Last Chance to See - Douglas Adams [47]
We crept on closer. Eventually we got to within about twenty-five yards, and Charles signaled us to stop. We were close enough. Quite close enough. We were in fact astoundingly close to it.
The animal measured about six feet high at its shoulders, and sloped down gradually toward its hindquarters and its rear legs, which were chubby with muscle. The sheer immensity of every part of it exercised a fearful magnetism on the mind. When the rhino moved a leg, just slightly, huge muscles moved easily under its heavy skin like Volkswagens parking.
The noise of our cameras seemed to distract it and it looked up again, but not in our direction. It appeared not to know what to think about this, and after a while returned to its grazing.
The light breeze that was blowing toward us began to shift its direction, and we shifted with it, which brought us around more to the front of the rhino. This seemed to us, in our world dominated by vision, to be an odd thing to do, but so long as the rhino could not smell us, it could take or leave what we looked like. It then turned slightly toward us itself, so that we were suddenly crouched in full view of the beast. It seemed to chew a little more thoughtfully, but for a while paid us no more mind than that. We watched quietly for fully three or four minutes, and even the sound of our cameras ceased to bother the animal. After a few minutes we became a little more careless about noise, and started to talk to one another about our reactions, and now the rhino became a little more restive and uneasy. It stopped grazing, lifted its head, and looked at us steadily for about a minute, still uncertain what to do.
Again, I imagine myself sitting here in my study writing this through the afternoon and gradually realising that a slight smell I had noticed earlier is still there, and beginning to wonder if I should start to look for other clues as to what it could be. I would start to look for something, something I could see: a bottle of something that’s fallen over, or something electrical that’s overheating. The smell is simply the clue that there’s something I should look for.
For the rhino, the sight of us was simply a clue that there was something he should sniff for, and he began to sniff the air more carefully, and to move around in a slow, careful arc. At that moment the wind began to move around and gave us away completely. The rhino snapped to attention, turned away from us, and hurtled off across the plain like a nimble young tank.
We had seen our northern white rhinoceros, and it was time to go home.
The next day, Charles flew us back across the ostrich-skin savannah to Bunia airport, where we were due once more to pick up a missionary flight returning to Nairobi. The plane was already there waiting and a representative from the airline assured us, against the evidence of all our previous experience, that there would be no problems, we could go straight to the plane. Then, a few minutes later, we were told that we would just have to go quickly to the immigration office. We could leave our bags. We went to the immigration office, where we were told that we should bring our bags. We brought our bags. Expensive-looking camera equipment.
We were then confronted by a large Zaïrois official in a natty blue suit whom we had noticed earlier hanging around watching us take our baggage out of Charles’s plane. I had had the feeling then that he was sizing us up for something.
He examined our passports for a good long time before acknowledging our presence at all, then at last he looked up at us, and a wide smile crept slowly across his face.
“You entered the country,” he asked, “at Bukavu?”
In fact, he said it in French, so we made a bit of a meal of understanding him, which was something that experience had taught us to do. Eventually we admitted that, insofar as we had understood the question, yes,