The sun slides over the ocher grasslands, sinking behind hills dappled with crooked oak trees laced in pale green moss. As the ground cools, herds of Watusi cattle, with rich chocolate-and-mocha speckled hides and huge, dissolving eyes, plod lugubriously to the edge of a watering hole shimmering with rose-colored light. Their great horns knock hollowly against one another as they lower their heads to drink. Zebras, scimitar-horned oryx, eland, antelope, and gazelles gather, curling their lips against the surface of the water, oblivious to the notion of natural-born predators or trophy hunters. Near a small village of canvas pole houses, two ostriches chase each other across the savannah, hissing and flapping their enormous ruffled wings as the other birds join in an ever-mounting alien cacophony of honks, whistles, blurs, bleeps, trills, shrieks, warbles, and something that sounds not unlike an air raid siren. A couple of giraffes delicately pull leaves from the heights of a nearby tree while a giant gray source crane does a bizarre mating dance. This is the stuff of pocketbook fiction, the sort of setting that has our hero rolling his own tobacco and drinking gin and tonics while resting his dusty boots on the porch of his fully furnished Imperialist safari tent; this is the sort of landscape that makes pith helmets look cool.
Paul Trapani
A resident of Safari West.
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I didn't expect Safari West to make me feel like Papa Hemingway, but here I am, 15 minutes out of downtown Santa Rosa, bouncing along a gutted dirt road, clinging to the rooftop of a modified Dodge truck, taking notes while two black cape buffalo fan their ears and lower their horns at me like the Minotaur looking over a bite-sized Theseus.
"Oh yeah, that animal could knock this truck over," comments a rooftop companion. "No problem."
"The animals here might gore, stomp, kick, or bite you," assures senior naturalist and operations manager John Roberts from behind the steering wheel, "but they won't eat you." He grins up through the metal screen beneath my feet, eyes bouncing with good humor and bad roads.
There is nothing exceptional about the driveway, nothing visible from the road that might suggest a 400-acre African wildlife reserve is nestled among the picturesque estates and meticulous vineyards lining the road to Calistoga, nothing to suggest the archway, which reads "Kwaheri rafiki" ("Come back, friend"), will lead you halfway around the world.
At the top of the driveway, a volunteer waves at us and climbs into her car as a little zebra emerges from the bushes near the office door and heads for her vanishing friend. Clip, clip, clip, clip go the tiny, deliberate hooves as she follows the car down the hill.
"Thandi! Thandi! You get back here!"
The 20-day-old zebra stops and turns, reluctantly walking back toward the office, where she nuzzles the thigh of 19-year-old naturalist Kim Thompson. Thompson gives Thandi a reassuring scratch, and the baby Chapman's zebra trots over to give me a sideways once over. Not recognizing my scent, Thandi remains aloof and on guard, but she allows me to run my hand over the coarse mane that rises vertically from her cream-and-coffee striped coat. Her stripes are different from those of every other coat in the herd, and her flanks are not identically striped; after scent, zebras recognize the unique coloring of rumps. Thandi gives me a dismissive toss of her oversized head and scampers back to the safety of Thompson's legs.
"Zebras kick," says Thompson. This, I learn, is an understatement. "Zebras are the most dangerous bunch on this hill," says Roberts looking at small herd grazing in the shade down the hill to our left. "They're really nasty characters." It's hard to imagine, watching them move lazily across the grass, nuzzling each other's flanks. A few feet to our right, a group of elands -- the largest of the antelope species -- stop their browsing and stare at us. They don't run; they just stare.
"We never do any veterinarian work out of these trucks," says Roberts by way of explanation.
Safari West is one of only six privately owned facilities in the country certified by the American Zoo and Aquarium Association and, while Safari West offers tours and very limited lodging year round, its primary function is wildlife conservation through breeding, including the propagation of endangered species like the elegant white-naped crane and the stunning addax antelope with their wavy horns. But it all started with the large and seemingly fearless elands.
In the mid-70s, Peter Lang, son of Hollywood producer and director Otto Lang, bought three elands from the Fresno Zoo to live on his longhorn cattle ranch in Southern California. Already harboring a passion for exotic wildlife, it was only a matter of time before Lang's domestic hoof stock was completely fazed out. By 1988, Lang had run out of space, so he and his African menagerie came north.
Quite suddenly, the elands are on the run, charging past our truck and down the hill. Taking heed, the zebras join the flight and the sound of hooves becomes heroic. Then, just as suddenly, the animals stop and look back up the hill, blinking foolishly.
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