Spring Mammalogy Pre-Registration Quiz

Quote of the week (at faculty meeting): “I tell you, he could not do it. And a university graduate. Can you imagine a university graduate who could not assemble a boom-sprayer for a tractor?” [Reply was a general chorus of “Shame. Shame.”]

Campus scene of the week (in dining hall): I’m in line behind some Angolan cutie, who’s dressed as if she thinks this is Brazil. She addresses an ancient Shona serving-woman, who frowns as if she thinks this is Rhodesia.

Angolan student: “I want more cheeeken theees day. You must giiive me at leeeast three pieeeces.”

Shona server, dumping three chicken feet onto student’s plate: “Next.”

Pre-requisite quiz for potential mammalogy students: Identify this:

For a person clever with historical connections, the back side of A.U.’s campus might be reminiscent of the San Francisco Valley circa 1849. In each case, one could observe a sufficiency of gold-panners. By and large, our panners today are the destitute of the destitute, gaunt skeletons who live in scrapes under the river-bank and sluice-clear tons of hand-dug gravels for maybe a buck’s worth of “color” each week. The panners are said to be desperados, who would commit murder for shoe-leather. But I have walked among these barefoot men, and the panners who do not run away speak pleasantly enough. (Thus, retaining two pair of boots and lots of money, I can write piously about feelings of guilt—which we Americans in Africa substitute for actions of justice).

One must pass through the valley of the panners if one is to reach A.U.’s most distant mountains, and that is the region I had chosen to explore. The most direct path leads beyond the soccer field through a burned savanna and past the round, thatched huts of folks whose affiliation with the University is somewhat tenuous. Then one descends steeply toward the Mutare River. The crossing-point is a two-log bridge hidden among palms and perennial broad-leaved trees. This lush oasis, within a winter landscape otherwise resembling Arizona (minus the cacti), reminds one that A.U. lies between the Tropics—and suggests the greenness that will return if the rains come. Ascending the far bank of the Mutare, one must negotiate the deep, concrete sluice-canal where machine-dug gravels were cleared, back when yellow gold and white money were more available. After the canal, one crosses a two-rut track that once led toward Moçambique. Entrance to this road from the Nyanga Highway is now blocked by barbed wire and security guards, and the road is little more than a path. But it is the clandestine supply route for the panners, and I presume that it’s also the route by which “color” begins its journey toward a world where gold signifies more and less than a barefoot man’s survival.

Across the old road, one enters a different world. Certainly a bit of firewood is occasionally collected, and one sees a few wind-blurred shoeprints along the game-trails; still, this is a place from which people are largely absent. Such was not always the case. Prior to Independence, A.U.’s far mountains were mined for gold by First World hard-rock techniques. Therefore, tunnels penetrate the mountains horizontally, and on the westernmost summit I found a ventilation-shaft that might, for all I know, emerge in Canada. (I tossed a rock—and listened in vain for the sound of its impact.) I like the current state of this distant world because I am not a “people person.” I prefer books to blabber, snakes to sermons, equations to Convocations—and turtles to pretty much anything else in the universe.

My objective in this back-campus wilderness was a particular mine. I’d saved the GPS coordinates from the Year 2000, so I found the place without difficulty. I knew from unmistakable spoor what lived in the shaft, and I wanted a picture, no matter what. So, with my Olympus 770 in one hand and a torch (= flashlight) in the other, I wiggled my way into the black tunnel. Beyond the collapsed entrance I could stand almost upright. The floor was sandy and dry, but the air carried a musky smell that raised goose-bumps on my neck. At about 30m in, I encountered a few bats. I’m reasonably sure they were Tadarida aegyptiaca, and a competent photographer (= Wayne VanDevender) would have managed pictures of their short faces and convoluted ears. A bit short of 50m, the entrance-shaft came to a “T” intersection: the left turn was blocked by a cave-in, but the right-hand tunnel was more or less open—and there were footprints on the floor!

I shall not burden you, dear readers, with details concerning my elevated pulse-rate or about other physiological indicators of my excitement. I’ll just say that—oh, my God, I’m too close; they’re charging! Aaaagggghhhh!

No, wait. I’m writing this whole story as if I were a hybrid of David Livingstone and Johnny Lane. Basically, I crossed the Mutare River. Although I tried to be polite, I scared some very poor gold-panners off their digs. I climbed a small, fine mountain and crawled into an old mine. As I tried to focus my camera with too little light, the mine’s two non-volant residents ran past me. And all I got was one quick snap of the defensive end of a retreating—well, if you can’t guess the varmint’s identity, please don’t sign up for Wofford mammalogy in the Northern spring of ‘Ought-Eight.