Now I was in a jump seat behind the pilot, except the pilot wasn't there. Of the crew, only the pilot had made the run before - once, ten years After nightfall they veered off course somewhere over eastern Turkey. There we transferred to another cargo plane,įlown by a pickup crew that normally worked for British Midlands. The Wild Animal Park truck made it to Air France Cargo with not a moment to spare, and we and the oryxes were on our way to Paris. The freeway north to Los Angeles was partially flooded and choked with traffic. It was essential to get them to Arabia as quickly as possible. In their crates, the clock began ticking, for it would be unwise to risk opening the crates to give the sharp-horned animals food or water. On their journey home, San Diego's oryxes would have company: Dave Malone, a young zookeeper, and a documentary film crew, consisting of myself and my wife, Kay, cameraman Bert Van Munster, and soundman George Goen. By 1980 there were enough animals in captivity that a few at a time could be returned to the wild. Arabian oryxes in zoos were swapped back and forth so that a genetically sound By the early 1970s, the Arabian oryx was extinct in the wild.įortunately, a number of conservation groups had faced the reality that the animal was being wiped out in its native habitat and had initiated an innovative breeding program. For sport, not food, they would slaughter sixty Later, oil-rich princes joined the hunt, not on fiery Arab steeds but on military half-tracks fitted with heavy-caliber machine guns. Hunt was exciting, a test of riding and marksmanship. A large oryx could feed a family for a month, and the But in the early part of this century, the peninsula's bedouin began replacing their old flintlocks with accurate and deadly Martini-Henrys. Once, great herds of oryxes had freely roamed Arabia. Patiently coaxed into a chute and loaded into large wooden crates. In a driving rain, three of the zoo's rare Arabian oryxes - magnificent black and white animals with long, tapered horns - were The journey had begun two days earlier in a winter storm that turned the San Diego Wild Animal Park into a sea of mud. The oil leak seemed okay now, and the port engine wasn't overheatingĪs long as they took it easy and held back on the throttle. 'Hopefully.'Īs the cargo plane banked, the flight engineer, wedged behind the copilot, checked his instruments-those that didn't have 'INOP' stickers stuck to their faceplates. 'We'll head west then? And sort things out.' He paused. It appeared that the aircraft had somehow strayed into Iran, which at the time was engaged

Were they in southern Jordan or perhaps Saudi Arabia? No. While the pilot worked the radio, the copilot tried to make some sense of the scattered lights below.

'You cannot be up there,' the voice crackled over the radio. The small cargo plane flew on into a starry but moonless night.

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