Peter Allison - How to Walk a Puma

Despite this assurance, within two days I was able to show off some marks on my left knee, and I’d still not taken the cord, or lead, position. For reasons never explained, Roy liked to select just one knee on each of the volunteers who worked with him, and stuck to assaulting that knee alone, regardless of which was closest. Roy fancied my left.

When at last I took the cord position with Roy, I tried to hide my nerves while sweat that had naught to do with heat poured from my torso and brow. Despite knowing that Roy had never had a trainer he hadn’t jumped, I thought I might become one of the people he jumped less often, for two reasons. Since I’d spent plenty of time with wild lions, leopards and cheetahs I felt sure I wouldn’t be scared of him; I reasoned that Roy would pick up on my lack of fear and we’d become great friends. Also, I’d had a cat—called Tyson—during my previous few years in Australia. Tyson had died soon after my engagement ended, which was almost as big a blow as the loss of my human relationship. Foolishly, I was sure my understanding of a house cat would be at least partly transferable to a puma. I missed Tyson, and wanted that sort of relationship again. We’d be friends, Roy and me, just like Tyse and I had been, I was sure.

Sure.

Roy jumped me three times that first morning. Being tied to him naturally made me an easier target. No matter how many times I’d seen it happen to Mick and Adrian, there was nothing that could prepare me for the moment the puma stopped running then turned and faced me, pupils contracted, and launched himself lightning-fast at my left leg.

Pumas can bite much harder than Roy did, and inflict much more pain; nonetheless a primal part of me protested that what I was doing was silly and illogical. Some ancestral lizard inside me uncurled and squeaked at me to undo the rope, climb a tree, and stay away from anything large with fur and fangs. Let the puma run free!

But Roy could not be set free because, like many of the animals at Parque Machia and the three other parks run by Inti Wara Yassi, he was too young when he arrived to ever be able to survive in the wild. His mother had been killed, most likely for her skin, when Roy and his brother were far too young to fend for themselves. The strain of capture, confiscation and relocation had proved too much for Roy’s brother and he had died soon after arriving at Parque Machia. Roy had thrived, though, and was renowned among the organisation’s volunteers as the most demanding puma in any of Inti’s parks. Demanding or not, he needed daily runs to maintain his health, and to give him a better quality of life than he would have if he was locked in a cage day after day.

‘You have to keep him on the rope at all costs,’ Mick had explained to me. ‘He got off once, nobody will ever say how. Roy’s a racist, hates Bolivians, and when he escaped, the first person he saw was a local guy. He took out the guy’s spleen with a single swipe. If something like that ever happens again the place will be shut down and all these animals will just get sold off to zoos by the local council.’

‘Right,’ I thought now, determined to quash the impulse to release Roy. ‘Keep him on the rope at all costs.’

The strain of running sixteen to twenty-five kilometres a day on difficult jungle terrain soon took its toll on my body. When Bondy had said Roy’s handlers needed to be fit I’d believed I already was. Now I knew that was because I’d never been to a gym where the trainer bit you for running too slowly. Roy’s handlers were perpetually soaked in sweat, a result of humidity so intense that breathing felt more like drowning. The closed-canopy rainforest under which we ran was stifling, yet in the rare moments we paused, it was quite beautiful. The air rang with the chatter of monkeys and clatter of woodpeckers, while crystal-clear streams ran off the peaks we tackled as part of Roy’s daily routine.

‘See that twitch?’ said Mick one day after I’d been there about a week.

Roy’s right foreleg had a definite quiver in it during one of his rare moments of inactivity; however, as predators are hardwired not to show weakness he did his best to hide it, even putting his full weight onto it to slow the tremor, in spite of the pain it obviously caused him.

‘It’s gonna need to be checked by one of the vets,’ said Mick.

Roy wasn’t due for his annual veterinary check-up for another month, but it had to be rescheduled for the following week so his leg could be examined properly.

Inti Wara Yassi, founded out of nothing by goodwill and run in the same way, is still a young organisation. It was founded and initially run by a man named Juan Carlos, a philanthropist who had already spent years taking in orphans and streetkids. These days its principal manager is a generous woman named Nina, whose colourful background includes a father who rode with Che Guevara. The only revolution Nina seeks though is a better life for Bolivia’s animals. The whole organisation is held together by hope, a strong desire to do good, and bananas (lots of bananas), but very little money. An X-ray machine was as far out of Inti Wara Yassi’s budget as a space shuttle, so Roy had to go to hospital. Without any veterinary hospitals within reasonable distance, there was only one place for him to go, a human hospital more than twenty kilometres away.

Unfortunately, another tool Inti Wara Yassi lacks is a vehicle.

‘So, we’re going in a taxi?’ I asked, smiling, on the day of Roy’s X-ray.

‘ Si ,’ replied one of the few permanent staff, a hard-working vet named Luis.

‘Does the driver know that not all his passengers are human?’ I asked.

‘ Si ,’ Luis said again, keeping to his pattern of not speaking English unless he had had a few drinks, then showing remarkable fluency.

So it was that Roy was anaesthetised and painstakingly manhandled down near-vertical drops and slippery-sloped trails on a stretcher. Along with two vets, plus Mick and Bondy (who’d decided it was too good a sight to miss), I clambered into the back of a station wagon taxi, its seats folded down to take the stretcher and its cargo. A small crowd drew around us, hoping to catch a glimpse of the famous Roy before we set off. (As well as the public, even other volunteers at Parque Machia are barred from visiting animals not in their care, so as to reduce the animals’ exposure to humans.) The only person seemingly not impressed by Roy was the taxi driver, who acted as if this was nothing out of the ordinary and soon had us rumbling along the rutted road until we left the tar and hit an even janglier stretch of cobblestone, flanked by dank jungle.

After half an hour we came to a roadblock where teenaged soldiers were wielding machine guns—a fine incentive to stop. I wasn’t sure what they were after—drugs, bribes, a hug?—but doubted we had the papers to prove we were legitimately permitted to transport a puma via taxi.

‘Drug checkpoint,’ Bondy said flatly.

I looked at Luis, who held a loaded syringe of anaesthetic low in his hand in case it should be needed, a bead of moisture glistening at its tip. ‘Well, that doesn’t look at all suspicious,’ I thought. The soldiers approached with grim expressions, one holding something that looked a little like a corkscrew.

‘They stick that thing into people’s luggage and get a sample of what’s inside,’ Mick explained.

As they drew closer, the soldiers had a good look at the four people in the back of the taxi, but remained unaware of Roy, who was almost completely covered by a blanket. Only the tip of his tail was visible, occasionally twitching as he dreamt of chasing knees through a field.