Brendan the Wildebeest
A little rescue
After my recent trip to Zimbabwe, I have been thinking a lot about living alongside wild places and spaces and everything that goes along with that, including beautiful landscapes and wildlife. My family in Zimbabwe have rescued countless animals orphaned for various reasons, be it poaching, bad luck, drought, or some other calamity. These rescues have ranged from vultures and monkeys to cheetahs and lions and, most recently, Rocky the rhino, who I have visited twice. In tribute to those thoughts, today’s newsletter is a throwback story to an animal rescue.
In early 2018, I volunteered with Ride Zimbabwe near Bulawayo. Part of my volunteering work was to go up to Cawston Wildlife Estate, a family run safari camp not too far from Hwange National Park, and help look after the horses there. As well as horses, I had another surprise charge to care for: an orphaned wildebeest dubbed Brendan.
Brendan became my little shadow for two weeks. I heated her milk on the stove next to my morning toast, fed her in the back garden, and took her for walks around the property with the small pack of dogs - mainly Rhodesian Ridgebacks and Jack Russels.
Her favorite place to be while I was there was with the dogs - in fact, she seemed to believe she was one of them. In the evenings, when we sat around a fire and the dogs spread out on the floor around us, she would join them at our feet.
She even came into the house on a few special occasions to watch TV with me.
During our time together, she had an unfortunate run-in with a warthog, resulting in a long gash along her flank from his sharp tusks. She had become so trusting that she allowed me to tend to her wound daily with no fuss or suspicion. Eventually, as was the plan and once she was strong enough, she was released back into the wild alongside a nearby herd of other wildebeest. My hope, although there is no way to be certain, is that she is still there now, frolicking amongst the others.
Do you have any stories of unlikely animal companions you have encountered over the years?
Wonderful story. I always wonder if a wild herd will accept their rejects or strangers. It certainly works with lambs fed because their mom rejected them (often with twins, one is rejected). They usually have no problem to reintegrated with the flock once they are ready. So go Brendan!