The Ostrich and the Wildebeest

CHANGE HAD ARRIVED in the Maasai Mara in a pounding of hooves and blur of dust. The ostrich trembled as it raced to the giraffe, who towered above an acacia.

“Is it true? Are the wildebeest coming?”

The giraffe blinked slowly, eyeing the black line on the horizon. “It’s been obvious for a long time.” Craning its neck, the giraffe plucked some leaves. “You’d have known too, if you ever looked beyond your own beak.”

The ostrich ran to a white-bellied go-away bird perched on a nearby acacia. “What will we do? The wildebeest will trample us all!”

The bird fluffed its feathers and screeched, “I’m not sticking around! I’m flying to Tanzania! To Uganda! To Rwanda! Anywhere but here!"

“I’ll join you,” the ostrich cried. “Let’s go!”

The bird nodded and flapped its wings with much commotion, only to hop to a different branch and peck at the thorny tree’s buds.

The ostrich waited, but to no avail. Eventually it wandered on until it encountered an ant hauling a leaf twenty times its mass.

The ostrich lowered its head. “Little one, are you not afraid the wildebeest will crush you in the stampede?”

“You almost stepped on me yourself. Does it matter who crushes me?” The ant moved on under its burden.

The ostrich could now discern faint vibrations beneath its talons. In desperation, the bird pressed on until it reached a lion sprawled in the shade.

"The wildebeest are almost here!"

The lion licked a paw, not looking up. “Of course they are. About time.”

“You’re not worried?”

“Worried?” The lion stretched, its mane catching the morning light. "About what? Overeating?"

The ostrich scampered on. The rumbling of striking hooves was now audible.

"The wildebeest are almost here!" the ostrich cried to a hyena lounging by the shore of the Mara River.

“Sure, they are,” said the hyena, its grin wide and toothy.

“But what will happen to us?”

The hyena tilted its head. “To whom?” It laughed, as though the question were a punchline.

“What do we do? What can we do?”

“I hear ostriches bury their heads in the ground.”

“Isn’t that a myth?”

They hyena grinned. “What’s myth but truth playing hide and seek?”

The ostrich swung its head toward the growing, now visible mass of wildebeest thundering toward them. In a frenzy, the ostrich began clawing at the earth.

The air filled with dust and noise as the wildebeest arrived in the thousands, but the ostrich saw none of it. Its head was buried deep in the dirt.

They surged by, oblivious to the strange bird. Hooves pounded, dust churned, life moved on.

Elsewhere, the giraffe watched the line of wildebeest fade into the horizon. The go-away bird preened its feathers, still in the same tree. The ant dragged its burden into a hole. The lion dozed beside a wildebeest carcass.

The hyena, meanwhile, jogged alongside the wildebeest. When the novelty of that wore off, it returned to the spot where the ostrich had long since suffocated. The ostrich’s head was still buried in the sand, but its body now lay in a heap. The hyena threw its head back and laughed.

“The herd passes, but your time stands still,” the hyena murmured.

Then it crouched and began to eat.

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*all photos by author, Maasai Mara, July 2007

POSTCRIPT

Ostriches don’t bury their heads in the sand when frightened. This myth arose because they dig holes for their eggs and use their beaks to rotate them, which can look like head-burying.

Humans, on the other hand, do.