Left Behind

Author(s)

Toby Aisbitt

Date Published

Today we set out to find a young calf that had been reported abandoned. We headed towards the helter skelter of vultures stretching far up into the sky only to confirm our fears. The calf was dead on arrival.

We don’t know which family it was from or why it was discarded. It was less than a couple of weeks old and given that there were no signs of animals besides scavenger birds we concluded it had died of exhaustion. It was a very sad sight to see and no doubt marked yet another victim of the ongoing drought. A weak calf is not worth risking a whole family over so, as ruthless as it seems, it was left behind in the struggle for survival.