Clark

Are you familiar with a dik-dik? It is a very small antelope, being about the same as a big jackrabbit. After roasting over an open campfire, a dik-dik makes a perfect entree for a two- or three-person meal.

Last month, we discussed setting a world record 100-meter dash running away from a hippopotamus. That evening also involved an African buffalo, so both of the most dangerous wild animals in Africa were involved.

Today, we’ll deal with a dik-dik-associated world record broad jump.

Ticks carry several very bad cattle diseases in tropical Africa, and controlling these killer diseases is both very difficult and very important. The primary control method is having cattle jump into and swim through a dipping vat with a chemical that kills the ticks on the cow.

We were building dipvat in the western Loliondo area of North Masailand, right up against the border of the Serengeti National Park. It was only about 30 kilometers from home, so my wife, Barbara, and my nephew, Mark, who was living with us at the time, had come along for a few days of living in the bush and living off the land.

In early evening, Mark and I set off along the bush-track in my Land Rover pickup to get a dik-dik for dinner. Mark drove and I stood in the back with my bow-and-arrow, and soon there one was standing in an open piece of woods that sloped downward toward us. I took a shot and missed (standard operating procedure), so I went up to retrieve the arrow. As I walked back and forth I looked up and there he was again — a nice, clear shot — and I missed again. So I went up to find that arrow, Mark came looking for the first arrow, and here’s where the action begins.

I was walking around with my head down, looking at the ground to find the arrow, when suddenly that was a loud snort about 20-30 yards away and a huge bull buffalo jumped up. A singleton old bull is a deposed king. He has been the leader of the herd, the boss of the harem of women buffalos, the winner of the fights for control, and now he had been run out of the herd by the younger guys and he has nothing at all. He is angry, frustrated, and as I mentioned last month, African buffalos normally are “smart, mean, crafty, agile, fast — and the quintessence of distilled malevolence.”

I had awakened the worst animal in Africa from his afternoon nap. We studied each other for about 3/1,000 of a second, then I turned and began running down the hill through the sparse trees. Under circumstances like this, cerebral function speeds up by geometric multiples and the question “what am I going to do?” was resolved in micro-milliseconds — “jump into the bed of the Land Rover so that he hits the vehicle and I’m protected.”

So I jumped. The problem, however, was that I was running so fast and jumping so hard that I flew over the Land Rover and landed on the far side of the road — completely missing the pickup bed. I have no memory of how Mark did it, but he reached safety in the cab. I got up and the buffalo was nowhere to be seen. Thinking about his mental process it might be something like, ”I thought that thing was one of those stupid humans but it was the wrong color — it was like a palid termite queen that’s never seen the light of day and it ran like a wildebeest and jumped like an impala and could even soar like a vulture. Hey, this thing might be dangerous and I’m outta here.”

So I never saw him again.

That is how I made track and field event history — this had to be a world record broad jump for sure. The length, the height and the velocity all put together how could it not be the record? What a great video it could have been.

The dik-dik was never seen again, either, and the two arrows still are in their resting places in my beloved western Loliondo bush country.