Rehabilitating wild beasts

Meet Brett Deetlefs, assistant general manager at Nambiti Big 5 Private Game Reserve, and his girlfriend Robyn Flint. Together they raise and rehabilitate wild animals. These have included a Spotted Eagle Owl, a Slender Mongoose and more recently a warthog.

The warthog’s name is ‘Pig’ and she acts more like a dog than a wild pig when you drive to their gate. She greets you by wagging her tail and making grunting noises. She was found at the side of the road when she was only one week old, with bite marks to her head. She had been attacked by jackal who had carried her away from her den.

This caring couple took her home, cleaned her up and decided they would raise her and get her back into the wild when she was strong enough to leave. As a piglet, she was fed formula milk every two hours and she slept in a ‘squishy’ cat box. If she got sick, Brett and Robyn would go into the bush and find some warthog faeces for her to munch on. When asked about this strange meal, Brett replied, “Warthogs don’t digest all of their food and if you open up the poo, you will see this quite clearly. There is bacteria in the faecal matter which is good for growing piglets and it is easier for them to chew it and digest it. Wild warthogs do this all the time!” This is what Brett refers to as “normal knowledge”. That is, if one sees it being done in the wild, then one can simulate the behaviour for domesticated animals.

Keeping Pig wild meant keeping her out of their bed. And by the sound of things, this was no easy task. Brett returned home one night to find Pig all snuggled up in their bed. Pig wasn’t happy about being chased out of the bed and the one night she cried so much she attracted lions to them! Robyn was staying at a cabin at Lion’s Valley Lodge and wouldn’t let Pig get up onto the bed. Pig cried her little lungs out and for lions; this usually means easy prey as they probably thought she was abandoned. When Robyn looked out the window, she saw that three lions had gathered under her cabin. Luckily, it was on stilts and they weren’t able to get in. They eventually got bored and by morning the lions had wandered off again.

As Pig got older, she learned to eat grass and took a liking for the taste of dog food, which she shared with Brett and Robyn’s Jack Russell dogs. She would spend her days playing with the dogs and laying next to the fence of the enclosure. Then two male warthogs took an interest in her and started visiting her. At four months old, Pig dug herself a hole so she could get under the fence and play with ‘The Twins’. At just seven months old, she spent her first night away from home and hasn’t returned for the night since! “She visits every afternoon, but she socialises very well with The Twins and they all live in a burrow in the veld in front of the house.

Pig is leading the best life a warthog can. She spends her days in the open veld, having fun with other warthogs, visiting her human and dog family for afternoon tea, and then it’s back to the safety of her burrow before the predators hunt for the night. Even though Pig was a great success, Brett says he will not be doing it again any time soon. “They are messy animals; she is a pig after all! We were never able to toilet train her, so it became very stinky and messy very quickly.” Brett also warns others who think that raising a warthog may sound like fun, “They are wild animals and you can’t change that. They are strong and get big, and they could hurt you. There is also a lot of time and effort that goes into raising animals and people don’t realise this. If you do find a baby warthog or any wild animal, it is better to take it to a proper rehabilitation centre where they have trained people to do this, and leave a donation. Or let nature take its course. This may sound harsh, but its how nature is. Predators are there to make sure we don’t get overrun by animals such as warthogs, who in turn would then destroy the vegetation. Nature has it all figured out.”

An important aspect of rehabilitation is taking the animal to a place where it occurs naturally. Warthogs are usually found in the areas of Nambiti which makes releasing them again much easier. This way Pig can find other warthogs, and can build a home and family as she should. “There are people who try to save an animal, but then take it away from its natural habitat. These animals won’t be happy, as they will always be lonely.”