Anyway, the big moment arrived and Adel squeezed the trigger.
Bang
⦠or rather
phffft.
The dart barely made it through the barrel. It sort of dribbled out and then fell onto the floor. We couldn't have planned a more ignominious start if we triedâand in
the full glare of the press. Seeing the mortified look on Adel's face, I asked Brendan to go over and get the pressure right.
Brendan cranked the gun up and with the next shot Adel was spot-on target, his reputation restored.
The slumbering hyena was loaded into a cage.
Next came the African badgers. Barbara and a zoo worker called Jaafar Tahb showed bravery beyond any call of duty by going into the badgers' den to coax them into the transport cage. Anyone who knows African badgers will tell you that they are among the toughest, meanest creatures around, with teeth that will rip an arm open. They are also totally fearless, willing to attack animals several times their size if they feel threatened.
However, one of the badgers was injured and Jaafar managed to get her in without much trouble. But the other was mad as hell, spitting and baring his powerful teeth. Jaafar is a former Republican Guard soldier, and although barely five feet tall he is as hard as granite. All he had for protection was a pair of rubber gardening gloves, but he was as deft as a picador and, after some wary circling, pounced and snatched the furious animal by the loose skin on his neck. Jaafar then bundled the writhing hunk of muscle and fur into the cage.
After that the pigs were herded in with relative ease.
Finally only the bear remained, hunched in his cramped quarters. But by now all the vehicles were packed to capacity, so Sumner reluctantly decided we would again have to leave the bear behind. The Last Man Standing, we dubbed him, as a reference to the Bruce Willis movie. We left plenty of food and water in the cage, enough to tide him over until we returned later in the week to close Luna Park down for good.
Sumner, glancing anxiously at his watch, instructed the convoy to depart. You didn't want to loiter too long in that part of town, even with an armed guard, when the sun goes down.
On the way back to the city center we had to pass through a tunnel. Just before we entered, the cry went out: “Sniper!”
In a heartbeat all the Humvee gunners had their weapons
trained on a group of fleeing bystanders. Other soldiers leaped from the vehicles and took up strategic positions around the convoy.
The men moved in practiced synchronization. Guns were swung to cover all angles, ensuring they could return fire from every conceivable direction. All the while they scanned the crowds, updating one another through their radio mouthpieces on anything looking even slightly suspect. If a suicide bomber or gunman came at them, within seconds he would be riddled with more holes than Swiss cheese.
I was in the back of Ali's taxi and carrying only my 9mm pistol. As soon as I saw what was happening, I told Ali to stop and back away from the convoy. The soldier in the nearest Humvee decided otherwise and, swinging out of the vehicle and waving his M-16, started screaming at us to get closer so he could protect us, which we did.
All the other civilians just kept their heads down. No one spoke for a few slow, terrifying minutes. Finally we cleared the tunnel.
Those few moments gave us an idea of what soldiers patrolling the city faced every day. Most of them were barely out of their teens and they were fighting the worst possible type of war imaginable: a war where the enemy were indistinguishable from civilians, wearing no uniform and emerging silently from the shadows. A war where suicide bombers rushed at them with lethal semtex belts, where IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) placed randomly on streets could go off at any minute, blowing patrols and innocent bystanders to smithereens.
In comparison to the average soldier 's daily life, the difficulties we faced at the zoo hardly seemed worth complaining about.
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STEPHAN TOLD US that he had been called back by WildAid and would be leaving shortly. I asked Brendan to go across to Uday Hussein's palace with him and to familiarize himself with the feeding procedures for the SF lions, which he would be taking over.
A few days later I also left for Kuwait on a C-130 en route to the
United States to raise awareness of the dire situation facing Baghdad Zoo.
It was the first time I had been out of Iraq since driving into the war zone almost two months earlier, completely unprepared for the wreckage and chaos I would encounter. I had originally come in on a reconnaissance mission to find out what was needed and wanted to hold the zoo together while things settled down. I thought the war was over and all sorts of help would be forthcoming, that I would merely help coordinate things and make sure the animals were well looked after. How wrong can you be!
Once in the States I made contact with David Jones, coordinator for the influential American Zoo and Aquarium Association (AZA). AZA had done more than any other organization to assist the Kabul Zoo after the Afghanistan invasion, and their expertise and fund-raising skills were vital if the Baghdad Zoo was going to survive in the long haul.
Jones, impressed with what had been achieved with virtually no resources and against serious odds, pledged to assist us. They had already begun fund-raising for the Baghdad Zoo via mail shots and the Internet.
While I was away, Brendan, Sumner, and the team in Baghdad were getting ready to rescue the sole remaining occupant at the Luna Park, our Last Man Standing.
This time they decided simple tactics would work best. They would merely dart the bear, load him in a net onto a flatbed hemmit truck while unconscious, and then speed back to the zoo, hoping like hell the eight-hundred-pound animal didn't wake up while stuck in rush-hour traffic. Indeed, the beauty of the plan was that they didn't even need a transport cage.
Brendan made sure the dart gun was fully cranked beforehand and Dr. Adel hit the bear 's flank straight on with a full dose of Telezol. They sat back, expecting him to drop within minutes.
Half an hour later, to everyone's astonishment, the animal was alert as ever, eyeing the people surrounding his cage as quizzically as they were eyeing him.
They decided to give him another shot of tranquilizer. The next dart only semipenetrated the animal's tough hide, injecting just a half doseâbut Adel believed that would be enough.
Not so; after another thirty minutes the bear was still as wired as a caffeine addict. He did vomit a little to indicate the drug was at least in his bloodstream, but he showed no inclination to doze off.
Adel nodded sagely and explained to everyone that Iraqi brown bears were bred in the harsh mountains of northern Iraq and were far tougher than their wussy European counterparts. That seemed to be the caseâwell, with this bear anyway.
After another half hour, with the bear still wide-eyed and wondering what all the fuss was about, it was decided to give him a third dose. This time the dart struck true, injecting another full dose of sedative. After a few minutes he lay down and rattled his teeth.
They weren't sure whether that was the drugs working or a death rattle, but things looked promising.
Not for long. Every time the bear 's head lolled, his teeth rattled and the noise seemed to wake him up again.
Eventually one of the Luna Park employees watching the fiasco sauntered over and told Sumner that the previous zookeepers regularly spent their evenings guzzling beer with the bear, often getting the creature blind drunk.
In other words, the bear was a junkie. The drugs he was being darted with probably just gave him a bit of a buzz.
This was useful information, and now knowing the bear was highly tolerant to toxins, the vets decided to dart him for a final, fourth time. They were running out of time and options, and no one knew whenâor ifâanother convoy could be arranged.
The soldiers also were understandably not happy about hanging around in this dodgy area of town longer than necessary, and so the rescue team had to move fast.
But even the fourth attempt failed to drop the animal. In that searing heatâover 115 degrees Fahrenheitâwith almost four times the normal dose of Telezol fizzing in his system, Last Man Standing
was still grumpily stomping around the tiny cage with a string of darts hanging from his butt in perfect symmetry.
Brendan decided there was nothing for it but to write this off as a bad day. One person distracted the bear as others rapidly plucked out the darts, and the rescue team left, hurrying home before darkness descended.
By now the tough Luna Park bear was becoming famous, much to the red-faced chagrin of the rescue team. In fact, he was being touted as the only creature in Iraq that had withstood the might of the U.S. Army. Sumner was even receiving phone calls from generals who had nothing to do with the zoo asking how the bear was getting along, while soldiers would come up to us in the street and ask if we knew of this bear that no one seemed able to rescue. We knew, all right.
But most disappointed of all were the DOD photographers. The story had become confused on its way along the grapevine, and they had heard Sumner and Brendan had hit pay dirt, getting hold of a truckload full of cold beer. They sped back to the zoo, tongues drooling in anticipation.
Not only was there no beer, but there was no bear, either.
I
HAD HOPED to be back from America in time for the next rescue attempt, but my tight schedule of talks and meetings was relentless.
To make matters worse, Last Man Standing certainly wasn't being cooperative. And as Brendan and Sumner scratched heads on how to rescue the recalcitrant bruin, pressure started to mount from the soldiers themselves to “do something.” Troops stationed in the western quarter of the city often popped into the squalid park to give the animal MREs from their own rations and check the water supply, and they were becoming increasingly vocal that no creature should be allowed to live in those dire conditions. Consequently there was no shortage of volunteers when the rescue team needed helpers.
Brendan and Sumner decided the best way to move the animal would be to get a bigger cage, and as bear cages were somewhat thin on the ground in war-torn Iraq, they contracted some of the taxi driver Ali's friends to build one.
Ali had by now became a friend and a trusted member of the team. He was a strong-willed, no-nonsense kind of guy who could get things done, but more important, he knew the city and its people and was on the information grapevine. Ali plugged us into Baghdad, and with him we could go almost anywhere safely. I sometimes still think that the reason we didn't have a suicide bomber or insurgent attack at the zoo was because of Ali's connections. I believe he knew a lot more about what was going on than he let on.
It took four days of feverish welding and cost seventy thousand Iraqi dinarsâabout seventy dollarsâbut at least the zoo now had a bear-proof transport cage. “Cage” was perhaps a generous description, as it looked more like an exhibit in a trendy art gallery. It also bore little resemblance to the specifications Brendan had requested. But it would work; or to be more prosaic, it had to, as it was all we had. The brown bear, of which the North American grizzly is a subspecies, is, after the polar bear, the largest of its genus and can weigh up to fifteen hundred pounds. Thus the cages we had used to move the lions were way too small.
The First Armory Division was now in charge of Baghdad, as my friend Capt. Larry Burris and the Third ID had been transferred to Fallujah, a militant-infested city in the heart of the Sunni Triangle.
I was extremely sorry to see them go; they were fine friends, loyal companions, and had played a significant informal role at the zoo in the early days. Without them the Baghdad Café closed forever; I still miss it today. Before they left, Capt. Larry Burris called a few of his officers together and presented Brendan and me with their regimental medal for bravery. Larry told us the Third ID only presents the medal on active duty and we were privileged and honored to accept it. Today mine hangs framed on the wall at Thula Thula.
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THIS CHANGE OF LEADERSHIP radically affected rescue missions, as one of the first acts of the new command was to draw up a stringent
set of convoy rules. Due to the increasing number of suicide bomb attacks by Ba'athists and foreign al-Qaida-linked combatants, from now on there had to be at least four soldiers and a combat medic manning each Humvee. The minimum number of patrol vehicles on the road at any given time also had to be four; thus the days of me and Sumner cobbling a few gung-ho soldiers together and launching a surprise rescue raidâoften acting on ad hoc informationâwere over.
Sumner drew up a revised rescue plan under the new transport regulations, but despite his meticulous attention to detail, the mission started off as a comedy of errors. The military convoy he requested set off to Luna Park as arranged but somehow neglected to fetch Ali's newfangled cage from the zoo. Although Sumner 's own Humvee was available, he was prohibited from driving the cage or the zoo team to the western sector alone thanks to the new travel restrictions. The result was the military escort was cooling its heels in one part of town and the rescue team in another.
No one was quite sure what to do, so Brendan and Ali sped off in the taxi to tell the soldiers that sorry, everything had gone seriously pear-shaped and they would have to postpone for another day. However, the soldiers were fired up for the mission: they wanted the bear out of his hellhole, no matter what it took. Their commanding officer, Captain Little, sensed the mood and declared he wasn't “postponing nuthin'.” He ordered his men to drive back and collect the cage.
A convoy was quickly formed and it followed Ali's orange taxi weaving through Baghdad's nightmare traffic back to the zoo. The soldiers loaded the cage onto the hemmit flatbed in record time and the armored procession started to snake its way back through the maze of motorized anarchy to Luna Park.
It was not a good trip. The convoy was much larger than our normal “in-out” rescue operations and the going was considerably slower. Children also came running up to wave or chat with the soldiers. The Americans had to keep shouting, “Back off! Back off!” not something they wanted to do with kids. But due to the ever-present
threat of suicide bombers, every civilian, no matter what age, had to be treated as suspect.
At Luna Park the greasy owner, Karim Hameed, came running out, rubbing his hands and uttering the predictable question: “How much are you going to pay me?”
He had arrived at the Baghdad Zoo earlier demanding compensation for the animals we had confiscated. Sumner told him at the time that while there was no compromise on Luna Park's closure, Hameed was welcome to present an invoice to the American administration. Personally I thought he should just be shoved into the tiger's cage, with or without an invoice, but luckily for Mr. Hameed, Sumner has a little more milk of human kindness than I do.
Anyway, this offer seemed to mollify the despicable zoo owner, for he must have known that most of his starving animals would have been dead by now if we hadn't taken them. To make some money out of that eventuality was not a bad economic proposition. He was obviously aware that even with more resources and our constant input, the Baghdad Zoo was only just surviving on a hand-to-mouth basis. The fact we had seized his animals could just be his lucky day.
That was three days ago and Sumner had no desire to get embroiled in another argument with Hameed; he wanted the bear rescue to crack on as swiftly and painlessly as possible. So he assured the Iraqi his claims were being processed and he would be paid out in due course, although certainly not the figures Hameed had quoted. In fact, his payout demands were causing some much-needed mirth at military headquarters. For example, Hameed was asking ten thousand dollars for five goats. A goat cost five dollars at Baghdad's pavement stalls; by Hameed's creative accounting, inflation had rocketed by some 4,000 percent.
The soldiers leaped off the Humvees and went straight to work. They snipped the front bars of the bear cage with hefty bolt cutters and wheeled up the transport cage, wedging it flush against the newly created hole. Some food was then placed in the carrier cage as bait and everyone waited for the animal to rush in.
And waited.
The bruin barely acknowledged his eager rescuers. No amount of cajoling or tempting food would sway him. Brendan then sprayed water into the transport cage, hoping the shaggy-coated animal would move there to cool off in the searing heat.
But the bear dismissed the temptingly refreshing cascade. He was chilled out enough where he was. His look of supreme disdain spoke volumes. This was, as Brendan told me later, the bear equivalent of giving you the finger.
It had now become purely a waiting game, and with nightfall approaching, time was not on security-conscious Sumner 's side. As the shadows lengthened, it would soon be too dangerous to hang around in this seedy part of town.
At one stage there was great excitement when curiosity got the better of the creature and he briefly lumbered into the transport cage to have a quick look-see. However, the overeager soldiers on top of the cage jumped the gun and didn't slip the drop door evenly. It jammed, and the screech of grinding metal chased the bear out.
You could have heard the collective groan from miles away.
Finally, after placing vegetables, honeyâeven MREsâin the mobile cage to no avail, someone discovered week-old scorched rice scrapings in a fire-blackened pot used by the Iraqi staff. These were added to the growing pile of food treats as a last resortâand to the astonishment of all, the bear sniffed the air for a few seconds and then rushed in to devour the scraps.
Everyone held their breath; the silence was absolute.
Brian Kellog, a muscular soldier now in charge of dropping the door, kept his cool and did his duty expertly; the gate slid down with a smooth metallic hiss and the bear was secure. Kellog, who came from the elite Ranger unit, was unquestionably the man of the moment. He was joyfully pummeled to the point of bruising by the ecstatic rescue team.
At long bloody last, and all it took was some burnt rice scraps.
The bear that had caused so many headaches was now chauffeured
to the Baghdad Zoo, and his hulking presence on the back of the hemmit again brought the street hordes to a halt.
But it was not over yet. After he arrived at the zoo the staff off-loaded the makeshift cage and had barely pushed it a few dozen yards when the rubber casing popped off a trolley wheel. They adjusted the angle of the cage to put the pressure on the remaining good wheels and carried on shoving. Then the next rubber casing burst off.
Then the next. The men who were pushing were now straining up against the cage with their fingers inches away from the increasingly angry bear.
It was going to be a photo finish. Everyone wondered whether the wheels would seize before they got the bear to its new home ⦠but the screaming bearings held. Just.
The door was pulled up, and the tough old brute ambled into his cage, a relatively spacious den with an outside area, shade cloth on the roof, and fresh water inside. Gone were the days when he had to flick stagnant liquid into his mouth from a filthy bowl placed outside the bars. Or be taunted by cruel crowds or fed liquor by bored staff.
Indeed, he now has a regular shower every afternoon to cool off. His fur is as sleek as an otter and he is putting on weight. Whatever one thinks of cages in zoos, he lives in luxury compared to the diabolical den that was his home at Luna Park.
The story did not end there. When I later called David Jones of AZA to tell him we had evacuated all the animals from Luna Park and planned to bulldoze it flat, there was a stunned silence on the other end of the line. AZA had Luna Park at the top of its list of “Worst Zoos on Earth” and had been trying for eighteen years to shut that abomination of a place down. Without knowing this, we had just gone and done it. Never again will those awful cages imprison wild creatures.
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THE NEXT ABUSED BEAR to be rescued from black marketeers was quaintly named Wounded Ass for the simple reason that she had a suppurating abscess exactly there.
The zoo team discovered the horrifically treated creature through Farah Murrani, who as newly appointed head of the Iraqi SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) was digging around the murky underworld of animal trading and heard Saddam Hussein's former private vet now ran a practice in town. According to Farah's sources, he had an injured brown bear at his surgery that was caged in appalling conditions.
This was around the same time as we were attempting to rescue the Luna Park bear, and as my aforementioned American fund-raising trip was looming, I asked Farah and Brendan to investigate further in the name of the Iraqi SPCA.
The Iraqi SPCA was founded by myself, Brendan, Sumner, Adel, and Farah. It was the first humane society for animals to be established in the country. In fact, it is doubtful whether the creation of such a society had been even fleetingly considered during the endemic brutality of the Saddam regime. And Farah, as the first-ever chairman, took her duties seriously.
A slimly built, highly intelligent woman, she had graduated from Baghdad University several years previously and set up her own veterinary practice in the city. She is a Christian, which means she can treat animals many Muslim vets won't, such as dogs, which are considered unclean. That's why canines are kept in Arab zoos as objects of curiosity.
Her practice was doing reasonably well until the Mukhabarat arrived and ordered her to evacuate her surgery immediatelyâand permanently. She still has no idea why, except possibly because the Russian embassy was across the road and perhaps the Mukhabarat wanted her offices for surveillance purposes. She wasn't paid a cent in compensation. In a blink her business was ruined.
Although it was not uncommon in Iraq for officialdom to wreck lives as casually as a cat claws a bird, for a young woman on the threshold of an exciting new career this was a soul-shattering experience.
She was too unnerved and disillusioned to open another practice and didn't work for nine months.
Then the war erupted. This was no surprise in Farah's life. She was in her midtwenties and had only known seven years of relative calm in her country.
A few days after Baghdad fell she met a group of American SF soldiers at a friend's house. They spoke of a crazy conservationist from South Africa who was trying to get the Baghdad Zoo back on its feet, and she said she would like to help.