Otters On A Plane - The India/Africa Expedition: The Chronicles of An Exotic Animal Cowboy

By William Thacker

From William Thacker's long-kept personal journals comes a fascinating but true story of the travels of a young, recent college graduate and his medical-student buddy. Both are animal enthusiasts and set out on an expedition to study and collect exotic creatures on the other side of the world. Little did they know the dangers that awaited them at nearly every turn in their travels.

 

First of the series The Chronicles of An Exotic Animal Cowboy, "Otters on a Plane" allows us to relive unusual and unexpected events with Will, Doc, and the enchanting Joann McVay, a British biologist they meet along the way. We get to travel along with the young sojourners as they face fascinating moments and unknown peril. The story is packed with history, geography, and local culture and food, along with a sprinkling of the music of the sixties.

• Language: English
• Publisher: William Thacker
• Release date: Feb 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223577478

William Thacker

Ever since four-year-old William Thacker got to hold a black rat snake, he has been fascinated by animals. As a child, he kept a menagerie in his family’s back yard in Florida, then moved his collection to Clermont’s Citrus Tower where, at the age of fifteen, he was giving guided tours and “milking” rattlesnakes for the public at The Wildlife Arena. Throughout his life, William has involved himself in traveling, collecting, and teaching about wildlife. He has been a youth camp nature director, a teacher, and a television host. He has operated an import company, an exotic animal shop, and has worked as a zoo educator. In 2019 William returned to Florida and began writing Thacker Tales. He now resides in the Black Hammock Wilderness Area where he continues to pen the stories of his incredible life with animals.

Book preview

Otters on a Plane

The India/Africa Expedition

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William Thacker

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from

The Chronicles of An Exotic Animal Cowboy

The author owes a huge debt of gratitude to Joanne Lawlor, Valerie Proctor, and Steve Duncan for their help and inspiration in the preparation and publication of this book:

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This book is a work of creative nonfiction. Some of the names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, actual business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Cover photo by Kenneth Tumusiime

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Copyright © 2022 by William Thacker

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording without prior written permission from the author.

Table of Contents

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Cobra In Calcutta

Surrounded

Hail to the King

The Man Eater

A Walk About

Tigers In Love

The Whistling Dogs

The Bushwackers

The Crossing into Africa

The Viper

The Leakey Compound

Venom In A Tree

The Village

The Trek to Mount Kenya

Return To Nakuru

About the Author

For Gino

Cobra In Calcutta

February 26th and 27th, 1970

Calcutta, India

The Boeing 707 cruised through the icy altitudes above the Atlantic bound for Bombay. Doc and I had left New York on the evening of February 25th, 1970. We were now poised on the edge of an exciting new adventure that would take us to the wilds of India and Africa.

Doc is Doctor Richard Ross. I had met him on a flight to Bogota, Colombia in 1967. At that time, he was attending Tufts Medical School in Boston. It turned out we were both interested in reptiles, and we were both on our way to Leticia, Colombia, in the Amazon Basin. He was going to volunteer in a hospital there.

Our Pan Am itinerary called for two days to travel the nearly eight thousand miles. During a layover at London’s Heathrow Airport, we ate lunch and talked about the reptiles we had kept. Doc was very interested in boas and pythons. He would go on to write The Reproductive Husbandry of Boas and Pythons, which became the definitive text for breeding those kinds of snakes in captivity. It was based on studies at his Institute for Herpetological Research in Redwood City, California.

We again boarded that afternoon for the London to Bombay leg of our trip. The route would take us over Western Europe, North Africa, Arabia, and East Asia.

I did a little research before leaving and learned that India is located on a huge chunk of Southeast Asia called the Indian Subcontinent. As the seventh largest country in the world, India occupies most of the space on that land mass and shares it with Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan. India is the second largest country by population and, at times it did seem mighty crowded. The Himalayan Mountains anchor the North. The extensive Indian shoreline extends roughly fifteen hundred miles and is bounded by the Bay of Bengal on the east and the Arabian Sea to the west – both bodies of water are part of the Indian Ocean.

I spent much of that long and enjoyable flight reading A Field Guide to the Mammals of India and memorizing the scientific names of reptiles on the price list of one Vivian Sausman, the exporter who we were going to meet in Calcutta. I also brought along some materials on the history and culture of India, a history that dates back some five thousand years.

There was a time when all peoples were hunters and gatherers whose weapons and tools were made of stone. From this primitive beginning, all the ancient civilizations arose: China on the Yellow River, Egypt on the Nile, Mesopotamia on the Tigress and Euphrates, and India on the Indus. Rivers are like nurseries in which cultural advancement develops. They provide water for irrigation and livestock and transportation for trade.

These civilizations began at the outset of a prehistoric era known as the Bronze Age. They have certain things in common: the advent of writing, mathematics, agriculture, architecture, religion, and urbanization.

The prehistory of India wasn’t well understood until the 1920s when archeologists unearthed two ancient cities in the Indus Valley: Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa. The artifacts revealed a most advanced culture and the architecture featured buildings of two or more stories of baked brick. They were merchant centers that relied on the migration of people for an economy based on trade. The citizens wore clothing spun from wool and cotton. Implements, tools, weapons, and armor were made of bronze, an alloy of copper and tin.

The farmers grew crops of cereals such as wheat and barley and raised pigs, goats, sheep, and a type of cattle known as the double-humped zebu or Brahma. This was quite an improvement over Stone Age hunting and gathering.

The earliest religion was Hinduism, which is also a dharma, meaning a way of life. It is marked by temple building, their belief in reincarnation, and the setting forth of positive virtues. Karma is one of their tenets.

Buddhism is based on the teachings of the Buddha, or Enlightened One, Siddhartha Gautama. Buddhists are known for their orange-clad monks, monasteries, and perhaps, the Dalai Lama.

In 1857 India came under the direct administration of the British Empire. However, through nonviolent means, Mahatma Gandhi brought that to an end in 1947.

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The tires hit the tarmac in Bombay as the sun rose above the eastern horizon. We had lost over ten hours flying eastward over the many time zones since New York. I marked it as 8 a.m., or 9:30 p.m. our time. We were glad we had caught some snooze time on the way.

Our baggage would be transferred from Pan Am to Air India for the cross-country flight to Calcutta leaving at 11:30 a.m. We wasted not a moment. Hailing a curbside cab, we headed for the open-air marketplace. There were freshly cut flowers as far as the eye could see. Blooms of every shape and color; blossoms waving exotic fragrances into the cool morning air. The stalls were awash with the rosy golden glow of the dawning sun. Saffron-robed Hari Krishnas played tablas, tamburas, and finger bells. Further along, a man sat upon a tasseled pillow playing the sitar. My Sweet Lord, it was mystical.

My head was still pleasantly reeling when we touched down in Calcutta, nearly three hours and a thousand miles later. Calcutta is the capital of the state of West Bengal. By cab, we went to the bungalow that Vivian Sausman had procured for us. It would serve as our base of operations throughout our stay in West Bengal. We checked in and left our gear there, then we walked to Vivian’s nearby home.

This city was quite different from Bombay. A pall of smoke and diesel fumes hung over the crowded metropolis. There was enough poverty and suffering to fill the ages. Bicycles darted in and out of the crowds, rickshaws and their runners clicked and jangled by, and electric trolley cars, known there as trams, clattered along their tracks.

Calcutta clings to the Ganges for its very life. Indians consider it holy. They bathe in it, drink from it, and consign their dead to it. At least they did in 1970. I saw the heads of the dead bobbing in the water as they flowed by. Perched atop the heads were crows pecking at the eyes. Maybe the corpses became food for the mugger crocodiles. I, too, collected water from the Holy River Ganges for my Rivers of the World collection.

As the heat of the day bled into the Indian sky, we had tea on Vivian’s veranda. We talked about animals until nearly 10 p.m. Tired beyond words, we headed back to our lodgings. Jet lag, exhaustion, and excitement kept us awake as we watched geckos scampering up and down the walls capturing some of the largest cockroaches I had ever seen.

The next morning, we showered and left the room. We were immediately surrounded by people seeking a baksheesh, or tip, for doing nothing. Doc sent them away saying, You go that way, I go this way. On empty stomachs, we headed for the Hogg Market.

On the way there I noticed that entire city blocks were devoted to themes. For example, one block was hardware stores, another block was pharmacies. There were many cinemas. The Indian people were very into movies. Filmmaking is a big industry there.

The Hogg Market occupies an entire city block. It was two floors of vendors plying their wares in that lilting British Indian accent. Merchants filled our vision by flashing multicolored silks directly in front of our faces, turning corridors into a kaleidoscope of exploding hues and exotic patterns. We reveled in the brassware, the intricately carved rosewood figures depicting the wildlife of India, and the beautiful tapestries with the magic of India seemingly woven into their warp and weft. Add to that the panoply of freshly baked and frosted sweets and you’ll begin to understand why it was a daily festival. Each stall seemed to be a source of Indian music and its own unique incense. Hogg Market became our amusement park.

Above us, the sky was filled with kites – small birds of prey attracted by the smell of meat, or perhaps the many small rodents that