“Here,” he tells me, “Just don’t move it too fast, and don’t move it too slow, and let us get the buggers.”
We wait until the last crimson grasps of the sun are releasing their grip over the water and a breeze is kicking up from the bay, and then our ATVs kick up and we go roaring into the night.
Boggs sits in front of me, driving, and I sit behind, straddling him and leaning on the crate that’s fixed onto the back for storage. I rest my hands on the mat in the back, and my coat rubs against the crate. I feel the wind-proof shell stick like gum to the sides. The rifle strapped to Boggs’ back buckles and nearly hits me on the head.
Athol is driving the second ATV ahead of us, and he keeps us running at a breakneck speed, without regard for vegetation or for following the dirt paths that we intermittently come across. Dust and rocks leap up with sudden starts, rattling against the metal frame and the plastic casing. My hands clasp and unclasp as we pitch up and down over tufts of grass, hurtling forward like a wave.
When Athol finally slows, Boggs pulls alongside, and shuts off the motor. We sit there in stillness for a few minutes, and I hear the clamor of the surf against the rocks. I know now that we’ve crossed the island, but I cannot say exactly where we have ended up. I open up my jacket, and pull out the flashlight from an inside pocket, and fiddle with the switch again, shining the bright light around the ATV, and around the low bushes nearby.
A pair of bright eyes stare back, startled, and I can hear a rustling in the bushes. The rabbit stares into the light, and I see it tense up, still, imitating a rock on the shore. Boggs turns his head slowly, to look at the rabbit, then me. He makes a motion with his mouth, as if he’s chewing something, and then slowly shrugs the rifle off his back. I watch as Boggs turns his torso slightly, and eases the sight to his eyes. He only takes a second to look. When he fires, only the rabbit moves, sinking to earth, like a flag in a dying wind.
“One.” he says.
This is on Robben Island, South Africa. The name comes from the Dutch, who called it ‘Seal Island’ when they first sailed around the Cape of Good Hope. The island is flat, unremarkable and hardly rises above the surrounding water. It measures roughly 5 square kilometers in area, with a little more than 3 kilometers from the North to the South, and a little less than two kilometers from East to West. Across the bay on most days you can see the city of Cape Town, to the South, with the monolithic Table Mountain rising above it.
You will know it as the place where the future Nobel Prize laureate, and President of South Africa Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for twenty seven years under the apartheid regime.
Along with Mr. Mandela, two other future presidents, and the father of a third also spent time in prison here. And even before that Cape Town’s first imam died on the island, and in the late seventeenth century, a Dutch ship carrying a fortune in gold wrecked just off the island, and left her priceless treasures to the tides.
In light of the rich history of the island, and its function as a worldwide symbol of peace and perseverance, the site was designated as a UNESCO world heritage site in 1999.
I am the UNESCO coordinator for the island, which requires careful documentation of the conditions of the site, an annual main stage presentation to the UNESCO conference, a twice a year dinner with the culture minister of South Africa, as well as limited input on all use of the site.
I also do double duty as the supervisor of the Cape Floristic Region, which was designated in 2004, and is really lovely in the springtime.
Here’s something else the Dutch did. Intending to develop a steady source of food for the island, they introduced a colony of European rabbits in 1654.
The female European rabbit has an average of over six litters a year, and can begin to reproduce when just three months old.
In the island’s well-remembered days serving as a prison, guards crossed the island at night, picking off the small animals for sport.
Now, there are almost 25,000 rabbits on the island. The shooting has started again.
The first night that I go out, we kill twenty five rabbits, which Boggs tells me isn’t a lot. It is a windy night, and the animals are mostly burrowed deep, hiding among the shrubs and holes. When we come back, we each grab two rabbits in our hands by the legs, and walk into the caretaker’s house. The back lights of the ATV’s tint the ground a soft red, and reveal our bloody hands, coated in black.
The rabbits go into the refrigerator, where they will sit until the morning. Then, they will be put into boxes and shipped to the mainland with the first returning ferry. We have a contact in the city who arranges them to be distributed among shelters and community kitchens to feed the poor.
I go out again the night after, when the dark sheets of clouds have been thrown off, and the moon is brightly exposed in the sky. There is almost no need for a flashlight, but I carry it anyway, tucked safely away in my jacket. We drive to a different location, this time staying inland, and closer to the prison and the offices. We sit and idle, and I examine a small hardy plant that sticks resolutely out of the dirt near our back tire. It is stripped down, nearly bare, with only the stumps of amputated stems to signify where it’s leaves once were.
We had been noticing that the rabbits we saw, and the ones brought back in piles on our trucks, were getting thinner, emaciated to the point of disease. The destruction of the island’s vegetation was even more noticeable. The brush around the visitor center disappeared over a summer. An old vegetable garden, planted by prisoners was thoroughly ravaged after the fence was undermined. The rabbits were not only digging under historic buildings, but they were also eating themselves out of their own habitat.
Athol kicks a little dust into the air. “Let’s go, then.” he says.
I take the flashlight out from my coat, and Boggs passes each of us a burlap bag.
We walk for a few minutes, and then Boggs stops and readies his rifle. Athol is already wandering off into the darkness near us. He’s wearing a headlamp that sweeps across the scrub like the beam of the lighthouse that crowns Robben’s southern shore. He walks haltingly, stopping and raising his rifle, then starting again and lowering it. There is a deliberateness to his movement that is reassuring.
When Boggs is ready, we move out in the opposite direction as Athol. I hold the flashlight again, and sweep it back and forth in front of our path. Rabbits run, rabbits freeze. Boggs does not shoot at the ones that dart from my light like bats. It is not because they move too fast, or are too small. Instead, there is always a rabbit that remains, and stands, confused and indecisive.
Then, there is the power of my flashlight. It is the arbiter of life and death. It finds the slow, the weak, the dull, and my focus frames the quivering creatures, marks them to be picked off like balloons in a carnival. A rabbit darts directly before my feet, and I do not follow. There is one partially concealed in the bush instead I spot a rabbit that remains, perhaps trusting too strongly the denuded branches that wrap around its feet.
In a moment it collapses, and I watch as Boggs bags it, stuffed out of existence. In the exhilarating warm night, our bags are full in an hour.
Originally, we tried trapping the rabbits and putting them to sleep. This was past the point where we had recognized the rabbit population as a problem. In my annual report, I wrote; ‘a parasitic growth on a location of cultural and political significance’. Of course, the problem then became to find the best way to limit the population. There were the ideas to deport the interlopers to the mainland, which were instantly recognized as idiotic and abandoned. There was a suggestion that we introduce predators to the island, a solution deemed dangerous for tourists. Then someone suggested trapping, which seemed like a good idea at the time.
We put out several hundred cages at night, and then collected them the next morning. Stacked towers of cages, starving rabbits, frightened and shivering rabbits, rabbits playing dead. We had some veterinarians come to the island, and they brought needles and containers filled with sickly smelling liquid. The rabbits would tense up, and never unclench, even in death.
The next day, we settled on hiring marksmen.
In early February, we get word that we’re going to need to stop shooting for a week. It is the anniversary of Mr. Mandela’s release, and a large number of dignitaries are expected to stay on the island for a conference on building ‘a more just future for humankind’, as well as a gala dinner and a speeches from the archbishop of Cape Town, Desmond Tutu, the president, and Mr. Mandela himself . Naturally, we agree it to be unpleasant to continue the cull in their presence, and there are preparations to be made. I am asked to give a short talk on behalf of UNESCO. The culture ministry has also had the great idea that those who elect to could sleep in some of the cells in the island’s prison, and so the whole island’s staff is ordered to refurbish a few so that visitors would be comfortable. Athol and Boggs join a few of the other staff bringing up comfortable mattresses from the ferry. I sweep the floors, finding rabbit scat in every corner.
The day before the conference begins, the island is closed to tourists, and Boggs, Athol and I go off to hunt in the afternoon.
In lieu of my flashlight, I have taken a rifle from the caretaker’s office, and have loaded it with .22 shells from my pocket. Athol has spent the morning giving me instruction, and I feel suitably proficient with the weapon. The gun is heavy in my hands, authority conveyed in weight.
We meet around a flagpole that marked the center of the recreation yard of the prison. There is a light wind and the flag and the ropes beat against the air, providing a marching rhythm. We walk a little ways out into the island together, and then split in three directions. I run along the coast, following a small scenic trail that fully circles the island. As my boots land on the dirt, I hear the familiar rustling, and watch as rabbits spring up like flowers at my feet.
I am curiously inefficient with my rifle. The deadly certainty with which I pointed my flashlight has given way to an unsteady hand gripping a sweaty trigger. In an hour, I have bagged five rabbits, and missed at four. My shots are imperfect, they more often then not stun or injure the rabbit, forcing a second shot, or a direct blow.
My confidence grows as the afternoon lengthens. I set up on a flat patch of grass on a small knoll. It is a prime defensive position. From this seated vantage point, I can rest my elbow against the ground, and reduce the shake of my hand. In a minute, I have hit two rabbits squarely in the head.
My eye is to the sight, honing in upon a third, when I spot something larger in my periphery. My first thought is to turn the gun, to stare through the scope, for I undoubtedly have run across a member of one of the island’s other problem populations, feral deer. Yet I pause, and lift my head instead. Something about the gait- distinctly the walk of a human, and now I see an older black man walking slowly along the path that I have been following, and staring out at the water.
I stand, almost out of some shame to be found and so thoroughly flanked, ready to raise my hands and surrender.
The man does not notice me, his eyes staring out across Table Bay and towards the faint line of the city.
“Hello friend!” I call out, and the man turns, abruptly, shading his eyes against the sun.
I walk down from my small perch, and he recognizes a fellow human, and comes forward as well. I am conscious of a streak of blood on my right hand, and so I offer him my left.
“Hello,” he says, with a soft voice and an apologetic smile, “I am a little embarrassed to be found here, I know the island was supposed to be closed today, but I did not want to wait to visit again.”
Immediately I wonder how this man has managed to get onto the island, but I do not ask.
“Are you here for the conference?”
“Yes I am,” he says, “I flew in this morning from Pretoria, and I have always been bored in Cape Town, I came here instead, for a walk.”
“It’s a nice place to be.”
He glances over at me, and looks at my jacket. “You work here?”
“I’m one of the caretakers.”
“Ah! You do good work, you know, it is nice to know this island is still so well protected.” he says.
Suddenly, I realize that I’m still clutching the gun.
“Yes, of course yes, it’s an important site of international significance, you know.”
“I do.”
I look at my boots for a moment, and I imagine the man staring off again at that familiar view across the bay to the continent beyond. When I look up, though, he’s still staring at me.
“If you don’t mind me asking¾” he begins.
“This gun is for rabbits, we have to cut down on the number of rabbits.”
The man looks at me with an odd expression, and I go on.
“There are almost 25,000 rabbits on this island, they’ve been tearing up the vegetation and undermining the structural integrity of some of the buildings. They can’t really stay here, they’re destroying everything.”
I pause, and the man nods his head. “I noticed how spare the plants and brush looked, I guess I just put it down to the dry season we’ve been having,” he says. “That’s a lot of rabbits.”
I think of the bags, the rabbits in piles, in cages, in soups.
“They were destroying everything, we had to do something, they weren’t supposed to be here, not on such a small island. It really can‘t support them.”
“What do you mean when you say they were not supposed to be here?”
“Well, they’re European rabbits, they reproduce extremely fast, and they spread, they spread all over.”
“I think I see, they were introduced to this island?”
“As a source of food, introduced by the Dutch in the sixteen hundreds.”
He shakes his head. “And you’re shooting them, then? Shooting them all?”
“Yes, well, yes it’s the only way, really.”
“Is it even possible? To shoot them all?”
“I’m not sure,” I say, “Eventually, it might be. For now, we’re just trying to cut down on their numbers. We’re taking the island back, we need to take it back.”
The man reaches into his pocket, and pulls out a small bottle of water. He unscrews the cap, and takes a long drink, holding the plastic up to block the sun.
“Would you like some?” he asks.
“I have my own, thank you.”
He takes another sip, and then puts the bottle back into his pocket.
“It’s a hot day.” he says.
“Would you like to see?” I say, “Would you like to help me out? Would you like to help protect this island? Would you like to shoot a rabbit? You can have my gun, I’ll teach you if you want, I’m sure I could find one for you in a second, they’re all over the place.”
I shake the rifle’s strap off of my shoulder and hold it out. I can feel the last heat of the afternoon beat against the top of my head, and the wind picks up a little, blowing eddies of dust around our feet. I hear rustling in the bushes.
The man reaches out and takes the gun from my hands. I can see his fingers running up and the barrel, and down to the butt, sticky in the sun. He holds the gun up, resting it against his shoulder, looking through the sight and feeling the heft. Then, taking the gun off of his shoulder, he smiles, and thanks me.
“I think it is time for to walk back,” the man says, “I must rest for tomorrow.”
I take the gun back, and hold it across my body, resting flat on my sweaty hands.
“Yes, of course, I’ll be there, you know, giving a presentation.”
“It was nice to meet you.” the man says.
I watch as the man walks along the shore, and disappears into a vanishing point. In his wake leaps a rabbit, pausing for a moment in the middle of the trail, perhaps to stare at the grey clouds accumulating across the bay. I stare at it, then turn and walk down to the beach to wash my hands and the stock of my rifle in the sea. I pardon the rabbit.
***
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