Wednesday was not the best of days. I woke up to find my wife Sharon was in the ER of a local hospital in terrible pain with a gall bladder attack.  The most difficult part of this job is the time you spend away from your family. I could never image my wife being in the hospital for two nights and me not being there with her. Luckily nothing like this has ever happened before.

I always need to be in contact with my wife and step-son. I actually call home almost everyday, just to talk about what is going on and to feel connected to her and her to me. It can be very tough on our families: natural history photographers sometimes can be in the field for up to two and a half months. The pressure of trying to get the best images of dangerous or elusive animals, often under challenging conditions, is difficult enough, but leaving the ones you love behind makes it so much harder. You might think that over the years this part would become easier but it never does. Satellite phones have saved my relationship! And here in India cell phones work all over the country (most of the time) and are relatively cheap to call the States. I can stay in touch and talk about everyday things that help us to understand what each of us are going through—and talk through what we are each working on. Sharon is a writer, so we often brainstorm on each other’s stories and have worked together on lots of projects.

We also had two very close calls on Wednesday that made it not the best of days.

It started with us going to check on a remote camera we had put up the night before after Deka, the range officer in charge of the western part of the park, had called me and said that a female tiger and cub – maybe one to two years old - had killed a pregnant rhino. In the dark we set up a camera with four guards watching over us the whole time.

So today on the way to check the camera trap, we stopped in a remote section of the park where you need to always remain vigilant. Konwar pulled over to move a turtle off the road, so I walked a few feet from the jeep to relieve myself. All of a sudden Doug Chadwick (the writer on this story) yells “RHINO” and I turn to see a big ole male rhino coming full speed at us! I ran back and jumped up on the opposite side of the jeep from the charge.  Our guard Hagairika shot his rifle about a foot in front of the rhino—and the rhino turned right around. Whew!!! We all said how stupid that was and took off.

About 10 minutes later, we’re in the forest watching three rhinos “dumping” next to a beautiful Bomback tree that had shed most of it’s large, red flowers on the ground (This is how they mark their territory, with these three to five foot high piles of dung.) This turned out to be an interesting photo, so I shot until they moved back into the forest. Then we drove on.
BIG MISTAKE! As we passed the tree we saw the female, back from just coming out of the water, grunting and charging the jeep! Konwar hesitated for a split second, thinking about putting the jeep in reverse, but decided instead to run the gauntlet.

But the rhino was too fast and there was no way to outrun her. She charged face first into the passenger side door. We thought we were going to be flipped off the edge of the raised road but the fact that she hit the door, which crumpled in, saved us. The dent was so big I don’t know how the park guard avoided injury. Rhinos actually use their teeth to ram and to bite--there were teeth marks in the door! She then proceeded to hit us again further back on the side of the jeep. Standing up in the back, Chadwick, Gabriel and I held on to whatever we could find as Konwar muscled the jeep away from the rhino. Once we pulled ahead of her, Konwar floored it but the rhino continued to chase us! Hagiarika fired again to scare her off, but she didn’t care. She did not stop until she was winded. Man, were we lucky!!!

We checked the remote camera on the dead rhino after we calmed down and we found pictures of a tiger with blood covering his face. Happy, but still shaken by our close call. “Not the best of days” got a little better.

UPDATE: my wife Sharon spent two nights in the hospital, the surgery went great and she is back home recuperating. We are lucky after all these years to still be so in love!! Thanks to our friend Nancy Green for all of her help, taking care of Sharon at the hospital and at home.

Watch Video:

Comments