Free Blood Safari by Deon Meyer Page B

gamblers who believe that they are lucky charms that will enable them to see into the future, their talisman to predict the winning numbers.’
    Beside me, Emma was listening with intense concentration.
    ‘The market for vulture parts has skyrocketed in the past few years. Take a guess what a vulture head is now selling for. Five hundred rand? A thousand bucks? Try ten thousand rand. But the sangomas buy the dead vultures from poachers for maybe two or three hundred rand a piece. And how do the poachers capture the vultures? They poison them. They set out a carcass laced with a deadly poison and they kill a hundred or two hundred birds at once, but they are on foot and they can only carry off ten or twenty, so the others are just left to rot.’
    The audience murmured their displeasure, but Donnie Branca was far from finished. He began to quote statistics of losses, every species a learned chorus in English, Afrikaans and Latin. The magnificent bearded vulture/lammergeier/
Gypaetus
barbatus
, which historically nested in the mountains of Lesotho, was entirely extinct in that country. ‘Completely annihilated. Nothing left, not one, not a single bird.’ On the South African side of the border only nine breeding pairs remained. ‘Nine, ladies and gentlemen. Nine.’
    I realised of whom the man reminded me. There had been a lay preacher in jail, a born-again armed robber from the Cape Flats by the name of Job Tieties. Bible in hand, he would preach at night, to himself and a handful of approving brothers. His voice carried through the cells with that same urgent, evangelistic fervour.
    The Cape vulture/Kransaasvoel/
Cryps
coprotheres
, once so numerous in Africa, was totally wiped out in Swaziland, on the critically endangered list in Namibia, and there remained only twothousand breeding pairs worldwide. ‘Two thousand. Imagine just two thousand people left in the whole world. Just try and imagine that. A century ago, there were one hundred thousand Cape vultures in South Africa. This incredible bird with a wingspan of two and a half metres that can spend the whole day gliding on the thermals over the African veld, covering seven hundred and fifty kilometres effortlessly – that’s the direct distance between Bloemfontein and Cape Town. Just two thousand breeding pairs left. A travesty, a tragedy, a disaster. Why? Why should we worry that they are disappearing, these disgusting, ugly, dirty birds?’
    Because nature was a delicate piece of engineering, he said. It was God’s timepiece, where every little gear, every tiny spring, was of vital importance to keep perfect ecological time. ‘Allow me to explain: every vulture had its place, its function, its role to play. Different vultures consumed different parts of the carcass – the body and beak of each was adapted for a specific task. The hooded vulture/Monnikaasvoël/
Necrosyrtes
monachus
would be the first to feed. Its sharper, smaller beak could rip open the hide of the dead animal. It would be a hurried affair in order to snatch a few strips of meat before the larger, dominant scavengers arrived. But it was indispensable; without it the others could not get at the innards.’
    The Cape vultures were the riff-raff of carrion. Eternally soaring high above the African veld, they would look for the lions and hyenas, crows, ravens and jackals that would indicate a carcass was ready. Then, they would swoop down in huge flocks, spiralling towards the earth in wide circles and gathering in rowdy bunches close to the feeding ground to be sure it was safe. And so the maul would begin, the great scrum to get at the carcass. Its bald neck marked it as an internal feeder. The giant beak and strong tongue shaped like a trowel would tear out great chunks of meat – it could swallow a kilogram of carrion in three minutes.
    ‘But the king of the carcass is the lappet-faced vulture/Swar-
taasvoël/Aegypius tracheliotos.
It stands a metre high.’ He indicated with his hand above