ROUNDING UP A ZEBRA HERD

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 181, 2 May 1925, Page 18

ROUNDING UP A ZEBRA HERD

Down in the plantation loud squealing and the thunder of hoofs tell of a herd of zebra galloping through sugar-cane and maize. Fifty per eent. of the crops is being ruined, and the morning ’ will find our carefully tended fields looking like the path of a tornado. For those of us who keep imported pedigree cattle matters are probably already- worse. In the trail of the zebra herd come swarms of tsetse flies. We have spent a small fortune bringing our beasts up country in “fly -proof railroad trucks and in trekking theni from the station to the/ farm “blanketed” in gauze and in charge of trained datives armed with fly-switches. But when zebras lure “fly’ to the gates of the. cattle-pens no precaution can avail. One bite, and the bull which cost a thousand guineas, dies miserably while its owner stands by helpless. There is only one- remedy, and that is to join our neighbours in a zebra round-up. This is a kind of big-game hunter’s lucky-dip. One moment you are taking a pot-shot at a hare and the next fleeing for dear life from a charging rhino. Under the promise of an uproarious feast on meat, every local native is roped in to join the beaters who line ,iin between the farms and the "bush.” The guns stand in a gap several miles away. 'The’beaters bring with them drums, calabashes, tin cans, boxes, hunting pipes, horns—everything that will make a noise—and on a signal shot close in over the plains with a most appalling din. , Every animal on the game list seems to leap up from the “bush.” Cavorting wildibeeste and'lolloping kongoni antelopes join the charging zebra armies; bufl’alohs, head down, tail up, come lumbering by. fierce and snorting; there is a sisittv streak of leopard and . a lawny flash of lion Everybody Aren at Tho beaters eut down bushes, build fires, squat round tho kills, and skin the beasts, roast and eat.—“ Daily Mail. ' j