Deb Aronson’s book, “How to Raise a Rhino” (Dragonfeather 2023) begins with the tense rescue of a baby rhinoceros in Kenya. Anna, a
small white woman is “wedged next to the crate…She knew an attack could come at any moment. She was cold. She was anxious. She was scared. She was ecstatic.” She had her first rhino in a wood crate. And what a great title: How to Raise a Rhino. We wait quite a while for her to actually raise that baby rhino, but first Anna has to make a sanctuary and rescue the rhinos.
Author Aronson visited Kenya to writer her book. She uses statistics such as: “An estimated 20,000 black rhinos roamed the Kenyan countryside in 1970, but be the time Anna moved there in 1980, there were only 300.” She uses Anna Merz’s extensive diaries to illustrate poignant moments in her story.
Aronson shows us how Anna Merz, as a child, saved sick animals. As a young girl in World War Two London, in the midst of exploding bombs, Anna was comforted by animals. War taught her how brief life could be and decided to live fully. For her, that meant travel and adventure.
With her husband, she lived in Ghana for some twenty years, raising horses. Someone brought her a sick baby chimp. Anna nursed him back to health then sent him to a reserve for orphaned chimps. She watched in horror as plants and animals became extinct. Poachers were killing rhinos for their horns and selling “bush meat” in the markets.
The couple moved to Kenya to retire. Even here, “stacks of zebra or Colobus monkey hides…lion teeth and dick-dik horns were piled high in the stalls.” Anna wanted to create a sanctuary “where wild animals are free to roam in safety.”
She found friends who would help by donating their land, build fences and help her bring in black rhinos. But over the “eighteen months of building the sanctuary…wild rhinos continued to disappear.”
Anna used her life savings to procure a little red plane, a helicopter, trucks and local trackers. The plane would search from over the treetops. After days of searching, a rhino would be spotted. A veterinarian would shoot a sedative into its hide from the helicopter. The trucks, with Anna, would race in and using a ramp, drag and push a sedated rhino into a wooden cage. The rhino would be given drugs to slowly wake him. Sometimes they were angry. Sometimes they were calm. The workers were always kind and gentle, but careful.
Eventually there were nine rhinos in the refuge. A couple rhinos became pregnant. When Samia was born, her mother wouldn’t nurse her, so Anna took over the rearing of the sick baby. Samia slurped gallons of the formula that Anna devised. Anna learned the meaning of Samia’s various snorts and huffs. Samia lived in Anna’s house and barn. They were so bonded that in adulthood Samia would protect Anna from charging rhinos on the reserve.
This is a great story for anyone who loves animals. And those who might start loving them.
Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning books: Lift As You Climb; Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue all signed and for sale at Jane Addams bookstore. Her forthcoming books are about women’s suffrage, Martha Graham, and Ella Fitzgerald. talesforallages.com
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