Gorillas in the Mist Read online

  With the utmost British tolerance and politeness, Alan said, “Dian, if you are ever going to contact gorillas, you must follow their tracks to where they are going rather than backtrack trails to where they’ve been.” That was my first lesson in tracking, and one that I’ve never forgotten.*

  On the eve of Alan’s departure, Dian was thrilled to hear gorillas hooting and beating their chests in the forest no more than half a mile away from camp. Early the next morning, January 15, 1967, the day before Dian’s thirty-fifth birthday, Alan made a last check of the camp—the patched-up cabin where the African workers would stay; Dian’s tent with its freshly dug rain gutters; the latrine pit and its burlap modesty screens; and the rain barrels in which drinking water would collect. Satisfied, he wished her luck and headed back down the mountain.

  I’ll never forget the feeling of sheer panic that I felt watching him depart. He was my last contact with civilization as I had known it. I found myself clinging to the tent pole simply to avoid running after him.

  The strangeness of the near-total isolation stayed with me for several weeks. I could not listen to the shortwave radio Dr. Leakey had kindly insisted I take along because, if anything, it increased my sense of desolation. I couldn’t read any of the popular or scientific books I’d brought, or even use my typewriter. All of these connections with the outside world simply made me feel lonelier than ever.

  Four days after Alan Root’s departure, the Congolese tracker, Sanweke, arrived at camp. As a youth he had tracked gorillas for Carl Akeley, and later he had done the same for George Schaller. He had also guided Joan and Alan Root. Dian had met him during her 1963 visit to Kabara, when she had learned to appreciate his remarkable abilities. His was a familiar face, and with his arrival her initial overwhelming sense of aloneness subsided somewhat.

  January 19: Left camp at 8:30 with Sanweke, along Bitshitsi trail. About half an hour out we found a single, fresh gorilla foraging trail to the right. We followed it through high nettles and saw that it joined up with four other trails. We heard a shrill bark, went in that direction across the main path and crossed on a log over a ravine, then up the hill along many feeding trails, down an extremely steep ravine and straight up the slopes of Mikeno, where we found the group’s night nests. Solid dung in each and all along the trail. We returned toward Bitshitsi and in about ten minutes saw an adult gorilla sunning to our left. It barked shrilly upon seeing us and disappeared. We went further down the trail and turned and crossed the ravine again. At that point the entire slope was in the open sun and here we encountered an adult male-a blackback-approximately eight to nine years old, who sat watching us, but displaying no fear. Time was 11:10. He gave small hoots, more like burps, before his chest beats (each five to eight thumps) and ended two of his chest beats with branch grabbing. Between three and five minutes elapsed between chest beatings, during which time two older females appeared…. Then the silverback boss of the family appeared from behind the young male after screaming wraaagh several times.

  This first real contact, lasting more than three hours, involved a family of nine gorillas that Dian named Group 1. It was the beginning of a series of contacts that continued until the rains set in and the gorillas moved far down the slopes below the camp where fog, mud, and torrential runoff made tracking them extremely difficult. By the end of January, Dian had racked up more than twenty-four hours of observations, which she carefully detailed each evening in her typewritten notes.

  In these early days her approaches to the animals were often clumsy. She was too persistent in pursuit, which disturbed and provoked them.

  January 26: I left camp alone at 9:00 as Sanweke had malaria. At 9:20 I heard a bark to the right, not far from the Bitshitsi trail…. It was Group 1…. I take another few steps so as to be in the clearing when the animals see me, and I almost bump into the blackback male. I measure later; we were six feet apart. He stands up, blinks his eyes, opens his mouth, screams, and runs about fifty feet through the brush behind him, screaming and tearing at the undergrowth. There’s quite a bit of screaming now from all sides, and a mother with infant, a juvenile, and an old female take to a tree. Old female and juvenile beat trees and chests and then juvenile runs to old female. Mother sits there holding branch with right arm and infant in left arm. She lets go of the branch and beats her chest, hitting the infant in the process. She stands up on the limb, wants to get down, but keeps looking at me hesitantly. Then in a split second she shoves the infant onto her back and leaps a good eight feet from the higher branch to a lower one covered with moss. She clings there for just a second with all four extremities and then leaps ten feet to the ground. As she lands, she gives a piercing scream and the infant lets out a long, high-pitched cry. I’m really worried about both of them, for it’s not my intention to cause them harm. Just then the old female does the same thing, only when she reaches the lower branch she rolls off it and must have hit the ground on her back. She lets out a terrible scream and about four others in the bush join in.

  Dian had learned from Schaller’s books that it was best to remain visible to the animals at all times, but not to frighten them with a sudden appearance. She soon found that this approach had the added advantage of capitalizing on the gorillas’ highly developed curiosity, attracting them to her. She tried to further arouse their curiosity by softly talking to them, but that frightened the animals away. She switched to imitating the gorillas’ own vocalizations, particularly the deep, rumbling naooooom that sounded a little like purring, and which she would describe as a “contentment vocalization.” She also mimicked mannerisms such as self-grooming and nibbling on wild celery stalks, and maintained a submissive crouch in the animals’ presence.

  There were inevitable setbacks.

  Today Sanweke and I were charged by two gorillas and it wasn’t a bluff charge-they really meant it. We were about one hundred and fifty feet directly downhill from a group when a silverback and a female decided to eradicate us. They gave us a split second of warning with screams and roars that seemed to come from every direction at once before they descended in a gallop that shook the ground. I was determined to stand fast, but when they broke through the foliage at a dead run directly above me, I felt my legs retreating in spite of what I’ve read about gorillas not charging fully. I paused long enough to try to dissuade them with my voice, which only seemed to aggravate them more, if possible; and when their long, yellow canines and wild eyes were no less than two feet away, I took a very ungainly nosedive into the thick foliage alongside the trail. They whizzed on by, caught up in their own momentum. It’s a good thing they didn’t come back to attack, for I was certainly in no position to defend myself. It may have taken only a split second to dive into that foliage, but it took about fifteen minutes to extract myself-what a tangle!

  As the gorillas began to reveal their individual personalities, Dian gave them names. First, No-nose: I think she is an old female, and she is the only one I’ve dared to name, but this is the only way I can think of her-she looks as if she has no nose. Then came Ferdinand, her name for a big blackback, followed by a whole rush of christenings: Pucker, Mzee, Solomon, Dora, Hugger, Scapegoat, Popcorn, Tagalong, Mrs. Moses, Cassius, Monarch … even an adolescent male named Alexie.

  Before long Dian developed an acuity for spotting trail signs that was matched by only the best African trackers. She learned that branches bent by passing animals point in the direction of travel. Gorilla knuckle prints show clearly in damp earth, and chains of dung deposits are laid neatly along a travel trail when a group is moving normally. Culs-de-sac created by individual animals that wander off the main trail to feed can be identified by taking the time to see whether there is a top layer of foliage bent back toward the main path along which the animals have been traveling. She learned to look far ahead along the line of travel to see if vine growth on trees had been disturbed or if bark had been damaged.

  Dian also discovered that the gorillas’ distinctive barnyard odor clung to the foliag
e, so the animals could sometimes be tracked by their scent, if one was willing to do it on hands and knees. Their dung, too, provided invaluable clues to a group’s proximity, size, and composition, and even its collective state of mind. The freshness of a dung deposit could be tested by its relative warmth and by the number of flies and/or eggs or maggots on it. Different-sized gorillas left different-sized dung deposits, so a careful examination revealed much about the number and ages of the animals in a given group. As for the group’s state of mind—dung from undisturbed gorillas had the same general smell and consistency as horse manure, but gorillas in flight or frenzy became diarrheic.

  Two months after arriving in Kabara, Dian received a long letter from the associate editor of National Geographic magazine, setting out the Society’s expectations.

  They want to do the entire works, just as was done with Jane Goodall: television special and magazine series and a popular book. They want me to start planning the first article now. I would get two thousand dollars for the article and any pictures of mine would bring fifty to two hundred dollars depending on page size.

  The opportunity to be published in National Geographic had appealed to Dian from the beginning, and she commenced work on an article almost immediately.

  It was at this time that she began having problems with poachers.

  Virunga poachers came mainly from among the pygmy Batwa people (often abbreviated to Twa), who hunted forest antelope (duikers, bushbuck, and bongo) and other game using snares, spears, and bows and arrows. Their skill at tracking and trapping was legendary. In earlier times these people had wandered freely in the forests, leaving farming to the more numerous Hutu tribesmen—people of Bantu stock. Although hunting in the park was forbidden, that was where the antelope lived, so the Batwa accepted the small risk of getting caught.

  Now in the March rainy season most of the elephant and buffalo and some gorilla have gone down the mountain to lower altitudes. In an attempt to locate gorilla, Sanweke and I descended the eastern side of the volcano in an area that turned into rain forest and was filled with Twa hunters. We met four of them in the deepest, darkest park of the forest, and while Sanweke held his gun on them, I took their spears and pangas. Sanweke intended to march them out of the forest to the nearest village, but one by one they slipped away from him because I couldn’t keep up and he had to keep his eye on me. That was easily the most horrible day of my life. We walked thirty-seven miles in all, through forest, mountains, and villages, before reaching the park headquarters because we couldn’t return the way we descended due to the presence of the Batwa. Six hours of this walk was in the dark and about twelve hours in the pouring rain.

  Finding enough nourishing food was another problem for Dian. She was not very good at adapting her cooking and eating habits to locally available products. She had a hen she called Lucy, and later acquired a cock, Dezi. She also tried to grow a vegetable garden. The hen provided her with an occasional egg, but the garden was trampled so often by night-wandering elephants and other wildlife that she finally abandoned it.

  On my monthly shopping trip I buy potatoes, carrots, artichokes, lettuce, and whatever else looks appealing at the village of Kibumba at the base of the mountain. Then I drive to the small town of Goma to visit English-speaking friends and buy canned goods, and then go to Kisoro, two hours away from the base of the mountain, to pick up my mail at the Traveler’s Rest and have a good meal.

  Much to my sorrow, the variety of canned goods is truly poor. The meat in particular. I can only get canned frankfurters, corned beef, and several varieties of “luncheon meat,” all of which are horrible. So I substitute tuna and cheese, and as fast as my poor hen can lay an egg, I claim it. She’s doing very well now, for I cook her a bowl of porridge each morning (with raisins in it, of course), and as soon as she is finished she lays a Grade A, superlarge. But no porridge, no egg. I also give her a slice of butter and cheese each evening.

  Food would frequently spoil or she would find that she had not bought enough, then Dian would be reduced to living on potatoes. This was not quite so unendurable as running out of cigarettes, something she also managed to do regularly.

  Still, none of this was enough to dampen her enthusiasm. In her letters home she described the joy of life on the meadow and among the gorillas:

  “I’m all curled up on my cot with the interior of my tent looking like a Salvation Army fire sale—wet, muddy clothes hanging everywhere around the pressure lamp in the vain hope that they will dry. Everything I own is wet.

  “The nights have truly been spectacular though, for there is a full moon and for some reason the sky clears in the evening. The volcano Karisimbi looms up fifteen thousand feet or so to the left of my tent, and its snow-peaked cone seems to pierce the heavens, with all the stars—looking like small, twinkling moons at this altitude—paying homage to it. When the moon is full, there is an uncanny, silvery glow over the meadow, the hills around it, and the mountain, and I can see all sizes and shapes of eyes reflecting its light along the fringes of the meadow. Last night a large herd of buffalo fed about fifty yards from my tent without seeing me sitting on my ‘front porch’ in the shadows.

  “The night really comes alive with sounds never heard in the day. There is the trumpeting of elephants ringing up the gorge between the mountains, the snorting of the buffalo, the chest beating and hooting of lone gorillas, the barks of the duiker, the soft, mounting cry of the tree hyrax—a rabbity little animal unlike any other creature on earth—that ends up with an abrupt sound like someone with a bad cold blowing his nose, and lastly the weird cries, hoots, shrieks, and laments of the nocturnal birds.”

  Dian was now feeling much less of a transient at Kabara; and in her hunger for a sense of permanence, as well as her need for a little more comfort, she took over one of the two rooms in the men’s cabin.

  I’ve just about finished fixing up a room in the hut, and it looks great. The ugly wooden walls are matted with two-tone grass mats the natives made for me, and the wooden supports are hidden by bamboo that was cut down the mountain a way and is a beautiful shade of moss green now. I have pictures, skins, tusks, and horns hanging here and there, and I’ve made curtains out of some African printed material. A fireplace will be built next week.

  Work is going well, for I’ve been following one gorilla group around all month, and now I’m able to get within thirty to sixty feet of them and they are not afraid of me. To be perfectly frank, I think they are quite confused as to my species! I’ve gotten them accustomed to me by aping them, and they are fascinated by my facial grimaces and other actions that I wouldn’t be caught dead doing in front of anyone. I feel like a complete fool, but this technique seems to be working, and because of the increased proximity I’ve been able to observe a lot never recorded before.

  Last week two of them approached me to within twenty feet, and the rest of the group remained at thirty-five to sixty feet for over an hour! There aren’t words to describe what a thrill that was, and as long as I live I’ll never forget it. At the same time I was slightly apprehensive because I was directly downhill from them and without a tree to climb or hide behind should anything have happened. I had to use my “threat face” once-don’t laugh, it’s quite effective-when one of the silverbacks began to get carried away with his bluffing tactics of running, chest beating, and breaking down trees. Needless to say, I was dutifully impressed with his prowess, but decided our proximity was being strained, so turned a horrible grimace on him, which had the effect of a flower on Ferdinand: immediately he sat down and began to eat, nervously and with one eye on me, but at least his hands were harmlessly occupied, and finally he just stood up and walked away.

  It was really an hour that made everything else worthwhile, and my only regret is that no one was there either to witness or photograph it.

  My field notes, of course, are just about ready to squeeze me out of the tent as they are quite voluminous after almost six months. This month I’ve been doing a great d
eal of work on what might optimistically be called thesis preparation-analyzing, classifying, charting and graphing, etc.-and now something complete and compact is growing out of all those pages and pages, and I’m rather proud of what’s being created.

  Now in June the rainy season has subsided to a great extent, and many elephant and buffalo are in the area because the local pond is the only source of water for some miles around. I feel as though I’m walking through the Denver stockyards, with animals behind every tree. I don’t mind the elephant so much because there’s no danger of stumbling across one of them. But the buffalo are often hidden by the foliage, and it’s hard to tell who’s more shocked when we “bump” into one another. The other day I was crawling under a long log, following a typical gorilla trail, when I noticed that the slender tree trunk I was about to grasp seemed to be moving. I pushed aside a few vines and found myself a foot away from a buffalo’s leg! The silly thing wasn’t aware of my presence, so I crept back farther beneath the log and let loose with some hog-calling yells that sent the entire herd into a frenzy. I’ll bet they’re still running.

  There are two Egyptian geese on the pond, which though lovely to look at, are not musically inclined. I’ve named one Olivetti and the other Corona Smith. They’ve taken to briefly visiting the meadow to exchange threats with my rooster, Dezi, who considers himself king of the mountain. Dezi has already succeeded in cowing two white-necked ravens, who now have to come to the tent instead of the hut (the tent is outside of Dezi’s domestic range) for the food I give them. It’s quite impossible to sleep there in the morning, what with the cock crowing, the ravens cawing, and the geese clicking.