Buffalo are now living in the fens of Kent. Why – have we slipped into the metaverse of Lewis Carroll? ‘He thought he saw a buffalo/ Upon the chimney-piece.’ But these are not African buffalo, those fierce beasts that recently charged but narrowly missed killing my wife at home in Kenya. No, these are the more docile water buffalo and so this story isn’t nonsense. ‘He looked again, and found it was/ His Sister’s Husband’s Niece.’
Clever scientists on sabbatical from modelling pandemics and climate change have introduced four water buffalo to the Ham Fen nature reserve, near Sandwich. These wetlands become clogged with silt, causing floods, and the idea is that the buffalo, with their huge bodies, will bulldoze channels through the mud. I’ve seen hippos do something similar in Rift Valley lakes.
Here is the complete opposite of feather-footed through the plashy fen.
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