The Day of the Jackal’s Muscadel Affliction

During a recent visit to Cape Town from some grape farmers from the Northern Cape, I was treated to this story involving the power of Muscadel wine. Names and places have been changed to protect those involved.

Malan Dreyer was at his wits’ end – more so than any other farmer in the Northern Cape district of Onseepkans. But this time, it wasn’t because of land reform, shortened credit terms from the co-op, or his wife’s insistence on a pricey 35th-anniversary trip to Thailand.

No, Malan’s trouble came down to a jackal. Or as it is called in these parts of the world, a “jakkals”.

Since Easter, the jackal had developed a taste for the sheep on Kiewietlaagte, although fiercely religious as he was, Malan could not be convinced that the jackal’s fondness for the lambs of Onseepkans had a link to Christianity. For it had been a massacre: Over thirty ewes and three times as many lambs had been killed from April to June, so much so that Malan’s only farm-related insight for 2024 thus far was how many lamb carcasses could fit onto the back of a Toyota Hi-Lux bakkie. And there’s nothing like desperation to make a man believe in strange ideas, and Malan had tried everything to catch that jackal.

He hired the professional hunter from Springbok with his camo gear and oversized ears. This over-talkative burly young man had set up a stainless-steel trap baited with smoked mutton. He would spend nights in the veld hoping to entice the jackal with shrill haunting jackal calls played from a CD player. Nothing worked. The jackal wouldn’t show.

Then Briek Stegmann mentioned the muscadel.

Malan had been at the winery in Upington, buying his wife’s sweet rosé – profoundly cheaper than a holiday in Thailand – when Briek overheard him mention the jackal problem to a fellow-customer, a saddle-horse breeder from Kanoneiland.

“A jackal’s love for muscadel is enough to turn it into a vegetarian,” Briek, the wine salesman, said. “A male jackal would take a glass of sweet muscadel over the tenderest lamb any day.” Malan looked at the wine salesman who had an honest and stern and knowing look in his eyes, the kind of look a man like Malan had learnt as that of someone who drank deep from the pools of concern and honesty and brotherhood. The look that evoked trust.

Lifting the box of rosé, Malan asked for two bottles of red muscadel. This was on a whim – if the jackal plan did not work out, he could always make good use of the sweet wine while sitting on the stoep and staring across the veld, trying to figure out what might really lure that jackal, while his wife paged across her phone looking at pictures of Thailand.

The morning Malan found 12 dead lambs on the far side of the concrete dam, he wasn’t even shocked anymore. The jackal’s trail of destruction had not just worn him down – it had now left him numb.

How long before he realised that numbness was far worse than despair; despair was at least a reaction towards something one cared about. Numbness was the evil of not-caring anymore. It was the worst. He had to get out of it.

That’s how Malan found himself in the veld that night, on the flat hill overlooking the pasture, a spread of land of the remaining winter dry grass growing between the sharp rocks. The moon was full, and fifty paces ahead sat an enamel soup bowl, filled with a generous splash of red muscadel Malan had poured.

Malan stroked the stock of his .243 rifle and lifted it, sighting the bowl through the scope. There was just enough light to make out the bowl clearly. If that jackal – or any creature – came near the bowl, there’d be one shot, and it’d be the death shot.

Everyone from Onseepkans to Grootdrink knew: Malan Dreyer never missed. He felt a swell of pride as he sat there, thinking about this reputation he had earned. But what would people say if they knew Malan the Sharpshooter was sitting in the middle of the night, waiting for a jackal to drink wine? There would surely be strange looks, some of the taunt, and some of the concern, and both of the humour.

He was still thinking that, gazing up at the stars, when… well, a cold gust of wind raked his back and woke him.

How long had he slept?

An hour, his watch showed. He wiped his eyes, switched on the big hunting torch pointed in the direction of the enamel bowl and looked through the scope.

No way.

Malan stood, stretched his stiff back, and walked over to the bowl. It was lying flipped over and obviously empty.

“Must’ve been one of the ewes,” Malan thought, muttering under his breath – cursing the jackal, the dead sheep, Briek’s nonsense about the vermin-attracting powers of muscadel, and his wife’s obsession with Bangkok.

But a desperate man’s mind turns stubborn. The next night, Malan was back on the hill. The bowl, fifty paces out again, was this time three-quarters full of the fragrant sweet wine.

So fragrant with the scent of sweet grapes that Malan took a deep swig from the bottle before sitting against a flat rock, rifle at his side. The moon was brighter, fuller than last night and there were no clouds, and he could clearly make out the bowl. Anything that came near it would be within his sights. He’d raise the rifle, line up the target, and – well, he was Malan the Sharpshooter.

When he woke this time, the wind was strangely warm. The moon had crossed the sky, and the night was dark and real and true, and held no lies. Getting to his feet, Malan didn’t even stretch, just quickly walked over to the bowl. It was flipped over again. Probably one of the springboks this time – he could see them grazing by the windpomp.

He sighed and packed up and ticked off another fruitless attempt at getting the jackal, not even wanting to consider what other crazy methods of vermin eradication were left for him, but knowing – at the back of his mind – that he was going to be having to consider another one soon. The sheep were disappearing, and they were disappearing fast.

The next night, Malan slept in his own bed, luxuriating in the comforting embrace of the soft mattress which he had missed so much in those two nights spent in the veld. It was all so warm and soft that he fell asleep before he could say goodnight to his wife in the guest room.

He woke rested, even though it was still pitch dark outside. The clock read 4:12.

As he climbed out of bed, reaching for his robe, he heard it: a faint clinking sound from the back porch. Something tapping, something scraping. The grating of metal against concrete.

Malan pulled his robe over his shoulders and felt his way toward the back door, the scrapping metallic sound growing sharper in his ears.

Just as he neared the door, the noise stopped. He flung the unlocked door open, greeted by moonlight and a warm wind from the east.

And to this day, no one knows who was more shocked – Malan Dreyer, or the male jackal standing there, enamel bowl in its mouth, waiting for the sweet taste of muscadel it had come to love over the past two nights.