomato, and sweat was pouring off me. Quinton might have had a drop of perspiration on his brow. We had covered at least four-hundred, near-vertical metres. He poked the telemetry aerial above the ledge like a periscope. Max had to be very close.

      There was no signal whatsoever, only a hissing sound. ‘Shit, the bugger’s gone over the edge,’ whispered Quinton. ‘Might have got wind of us. Come on!’

      We were off again, bounding up the slope to the next ridge line. The weather had begun closing in. Low clouds scudded through gaps in the berg. The wind turned icy, and the towering Sneeuberg dissolved into white. It began to rain. Quinton was pulling ahead once more. I watched him stop and stare at the terrain, head to one side, thinking like a cat again. Which way would Max have gone? Then the half-man, half-leopard slunk over a rise and disappeared.

      After thirty minutes we reached another ridge line. I collapsed next to Quinton, wheezing like a rasp. My thighs were incendiary and my right knee, the dickey one, had sort of capitulated. My vision was all spots and floaty hallucinogens. A leopard could have been standing two metres away, and I’d have dismissed it as retina malfunction.

      Quinton raised his telemetry aerial. ‘I’ve got a faint signal. Could be bouncing off the cliff. Max is heading west. He’s missioning. We’ll never catch him. This is the easternmost part of his range. He could be gone for weeks now, prowling his territory along the western slopes of the berg. It’s completely inaccessible. I’m sorry.’

      We headed back, making a detour to a spot where Max had recently made a kill. All that remained was a sprinkling of klipspringer fur, which had been carefully removed and discarded by the leopard, and a reeking pile of stomach contents. Everything else had been consumed.

      ‘From the data we got off his GPS collar, we know Max spent about twenty-four hours on this carcass,’ said Quinton. ‘When we notice a GPS cluster in one particular spot, we come and investigate. These cats are so mobile that when they’re stationary for a while, they’re usually on a kill. But we missed him by about an hour. Such a sneaky fellow is our Max.’

      That evening, Quinton was due to give a talk on leopards at Mount Cedar, a popular lodge in a nearby valley. I got a lift with Garth and Lorraine to Quinton’s Matjiesrivier home, a traditional thatched cottage leased from CapeNature, where he lives with his wife Elizabeth. She’s a willowy woman with a mane of curly auburn hair and a Julia Roberts smile. Elizabeth used to be a Waldorf teacher in Stellenbosch. Now she runs environmental education and wilderness camps for children at Matjiesrivier. Their house serves as the de facto headquarters of the Cape Leopard Trust. The tall, creaky interiors are crammed with zoological books, pictures of big cats and maps of their distribution. It’s the delightfully jumbled home of working scientists.

      We transferred to Quinton’s vehicle for the trip to Mount Cedar. Night was falling and the mountains were at their most seductive. As we drove, the rocks turned from gold to purple to burnished black, and stars began to prick the sky. Nearing the lodge, we breasted a rise and Quinton said: ‘This is exactly where I saw my first leopard. I’d been searching for nearly a year by then, and suddenly there it was, caught in my headlights. Just the briefest glimpse. Incredible.’

      He told us about his early searches in the desolate Karoo Cederberg to the east of the road we were driving. ‘It’s the most isolated part of these mountains. No one ever goes there. That’s why I love it so much. You can walk for days and not see any sign of humans. Pure wilderness. I was in the leopards’ environment, alone, sleeping wild. Occasionally I’d be backtracking along a route I’d just walked and there’d be fresh leopard spoor across my path. They knew all about my presence. I’d often hear other animals alarm-calling. I knew the leopards were close. But never so much as a glimpse. Not seeing them made it even more special, if you get my drift. The invisible cats. Like a fairy-tale.’

      We СКАЧАТЬ