Our Savannah

by Natty Bokenkamp

They brought the animals in on cargo jets with Greenpeace and World Wildlife Fund logos on the sides. It wasn’t safe in Africa anymore, they told us, what with poachers and civil wars and AIDS. “It’s like the airlift of the Ethiopian Jews,” said Carl from next door. He’s Jewish, so he should know.

As the first animals came down onto the tarmac, blond TV reporters smiled with their teeth and called it “The Opening of the Ark.” My son, Christopher, heard that and sang the Noah’s Ark song he’d learned at Sunday school for a week straight.

In the beginning, it was only zebras and gazelles. The first time I saw a gazelle I was getting the newspaper from the doorstep just after dawn, and the gazelle moved like sunlight, a tan beam reflecting across our lawn. Then it stopped and jumped, vertically, three feet in the air, and then it dashed. Madeline’s two Weimaraners were at the window, watching, scratching the glass. The gazelle was three blocks down the street by the time I had my slippers on. I saw it go between two houses, and then it was gone.

I told my sister in Wisconsin about it, and she laughed. “We get deer running through the subdivisions all the time,” she said. “You’ve just got fancy deer.” I told her to bring her kids down some time. It’d be better than the drive-through safari they went to in Texas two summers ago.

A week later, I saw my first zebra—on I-70 coming home from Junction City. It was a crumpled black-and-white striped corpse next to two sets of skid marks, a couple of turkey vultures waddling toward it. The rest of the herd had already moved on, but I caught a glimpse of stripes through the lines of a cornfield as I sped past. The next day, there were five or ten of them in Madeline’s flower bed. I shot one, and the rest left at a trot. The grass in the front yard was alltorn up, covered in hoof prints and brown pellets the size of Christopher’s fist.

Ranchers howled in protest when they brought in the lions, but most of us didn’t mind. The Greenpeace people told us not to worry, just to keep children and small animals inside at night. “The
lions ought to keep those damn zebras down, at least,” Madeline said. Our freezer was still full of meat from the zebra I shot. They make good steaks, not too gamy, a little sweet, good with a pinch of salt and some olive oil.

After the lions came hippos, giraffes, ostriches, rhinoceruses, crocodiles. Elephants were next, then cheetahs, warthogs, and other species that even Christopher can’t identify. Another herd of zebra moved into the back lawn, and I had to let them stay. It was a good excuse to stop watering the lawn. Pounding hooves have left the grass golden brown. The trees look different, too, their branches sparse in the red sunsets, like acacia.

Elephants have trampled all our fences, and they knocked down the west wall of the Henderson’s house. Amy Henderson told me they’re not planning on putting up a new one. “You get this fantastic view of the horizon at sunset,” she said. “I watch every day with a camera, just in case a giraffe walks in front of it.”

A week ago, cheetahs got Madeline’s Weimaraners; the dogs just weren’t fast enough.

I can’t drive on the highway anymore without hitting a wildebeest, so I’ve stopped going to work. Mostly, we’ve stopped driving altogether.

Yesterday, I saw Carl from next door chasing meerkats in his front yard with a sharpened stick.

Christopher’s been domesticating the zebras in the backyard, giving them sugar cubes and names. He wants us to be zebra farmers. I’m giving it some thought.