Introduction



In the fall of 2019, while helping relocate a small seed population of giraffes to Uganda’s Pian Upe Wildlife Reserve, I sprinted across the savannah with a crew of rangers, biologists, and other veterinarians to subdue a fifteen-hundred-pound semi-sedated giraffe. As the beautiful, graceful giant reached the ground, I moved in to administer a series of injections at the base of his neck. All around me, other members of the team were laser focused on their own jobs—covering the animal’s head to help calm him, injecting a reversal for the sedative, taking tissue samples, monitoring his heart rate, and securing a series of long lead lines that would help us guide the giraffe into a travel trailer. I’d watched the process once before, but this was my first hands-on participation, and I was mindful as I crouched down of the number one rule of giraffe wrangling: Stay away from the legs. A giraffe can kick with enough force to kill—and potentially decapitate—all but the hugest mammal. I glanced to my right, doing the math as I assessed his powerful body and all four legs. He was on his right side, not peaceful, but no longer wildly flailing. I turned my attention to the job at hand.

Seconds later, the giraffe struggled a bit. As I glanced up, I saw his right rear hoof—wide as a plate, dense as an anvil, and propelled by all the force this massive animal could muster—cannonballing toward my face. As I snapped my head back, my Ugandan adventure flashed by—how eager I’d been, how carefully I’d studied this process, how much this was gonna hurt (if I survived it). One second that hoof had been fifteen feet away; the next it was inches from my eyes.

Mercifully (because there was not a damn thing I could have done to stop it) the kick stopped just before crushing my head. My nerves reset, and I got back to work. After that, I reminded each person working in that general area that against all odds, a giraffe can reach you there.

This goes to show that no matter how much experience you have as a vet out in the wild, there’s always a learning curve, even if it gets a little less steep as time goes by.

My own learning curve to understanding and caring for wildlife started when I was just a kid. Growing up in Kansas, I spent my days flipping rocks in a creek, climbing trees, and constantly running my hands through leaves and dirt, always looking for wild animals in the woods near my house. I was hooked on the feeling of adventure, the sense that any minute could bring my next big find, and the fascination that came with each discovery. I guess I was easily amused back then, because even a giant earthworm sighting could make my day.

Over the years, for reasons I can’t fully explain, I developed a huge soft spot for creatures most of my peers found gross or scary. Spiders, lizards, snakes—the gnarlier, the better. I loved to study how they moved, to see what they ate, to understand how they sheltered and protected themselves. The more dangerous the creature, the closer I wanted to get to it.

* * *

The same boyhood passion that found me out in the woods every day after school led me to become a student of evolutionary and ecological biology. It gave me the ability to let excitement overrule any reservations as I traveled farther and farther afield: driving through the Australian outback, trekking the Tanzanian savannah, bushwhacking my way across the Amazon, and hiking the jungles of Southeast Asia. It led me to veterinary school, where I became a wildlife, exotics, and small-animal vet. And it helped me grow into the conservation-minded eco-traveler I am today. It’s been a long progression, and I’ve made a few mistakes along the way. Mostly, though, I’ve had amazing, inspiring experiences that make me want to reach more people with what I’ve learned, and step up as a voice for wildlife conservation.

* * *

Thanks to social media, I get to share my encounters with an audience of millions, but there are still things you don’t see in my feed, like the fact that a lot of my travel is really freaking uncomfortable—hot, cramped, smelly, and dangerous. It’s a simple equation for me, though: if I want to see the animals and the people and places and the cultures, I’ve got to do what it takes to get there. If that means a fourteen-hour ride on a sweltering bus with as many goats and chickens as humans, bring it on. If I have to fly through a lightning storm on a prop plane to a remote airport with one poorly lit, too-short runway, fine. I will walk, bike, row, swim, climb, or hitchhike. I’ll ford a river teeming with leeches—I’ve done it before—or slash my way through a jungle (even if it’s home to one of the most powerful drug cartels in the world).

I’ll do just about anything to get where I want to be: Nose-to-trunk with a once-abused temple elephant who’s finally found a peaceful home in Southeast Asia. Swimming beside a gentle thirty-five-foot behemoth of a whale shark along a pristine Australian coastline. Holding a gorgeous snake whose neck is as wide as my wrist at a South American serpentarium, watching its venom pour along the handle of my snake hook. Sitting on a rocky Rwandan cliff beside a silverback gorilla who has chosen the place right next to me to flop down, belly-up, and watch the world go by.

Those moments are the payoffs, and they’re worth every minute of being hungry, tired, blistered, sunburnt, dirty, or uncomfortable I’ve endured to get to them.

The very best part of my experience is that many times along the way, I’ve been entrusted to roll up my sleeves and help some of these animals. When I was in college, I got a volunteer opportunity as the official squirrel and raccoon intern at the Greenwood Wildlife Rehabilitation Sanctuary in Colorado. That led me to take volunteer trips of my own across South America and Southeast Asia. With little to offer but enthusiasm and time, I’d show up at a place I’d found on the Internet and trekked to on my own, asking if there was anything I could do to help—and there always was. By the time I earned my veterinary degree, I’d gotten pretty good at figuring out ways to get invited (or at least to get in the front door) to wildlife rescues and preserves all over the world. I’ve done every job, from bottle-feeding bears and koalas to shoveling shit out of a tamandua’s enclosure; from standing guard over endangered sea turtles to performing delicate surgical procedures on monkeys, lizards, rhinos, turtles, and, of course, dogs and cats. At this writing, I’ve volunteered my services on six continents and in dozens of countries, and every year brings new opportunities and challenges.

This book is the story of how a guy from Kansas ended up getting to do all the things that would make his curious, overenthusiastic boyhood self proud. Thank you for taking the time to share it with me.



1

Australia



I was twenty-one years old when I set out on the trip that would give me my first glimpse of my professional destiny. In Australia, I spent the first two weeks of my semester abroad taking a crash course in marine biology on a coral island on the Great Barrier Reef. Lady Elliot Island is the ocean’s answer to a desert mirage—a tiny dot of vibrant green land in a vast expanse of blue sea.

The ring of white-sand beach around the island was stunning, but whenever I think of this place, I see and smell the water. I’d only just gotten scuba certified, and every single dive opened up a new world for me. The first time I slipped beneath the surface, I saw a loggerhead turtle cruising over coral directly below me, his giant spotted flippers stroking through the water. My pulse raced and I held my breath (a no-no in scuba diving, by the way). A giant loggerhead. In the wild. Next to me. His carapace was at least three feet long, and he must have weighed 350 pounds, but he was gliding with total grace, his heavy-lidded eyes steady and somber. He was so majestic and peaceful, my impulse was to fall in behind him and trail around for as long as he’d let me.

Other dives opened my eyes to the diversity of reef life: nurse sharks and reef sharks so close I could have touched them; striped humbugs and bright blue surgeonfish darting around the reef; a giant grouper with beady little eyes and a gaping maw of a mouth who swam right up and brushed against me. I saw an octopus gliding from coral to rock, morphing at each stop to match the color and pattern of his surroundings. It blew my mind. I was so overstimulated by what I was encountering on those dives that I couldn’t stop thinking about it, dreaming of technicolor fish and all-knowing turtles at night, and waking up ready to see more every morning.

A few days in, my class was out in the water, listening to our instructions as we got ready to dive in pairs. When I glanced to the side, manta rays—at least three of them—were soaring through the ocean under the power of their massive aquatic wings, only twenty yards from me.

Mother Nature outdid herself with these spectacular creatures in their scale, beauty, and incredible aerodynamics. The reef manta rays I saw that day have wingspans reaching up to fifteen feet and can weigh more than two thousand pounds. Despite their crazy-powerful build, they are peaceful, harmless creatures that eat plankton—they don’t even have stingers. These rays are often loners, but they gather in groups to get their gills and skin scrubbed by little cleaner wrasse fish that bite off the dead skin and parasites. The natural “cleaning stations” they visit are found at coral reefs, and Lady Elliot Island is one of the most active in the world.

I’d read that mantas sometimes interact with scuba divers, swimming around and over them, touching them with a wing, almost playing with them. I knew I was in their habitat, and I’d been waiting and hoping. So the minute I spotted them, I was on my way. Honestly, I didn’t mean to break protocol or abandon my dive partner. It was kind of like when a dog sees a squirrel—I didn’t think; I just bolted toward them.

Bad idea. One of the biggest rules in observing underwater animals is that you’ve got to move slowly. You have to be watchful and patient, not (ahem) abrupt and frantic. You have to be willing to wait.

I would get to see the manta rays another day—and even get up close—but that morning I blew it. I took off in such a hurry, stroking through the water straight for my new friends, that I startled them. The other divers in my group were not loving me as I treaded water and scanned the horizon, looking all around for the rays, which were long gone.

I’d always loved animals. I’d always been fascinated with how they live and what they think and how each species is so different from the next, but my two weeks on that tiny island on the Great Barrier Reef changed me. Swimming in the crystal water and seeing a kind of nature we sure didn’t have back in Kansas or Colorado made me a little crazy, a little overeager, and a lot in love with the idea of doing something with my life that would bring me back to the animals there. And I knew that many of the creatures I’d fallen in love with were endangered—which only added fuel to my desire to keep the connection I felt to them alive.

Kangaroo Beach

Back on the mainland I worked hard in my classes, but on my days off I surfed, snorkeled, and explored the coast. One weekend my friends and I set up camp in Murramarang National Park, at Pebbly Beach, sometimes called Kangaroo Beach due to the frequent sightings of eastern grey kangaroos in the area. I couldn’t wait to go looking for them.

It turned out no search was needed. These kangaroos are super habituated to people. The very first evening a group of them (a “court” of kangaroos) showed up right on the beach and sat at the perimeter of the site, observing our behavior.

Kangaroos on the beach—no joke. These guys had lean faces, big eyes and ears, and soft coloring. From the neck up, they looked a lot like the deer from back home. But they were standing on two legs. The white-tailed deer in Kansas never did that.

One of the roos kept staring at me, waggling his ears and crossing and uncrossing his little arms in front of him, like a fidgety kid who wants to raise his hand in class but can’t quite work up the nerve. His eyes stayed on the sandwich I was eating, so I figured we could make a deal. There are a lot of reasons not to offer people food to wildlife, but these kangaroos interact with humans every day, so I figured a bit of bread from me wasn’t going to have a lasting impact on this guy’s diet. I put a small piece in my hand and held it out, saying, “Want a bite?” His friends took a step back, but my new pal was brave. He leaned in, then hopped a little closer. I waited, keeping my posture steady, speaking softly. My friends waited, too, probably thinking I was pushing my luck. The roo kept looking from the bread in my hand to my face and back again. The ears twitched; the arms waved.

“It’s okay man,” I said. “I’m not gonna hurt you. You can have this one.”

I set the bread on the ground and withdrew a few inches, and he stepped right up and took it. He ate the next one out of my hand. And then another. After that, we were compadres. That day, this guy and I hung out, sharing snacks, while his friends watched from a few feet away, not quite brave enough to get close.

Did I mention that I was a twenty-one-year-old college kid at this time? No veterinary degree. No experience with the species. Just an avid, goofy fan of wildlife, feeding a friendly kangaroo and having the time of my life. Of course I couldn’t leave well enough alone. On the second day I had to push the envelope. I took a bread crumb and put it in my lips, then pursed them in the kangaroo’s direction. No, you don’t have to tell me that was stupid. I know. My furry friend hopped over, leaned in, and planted one on me. Actually, it may have been more of a bite than a kiss, but I don’t like to remember it that way. He grabbed his bread crumb, and also both my top and my lower lip, giving them a rough tug, enough to say, “I could take these off if I wanted to.” Thank God he wasn’t in the mood for a fight—I could be lipless today.

After that we stuck to hand-feeding, which was ill-advised enough. If I met that kangaroo now, I’d know better than to feed him and encourage his potentially dangerous comfort level with people, but back then I couldn’t see past the opportunity to make that connection. I still had a lot to learn about safely and responsibly interacting with wildlife.

A Big Idea, and One Giant Fish

As the end of the in-class session neared, I used my days off from class to travel as far as the northern Great Barrier Reef and to Tasmania, Melbourne, and New Zealand. I’d covered a lot of ground, but two or three days at a time didn’t feel like enough.

In the Australian university system, there’s a long gap between the end of classes and finals—time to study for exams and complete research projects. There was nearly a month on my calendar for studying, but to me it looked a lot like an invitation to get out and see the country. I’d been thinking about the animals I was encountering, and about how I wished I’d been able to capture those moments on film, so I called my mom and asked if she would send me a camcorder, a tripod, and a box of mini DV videotapes from home. Then I got out my map and calendar and hatched a plan.


Copyright © 2020 by Evan Antin