A is for Aardvark
You may well have heard of an aardvark considering it is at the very front of a dictionary as the first word in the English language, but very few people have seen them while on a safari. This is the story of how I saw my first, and second, aardvark.
I moved from the UK to South Africa to study at Rhodes University in the Eastern Cape. Being able to study Zoology in Africa, I mean, what better place? I was in my element. Part of my student visa that was granted stated that I had to keep up the good grades in my studies and not fail any of my courses otherwise my visa would be revoked, and I’d be on my way back to a wet and windy island that is the UK. Fair enough, don’t fail and I can stay in the continent I felt right at home on from the first second I arrived. However, the problem with this is that there are so many incredible places to explore, experiences to have, animals to see and things to do. Basically, there were a lot of distractions from my studies. Luckily for me, such was my passion for the subject that I soaked up it all up very quickly. Good thing otherwise the SA government would have had me on a plane quicker than you can say ‘Howzit, let’s have a braai!’.
I quickly started filling my time between lectures following and identifying all the amazing and exotic birds I was seeing and finding chameleons in the shrubs. This was great to fill any free time around the university campus, but I soon wanted to venture further afield. Driving just out of town took me quickly into the arid interior of South Africa, and I had been learning about all the interesting animals that called this habitat home. Creatures like caracals, cape foxes, aardwolf and bat-eared foxes (as strange and cute as they sound, they are somehow even more so in person!). The problem with finding all these interesting new animals was that they are all mainly nocturnal, an adaptation to the water-scarce environment as moving around at night means they are cooler and therefore waste less water through evaporation.
My solution – night drives! I started heading out around dusk, having bought a high-powered spotlight to use from the car - not thinking at all about how this might look to the local police. I quickly got pulled over and questioned by a police officer. He seemed to think I looked like someone scoping out a quiet house out of town to go and rob, or that I was a poacher looking for animals for bush meat (at least this accusation was in the right ballpark - I was looking for animals, though in reality this accusation couldn’t have been further from the truth). I carefully asked his permission to let me show him my camera as I was looking for animals, but only to capture them on film. Having just seen an aardwolf (small stripy fox-like mammal), I thanked the stars that I had some photos of it so I could show him exactly what I was doing. On seeing the pictures, he relaxed, which meant I relaxed, and we started talking about the animals he had seen out on these roads after dark. Turns out he had seen aardvarks on this very road a few times.
Aardvarks had quickly become the number one target to see for me as they are rare, shy and mainly nocturnal as well as being really unique animals with a long pig-like snout, big bear claws, a long tail and a big stout and round body roughly the size of a big dog. Or a small pig. Their name in Afrikaans literally means ”Earth Pig”. Armed with my new information and the very comforting knowledge that I wasn’t about to be arrested and thrown into jail, I kept looking. Evening after evening, week after week. I had seen and photographed all the other animals I wanted to find but the rare aardvark kept eluding me. In all honestly, my nighttime excursions to try and find an aardvark were starting to affect my grades, as I would be exhausted in the day having spent hours out after dark looking for my new nemesis. I couldn’t keep this up much longer as I had exams coming up, and the possibility of deportation if I didn’t take them seriously.
My flatmates had by now taken an interest in what I was doing. Though they weren’t quite as passionate about finding an aardvark as I was, they did agree to come and help out with the spotlight a few times. Just before exams were about to start, we headed out one evening so we could all have some time off revising. The only bad thing about them coming with me was that they would try and call it a night long before I wanted to. We headed out and saw some cool animals like a huge male kudu (big antelope with long spiral horns) and the rare cape fox before the boys got bored and asked to turn around. Fine, I should be studying anyway I thought. As we headed back and were just about to crest the top of a hill, a big round bear ran across the road in front of us. I did a double and then triple take and slammed on the brakes. The animal was now furiously digging a hole to escape into next to the road only a few metres away. I threw open the car door and bundled out, forgetting my camera in the process. As I reached back into the car, my car door swung shut. Hard. And locked. Unfortunately for me my thumb was still in the way and the door had latched on it. I felt no pain at the time, I was just trying to pull away to go and finally see the aardvark I’d been searching for. Despite my best efforts, my thumb didn’t detach from my hand but one of my flatmates thankfully opened the door from the inside releasing me to go and photograph my quarry.
It was incredible to see one of these amazing and bizarre animals up close and personal. It was bigger than I had thought but definitely had a touch of the ‘cute factor’, with its long nose and slightly hairy body. I managed a few photos before it disappeared down the hole it had quickly dug with its bear claws, and I headed back to the car.
Now I felt my thumb. Throbbing as if I had smashed it with a sledgehammer. Within a couple of days, the nail and nailbed had died and fallen off. Two weeks of pain for 20 seconds with an aardvark, I’ll take it! As we headed back, just a couple of hundred metres up the road I saw a second aardvark! In the UK, there is an ironic saying stating that ‘you wait ages for a bus, and then three come along at once.’ This very much felt like that. Weeks of searching and then two in five minutes. How lucky were we?! Having found my aardvark, I switched focus back to my exams and happily passed them all, meaning I had skipped deportation - allowing me to pursue many more animal filled escapades throughout Africa. Lucky me!