Zara's Tales: Perilous Escapades in Equatorial Africa

From adventurer, explorer, photographer, writer, pied piper Peter Beard--eleven irresistible tales, told to his daughter in his tented encampment at Hog Ranch, Kenya, about life, about living, about Africa. <BR>He writes of the East African hills he came to know so well over four decades, where time slows to infinity in a great bottomless, bottle green underwater world . . . about Nairobi in the 1950s, still a quaint, eccentric pioneer town, full of characters of all stripes and tribes, where rhinoceros roamed the streets and local residents went to the movies in pajamas. <BR>He writes of the camp he built twelve miles outside of Nairobi so that he would never be off safari, a forty-acre patch of bush called Hog Ranch (abutting Karen Blixen's plantation), named for the families of warthogs who wandered into camp, a camp populated with waterbuck, suni, dik-diks, leopard, giraffe, and occasionally lion and buffalo. <BR>In "Big Pig at Hog Ranch," Beard tells the story of Thaka (translation from the Kikuyu: "handsome stud"), Hog Ranch's number-one, fearsome, 300-pound warthog, who came into camp and dropped to the ground happy for a vigorous tummy rub, and who one night, "lying in his favorite position, munching on corn and barbeque chicken," was encroached upon by a bristly haired, wild-looking boar hog. All three hundred pounds of Thaka exploded straight at the hairy intruder, the two brutish, bony heads crashing together thundering through the camp and Peter witnessed the unleashed power--the bullish strength--of the wild pig . . . <BR>In "Roping Rhino," Beard tells of his first job in Africa, rounding up and relocating rhinos for the Kenya Game Department with his cohort and neighbor, aweather-beaten native of Old Kenya who thrived on danger and refused to bathe--and of the enormous silver-backed rhino bull that became their Moby Dick . . . <BR>He writes of his quest to photograph overpopulated and habitat-destroying elephants for Life magazine on the ev

"Beard's memoir, dedicated to his daughter, Zara, has the delicious suspense of a tale told to a child — one who knows the teller escaped to tell his story. An adventurer with a conservationist's calling (preserving East Africa's wildlife) and a photographer's craft, Beard captures 'the old world, the wild life, the wild animals, and the wonderful things we may or may not have left behind' with words and pictures (some photographs, some drawings and lots of 'dawdles and dipsy doodles'). Monster lions offer 'a midnight fright-night incident so dark and sudden I can only tell it to Zara in the daytime,' and a large crocodile takes up residence at a camp site. There are moments of quiet beauty, as when 'a family of giraffes float past our open tents like shimmering ghosts in the moonlight,' and wild days with 'the most eccentric local animal trapper in the history of this eccentric calling.' Occasionally Beard meditates on life or remonstrates on the factors threatening it. The bongos Beard captures on film and the elephants he does not manage to outrun hold the book's center. Although Beard's adventures abound, at heart this is a father's memoir for his daughter. Composed with a writer's ear and a photographer's eye, this is a book to share, something for both the young Zaras and the sophisticated Peters. 145 illus." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Peter Beard was born in New York City and graduated from Yale University. He is the author of The End of the Game, Eyelids of Morning, and Longing for Darkness. His photographs have appeared in many newspapers and magazines, including Paris Match, International Herald Tribune, The Times (London), Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Architectural Digest. Beard lives in Montauk, New York, and Nairobi, Kenya, with his wife, Najma, and his daughter, Zara.