‘Chaperoning’ is my father’s term for adult jackals (senior or junior) when they teach bait-site order to the young. This is a critical family concern and everyone is engaged in it. When generalized, this means teaching the young how to use waste-heaps close to human habitations without much risk. For jackals are primarily foragers – not hunters like the wolves. Nearly 80% of their food comes from whatever edible waste humans would throw away.
In the rather rundown village of Stanevo (150 inhabitants), which is the nearest settlement to my father’s camp, waste bins and dumps do not have much to offer. Edible waste would go to pigs, chicken, the house dog. Stray cats and dogs would take care of whatever may have found their way into the bins or waste-heaps.
There is thus not much hope in the village. The riverbank, a kilometre down from the last houses, is another matter. During the summer, anglers’ camps would sprout there, particularly at weekends. There are no regulations about how campers should get rid of their waste. Struggling local administrations have turned their backs to the riverbank. It is a wild land. With layers of plastic waste brought from upriver by high spring-waters each year, one might think of it as a wasteland.
This is good for the jackals. Most importantly, they enjoy a many kilometre-long strip of safety. It begins from the bank and extends for up to two kilometres into the hinterland. This is a wide strip of dense vegetation, gradually rising until a vast fertile plain opens up. From there on machine-cultivated fields stretch further southwards until they reach the foothills of the Balkan Mountains, towering on the distant horizon. A GoogleEarth image gives an idea of the strip of safety by the bank where the bait-site and my father’s camp are situated:
As it can be seen in the image, the birthing-den (2) is located close to the bank, right by the camp. The jackal family must be finding the place to be safe.
When going down to the river from the birthing den there is first a nearly vertical path, running down the bluff-face. From there begins an impenetrable thicket of amorpha bushes and deciduous trees until the river-bank opens up. In the opposite direction, another thicket begins from the edge of the bluff where the birthing den is hidden. In this way, besides the birthing den, the jackal family gets a day-resting place. From the edge of the bluff, between ten and fifteen metres high, they have an open field of vision, hearing, and smell all the way down to the river. Any human setting foot there would be sensed well in advance. The same goes for the opposite direction – southwards, towards the hinterland. In the final account, with a vista in front, and a thick ‘back’ behind, the family has a safe birthing den as well as a day-resting place for all family members. The point marked (2) in Fig. 1 can be thus described as the family home. When jackals seek safety, they always run in this direction.
There is, deeper into the hinterland, a strip of pasture-land (3), running parallel to the bank. This is where a big herd of cows graze: a feature of great interest for the jackals. About what they find so interesting in the herd we’ll have much to say later on.
Further south there is another and much broader strip of a dense forest (4). Still further and on top of the last elevation above the forest, there begin the fields of cultivated land.
From the bank to the fields the terrain can be described as jackal land. Close to the river are the family homes of at least four neighbouring jackal families. Their foraging territories begin from the bank and stretch fanwise to the fields and the two villages flanking them: Stanevo on the eastern side, and Kovchitsa to the west.
All four family homes enjoy the same quality of safety as described above in respect of the home of Boldy’s family. But the places chosen for family homes provide additional advantages beside the all-important one of safety.
The first is about easy access to water. There is the river right below: jackals like to be near a water-source. A river nearby is great, especially so in the hot months of July and August. At the height of summer, day temperatures get up into the forties (Centigrade) and beyond. Even during the night, the temperature may not fall below thirty. Some semblance of coolness may be felt about four in the morning but that is all.
Apart from providing drinking water and some respite from the heat, the river helps for getting rid of body parasites like flees. My father goes barefoot to the bait-site when serving food and setting up the cameras. And yet he claims that never a flea has jumped on him. He thinks that jackals may be getting rid of fleas by lowering themselves slowly into the water – like foxes do. The latters’ tactic is to lower themselves very slowly while the fleas are running up their body to escape drowning. Not to get washed away by the current, foxes hold fast to the bank by holding to an overhanging branch by their teeth. When only the tip of their muzzle remains above water it is black with flees. Then the fox submerges their head under water and lets the current carry them downwards for a while, before they scramble up on the bank.
The jackals may be using the same tactic. Besides not seeing any flea hop on his legs, my father says that he has not seen the jackals scratching their necks and heads like dogs do. But there may be something else too. The False indigo bush, locally known as morfa (Amorpha fruticosa) with its pungent smell, against whose leaves jackals constantly brush, may also help in getting rid of body parasites.
In addition to all the services the river provides, its help is precious during denning time. For food can be carried to the nursing mother by ‘helpers’ from the family, but water cannot. When the river is nearby, the Mother can dart down for a drink of water while she is still able to hear what is going on at the birthing-den. The bait-site, situated halfway from water to den, allows the Mother to get a quick bite on the way back.
There is a jackal path going down from ‘home’ to water (Fig. 2), but for humans this part of the terrain is not welcoming. Apart from the intertwining bushes and brambles, there is serious blood-sucking and stinging insect pressure. (To see my father walking there, barefoot and half-naked, is not for the faint-hearted. He claims mosquitoes do not bother him, but for other humans they are a serious barrier). Grass-snakes could be seen to cross the path (Fig. 3), and a wild cat would be lurking around there during the night.
Such is the terrain which is to the liking of jackals. The main thing is that it is opposite to what humans like.
All of the above are considerations of critical importance, but the locations of family homes offer further attractions for the jackals. After 1st June, when the fishing-ban ends, anglers descend from near and far. They put up their tents in available open spaces on the sand-and-pebble river-bank. With lowering waters in July and August, more would come making use of an improvised car-track running along the water edge.
The anglers and campers have edible matter to throw away, while, naturally, they do not have any domestic animals brought along. A quiet-and-peace-loving lot, they do not bring pets either. For the jackals this is good. There is no competition for leftovers and other waste. All of that is simply dumped into the bushes behind the tents without much ceremony. There are fish-innards and heads, at times – heaps of them. There are also vegetable peelings and other leftovers from cooking. Toilet facilities there are none. A state of nature. Civilization signals itself only by abundant plastic pollution. Cargo convoys and long cruise-ships sailing by represent a more regulated world but there is no connection between that and life on the bank. These are parallel realities.
My father’s bait-site is a replica of such dumps by fishing camps. There are, however, a number of differences. It isn’t an ordinary camp.
In the first place, the camp is set up over a month earlier than the start of the summer camping invasion. This means carrying and putting it up at high-water time. High water level is typical for the spring months. The river rises impressively due to melting snows in distant mountains: principally the Alps and the Carpathians, but also the Balkan Mountains.
For the camp this means that all the luggage has to be carried upriver by boat. The bank is mostly underwater and carrying by land routes in the hinterland is hardly a viable alternative. The available dirt-roads there would be in a bad shape after the winter. Lowering heavy stuff down the bluff overhanging the bank is practically impossible. So, the operation has to be done by boat.
That would be in late-April-beginning of May, depending on the weather, the state of the equipment, transport, and available family and friends to help. There is nearly a ton of equipment to provide living space, support observations, ensure food supply for the jackals and my father, ensure energy supply, etc. My father would be there for an average of a hundred days. Carrying all the stuff is a demanding exercise. Without the family factory’s van, and crucially – the help of family and friends - launching my father into jackal land would be hardly possible.
The collective effort would culminate in my father’s camp being set up at Km 727 at high-water time. High water and the April-June fishing ban would make large parts of the bank devoid of human presence. Thus, in April-May, what with high water and the ban, my father’s camp would be the only one for many kilometres up and down the river.
The jackals know about my father's arrival as soon as they hear the outboard motors of the boats ferrying furniture and equipment pushing against the strong current. Some 30 minutes later the two boats will have arrived at the camp spot. The trail cameras will be mounted first thing after unloading the boats. They will register jackals presence almost at once. One could see the indistinct profile of a jackal (the Mother?) weaving through the bushes on the periphery of the overgrown bait-site:
Fig. 7. Jackal daytime movement upon arrival at Km 727 (27 May, 2024, 11:35 a.m., DST)
At an earlier arrival (by a month) in Season ’20, the first to greet my father was a cat:
The cat must have got through the winter by hunting around for rodents and birds. Or maybe that was the resident wildcat, younger by four years at the time of the picture.
The first night is always marked with a loud ‘concert’: close howling, as my father calls it (i.e., chorus howling close to the camp, coming from the edge of the bluff-face rising behind the tent). The same type of chorus would be heard at departure, again sung from the same place. It sounds like this:
Fig. 9. Close howling by the camp
With this ceremony over, camp life with the jackals – and all other creatures at the place – would begin. For neither of them the coming of the camp would be any big shock, in fact it could be that they all had been eagerly waiting for its arrival. Nevertheless, the ever-wary and suspicious jackals have to make sure there is no foul play this time around. Consequently, the safeness of the bait-site is to be carefully checked. After that procedure is over (checking for hidden traps), the rules of bait-site use are to be reaffirmed, and later on – in July and August – to be passed on to the newborn pups and reiterated for the ‘teenagers’ – those of the previous year’s litter. ‘Chaperoning’ will be the word of the day.
