"The Eland (Taurotragus oryx) is Africa's largest antelope, with mature bulls reaching nine hundred kilograms. It produces, as it walks, a loud clicking from the carpal joints of its forelegs — a sound that carries considerable distance and identifies the animal before it is visible. The author notes that he has been recording this sound in the margins of other animals' field notes as 'unidentified clicking, source unclear' for approximately eighteen months. The eland can clear a two-metre fence from a standing start. The author initially wrote 'observer error' in his notes on this and has since removed the phrase. The eland is the most sacred animal in San cosmology. The author had written 'large antelope, unremarkable.' The word unremarkable has been removed."
He had been hearing the clicking since the leopard country.
It appeared first as a marginal note in the leopard entry — clicking sound, source unidentified, single occurrence — and had accumulated across subsequent pages with the persistence of something that was happening regularly and being noticed without being resolved. The hyena entry had it. The secretary bird entry had it twice. By the time the Colonel reached the buffalo country he had seven separate notations of an unidentified clicking and had begun to feel mildly antagonised by his own ignorance of its source.
It was not insects. He had eliminated insects in the third entry. It was not a bird — he had good cause to know every bird call in this landscape and this was not one. It was not mechanical — there was nothing mechanical for several hundred kilometres in any direction that might produce a clean, rhythmic click at irregular intervals, growing louder as something approached and fading as it passed.
He heard it again on the morning he reached the acacia plain.
He looked up.
The eland was forty metres away, moving through the camelthorn in the unhurried manner of something that does not revise its pace for observers. A mature bull — the neck heavy, the dewlap substantial, the mat of dark hair on the forehead dense with age. With each step a clean, carrying click, produced by the carpal joints of the forelegs, the sound of nine hundred kilograms moving through the African morning with a specific acoustic signature that the Colonel had been hearing and not understanding since October.
He wrote nothing for a moment.
Then: "Clicking: eland. Carpal joint. Produced at each step. Carries considerable distance. Source resolved. Eighteen months. The author notes this without additional comment."
The bull paused at an acacia thicket.
He was very large and the thicket was not very large. The eland assessed this situation and then moved behind the thicket's edge — or partially behind it — in the specific manner of something that has committed to a course of action and is continuing to commit despite the evidence that the action is not achieving its objective. Perhaps a third of his body was concealed. Two-thirds was not. His horns, which the morning light caught at an angle that made concealment entirely theoretical, extended well above the thicket's height on both sides.
He stood very still.
The Colonel stood very still on the other side.
They remained in this arrangement for some time.
The Colonel wrote: "Attempted concealment. One acacia thicket. Effectiveness: partial, at best. The eland appears satisfied with the arrangement. The Colonel does not propose to disturb it."