Meeting Julie

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Sept. 11, 2003
FREE STATE, South Africa — Attached to John Varty's right hand is the clunky black camera with which he's shot hundreds of hours of footage documenting two captive-born tiger cubs' education in the wilds of Africa. Attached to Varty's left hip is me.

"You're an extension of me, as far as she's concerned," Varty assures. "Stay close."

"She" is Julie, a mature Bengal tiger who's chuffing and leaning hard into me as she brushes by.

I should chuff back to her, Varty instructs. The wrong thing to do, I sense, is stand frozen.

"When she presses, push into her; stroke her hard," Varty says. "She'll perceive confidence."

My heart races like that of the hare bounding across a distant field. A pathetic attempt at a chuff emanates from my throat — the preferred placement for the tiger's signature suffocation bite. I watch my hand reach out to touch Julie's athletic haunches, wondering if it will come back to me, fingers and all. It's impossible not to give in to melodrama: Her raw power is palpable.

Julie's short, striped fur feels softer than I imagined — not at all prickly. Varty wonders out loud if the hairs might be hollow, like that of a polar bear, adding to Julie's buoyancy in the water. Unlike most cats, Bengals love the water and are incredibly adept swimmers — known to cover distances of several miles or more. Varty enjoys swimming with the cats in the river for exercise, but it's still early spring here and too cool for that.

Julie chuffs some more, revealing her good mood, and then sets off to hunt. Missing is Julie's sidekick, Ron.

"Where's brother?" Varty asks her.

Ron's most likely lording over a half-eaten waterbuck taken from his sister, gorging himself in private, Varty guesses. As the big male Bengal has no compelling need to hunt today, it's just the three of us.

"When she starts to hunt, we become irrelevant," Varty whispers. "We'll try not to get in the way."

Julie follows along a spring bed, padding soundlessly through the tall, tan grass and leaping effortlessly across outcrops of bare, dark rocks that protrude above the veld. She investigates a hole in a termite mound, sniffing for ant bear. No luck. She crouches and creeps as she slips through the thorn trees that grab Varty's denim shirt and tatter his pants. She's stunningly camouflaged in the dappled light — adapted to lie in wait for prey and pounce.

Like a cub, I try to follow by focusing on the white tips behind her ears and her black-tipped tail. But who am I kidding? I manage to stay on Julie's heels, figuratively speaking, only because Varty leads the way, crashing through brush, camera relaxed at his side.

Julie's in patrolling mode; she's not quite hunting. That could change in an instant if the opportunity presented itself, if she flushed out a porcupine, for instance. Stopping to lift her head into the wind, Julie curls back her lips and makes a "flemen face. " She's activating the Jacobsen's organ, Varty whispers, a primitive sense organ related to smell.

She leaps up to the top of a small hill and surveys her territory. She more often stays in cover but occasionally silhouettes herself like this, Varty says, usually keeping near to a tree or rock. She sees better in the distance than at close-range. Her night vision is especially keen — six times better than that of yours and mine.

Julie looks out over a nearly 20,000-acre area in the northern part of the sanctuary, which currently measures nearly 90,000 acres in total and spans two South African provinces: the Free State and the Cape. The Gariep, a croc-free river, runs through the sanctuary. Varty procured this property by buying up 22 sheep farms "relatively cheaply," he says, because the farmers were going bankrupt. The land, dotted by windmills for irrigation, was overgrazed and eroded.

He simply couldn't do this project in the tigers' native Asia, Varty insists, despite rampant criticism that that's where "wild" tigers belong. Here, in South Africa, the Londolozi founder readily purchased all the game he needed to stock the area "with a few phone calls to some of my mates." The infrastructure was in place. He knows the lay of the land.

Clearly, so does Julie. We've lost her for a moment and stop to listen. Varty scrambles when he catches a glimpse of her pouncing. Whatever it was, she missed it.

Varty has employed a crew of locals from nearby Philippolis, a depressed agricultural town, to help restore the land by razing the decrepit farmhouses, tearing down windmills, moving a road that thoughtlessly bisects a swampy region, and, not incidentally, erecting a tiger-proof fence. With conscientious land management, the water table started to rise on cue. A spring flows into a stream. The parched earth, with its stubborn patches of stubby brown grass, is in recovery. Much to everyone's surprise (and some dismay), Varty is growing tiger habitat. And tigers. In Africa.

A farmer who formerly owned one of the properties was amazed at the transformation, according to Varty: "He says that if he had known this water was here, he wouldn't have sold the farm. I told him the water wouldn't be here if the windmills and sheep still were."

As soon as a permit allows, which could be any day now, a 24-month tracking study will commence in these 20,000 acres. If the tigers are successful in fending for themselves for the next two years, the smaller fence will come down and all 90,000 acres will become available to them.

Tigers, in their native Asia, live in "closed" habitats: scrub, riverine forest and tall grasslands where they hunt and kill with stealth and in secrecy. This terrain, in theory, might appear more suited to cheetah than tiger, Varty says, because open grassy areas comprise such a big chunk of it (35 percent). But it also has rugged hills and steep gorges in dense bush — places for duiker, kudu, bushbuck and eland, all tiger prey.

It'll be interesting to see if the tigers modify their hunting methods, Varty says, when the gazelles and blesbok start to drop their young. Mothers leave their babies sitting frozen and still in the grass while they forage, periodically coming back to nurse. He wonders if tigers will recognize these opportunities and hunt accordingly.

Julie, meanwhile, is lapping up water from the spring. In the excitement of meeting her, I forgot to pack a bottle of water when we set out. I guess I could hunker down next to her and Varty who's cupping his hands and drinking gustily. But no, I think I'll just stay thirsty, for now.

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