"The Cape Buffalo (Syncerus caffer) carries, in the bearing of its old males, the complete record of what it has survived. Its memory is specific and long — a wounded bull has been documented waiting eleven hours at the site of an incident before executing a textbook ambush on its return. A herd in the Mara, after losing a cow to lions, returned to the site, drove off the pride, and lifted the body with their horns — a behaviour researchers have termed mourning aggression that the author finds, on reflection, requires more careful consideration than the name suggests. The herd's direction of movement is decided democratically — cows standing and facing their preferred direction, the cumulative standing time producing the decision. Those males who leave the herd in their later years do not leave because they are expelled. They choose."
The letter had arrived yesterday. He had read it three times. He was reading it again at the camp table with his tea when the bull appeared at the edge of the open ground.
Not approaching. Not threatening. Standing, in the way of something that has been standing in places like this for a long time and finds the arrangement adequate.
The Colonel set the letter down. He looked at the bull.
He was old — the boss thickened over years of everything that had wanted to kill him and hadn't, the coat roughened at the shoulders where the oxpeckers worked, the bearing of something that has made its arrangements and is at peace with them. He carried two oxpeckers this morning. They were not still — working, methodical, finding what they found. The bull was still. The oxpeckers moved. The bull held.
The Colonel read the paragraph again. Set the letter down.
He opened his notebook.
He wrote about the democratic vote first. He had been watching the herd at the waterhole — the standing, the facing, the lying back down. He wrote it accurately. The direction with the most cumulative facing time wins. He noted: Not hierarchical. The dominant animal's preference counts more — requires less support — but does not override. The vote is real.
He read back what he had written.
He wrote: The herd voted and moved. Those who preferred a different direction went with them or did not.
He looked at the letter.
He wrote about the mourning aggression next. A herd returning after a lion kill. Over a hundred animals surrounding the site. The lions fled. Then the herd moved to the dead cow and with their horns lifted her. Moved her. Set her down. Stood around her for a time.
Mourning aggression the researchers called it. The Colonel wrote the term. He sat with it. The aggression he understood. It was the mourning that required more careful thought.
They went back. That was the thing. They went back and they did not abandon what they could not recover.
He did not write what this suggested to him.
He wrote the revenge behaviour next. Eleven hours. The bull waiting at the site. Not fleeing. Not hiding. The ambush executed with the precision of something that had been considering it since the original incident. Memory: specific. Duration: eleven hours minimum. Likely longer.