A Rhino Costume's Travels

Worldwide A rhino costume’s travels WhenW people ask me how someone got involved with Save the Rhino, oor how come an event happened, I often fi nd myself telling a shaggy dog stsstory. Things seem to circle back round, pop up, overlap, and add a new layerlal as they go. Let me try to give you an example. CathyC Dean | Director MICHAEL BRABANT ack in summer 2001, when I was coming for my and treadmills and heart-rate/oxygen job interviews to become Director of Save the testing. It’s great publicity for us. Rhino, I was particularly impressed that our And then we had a call from a guy called three Trustees at the time — Robert, George and Michael Brabant, who’d worked on editing BChristina — together with my predecessor Dave, were the video, and had already rounded up a all training for the 2002 Marathon des Sables (250 km group of Kiwi mates to climb Mt Kilimanjaro, across the Sahara Desert.) They were joined by Bryan the highest mountain in Africa. Could he Hemmings, a guy who’d grown up in Kenya, fallen in love borrow one of the rhino costumes and with rhinos, run the MdS the year before and come 34th fundraise for us? All eight of the team made out of 700 runners. He helped persuade my Board that it it to the summit, Uhuru, as did the rhino would be entirely sensible to do the MdS in rhino costume, costume, by then nicknamed Rihanna (top) . which they duly did, clocking a BBC2 documentary as they did so, thanks to the added presence of our Patron Nick So, from the Sahara to the summit Baker, presenter of The Really Wild Show. of Kilimanjaro, via Paris, London, Despite the blisters, Bryan stayed in touch, winning a a pentathlon and a party fundraising pentathlon hosted by Trustee George, and Bryan and Vinny are now training for the also — fluke! — winning a fantastic safari for two people to legendary Comrades marathon (all 89 km Laikipia in Kenya at our annual dinner/party, both in 2003. of it) in South Africa, along with another So it wasn’t entirely surprising when Bryan popped up again friend of Bryan’s and my husband. And in 2005 with another wheeze: he had rounded up five other me. At the moment, we’re holding firm to people, including Olympic Gold medallist Adrian Moorhouse, our stated position of running ex-costume: to relay-run the rhino costume from Marble Arch to Dover, just finishing in less then relay-swim to Calais and then all cycle to the Arc de than 12 hours would Triomphe in Paris. Arch to Arc, rhino-style. Simple (right). be enough for me. One of Bryan’s team was a guy called Vinny O’Neill, and But you never know — Vinny popped up in our lives again in 2012. In between those damn costumes working on logistics for the London 2012 Olympic Games, have a way of turning he decided to again take on the rhino costume challenge, up. And now Bryan’s and ran the London Marathon in a record-breaking 4 hours daughter Lyddy 17 minutes and 27 seconds! He must have terrified lots is due to come and of other runners as he turned the corner at Buckingham do work experience Palace and pointed his horn at the finish line. with us this Easter. Keep your eyes peeled….You never So when, in September last year, we had a call know where our rhino from ASICS, the people who make sports gear, costumes will be next! wanting to find an inspiring runner to feature in their campaign for 2013, we introduced them to Vinny. ASICS made a short film, launched in March 2013 online and in its central London store, complete with rhinos FRAMIREZ IMAGES SRI UNLESS NOTED MISS SHARI From the Sahara KA2INA to Paris, the rhino costume adventureture continuesontinnues AndAAnd ththereerre ends anotherher shaggy dog story.tory. SUE FLICKR Or doeses itit?? Events in Brief Adam Rutherford gave our Eleventh Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture on WeW our CREATION ffundraisers The origin and the future of life TheT Going Down South team raised ££2,000 journeying from London to Cape Town and visiting rhino pgprogrammes along g the way y December 2012 Our huge thanks to everyone who donated to and bid for last year’s online auction and helped us raise £2,500 for rhino conservation. Lots included a Moonlight rhino T-shirt signed by Daniel Craig, Muse, Morgan Nicholls and Kate Hudson Adam (right) took us through some that raised an incredible £300, of the biggest scientifi c theories in 2 tickets to a QI fi lming and a signed biology that attempt to explain where copy of 1,227 QI facts to blow your Mark and David Worsfold, and life on earth has come from. Some socks off, raising over £180 and their pal Phil Bailey kayaked ideas have been proved wrong whilst our biggest-selling lot, a baby 99 miles on the Wilderness Waterway others have changed the world. Quite white rhino ceramic sculpture by from Flamingo to Everglades City, literally, since genetic engineering Nick Mackman ((above).) raising over £1,000 for Save the has enabled humans to begin Rhino (above) tackling everything from cancer and HIV to problems such as how to build Aaron Kulakiewicz fundraised an on the moon, and even how to bring impressive £641.51 by shaving his animals back from extinction. head to raise money for rhinos Stephen Mangan (left) was our brilliant Rhinos seen on MC for the evening, and we also had Kilimanjaroj once againg presentations from Cathy Dean, Save the Rhino’s Director, and a video from the Environmental Investigation Agency on the rhino horn trade. THE ANIMAL PARTY We had a lot of help to put the November and February saw two evening together – so a big thanks Animal Parties in aid of Save the to our lovely speakers, Douglas’s Rhino. The Last Tuesday Society very family and friends, Factual kindly donated a percentage of both Management, Penguin, everyone parties’ profi ts to rhinos. The Animal who donated to the raffl e and all Huge thanks to Team KilimanjaBRO Parties take place at Electrowerkz, those who came along to support who raised over £8,000 by climbing Islington with a host of stalls and us on the evening. Kili in December in a rhino costume games alongside their animal band (above). Rihanna the rhino made it PROCEEDS FROM THE EVENING WILL GO TOWARDS and a myriad of fancy dress: from to the summit – the fi rst time a rhino SAVE THE RHINO AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL jellyfi sh to spiders to oryx! We were has summitted Kilimanjaro since 1994, INVESTIGATION AGENCY. there with rhino costumes, our Horny when Save the Rhino founders Dave Hoopla game, and for Valentine’s Stirling and Johnny Roberts climbed Day we even took along our very the highest mountain in Africa. The special ‘rhino of love’. Party-goers KilimanjaBRO team also made a video RHINO MAYDAY 2013 were invited to leave their messages to raise awareness called Gotcha Save the date for Rhino Mayday 2013. to each other via post-it notes! Nose – Help Save the Endangered The UCL Grant Museum of Zoology Among the love messages we found: Rhinos, which you can fi nd by has kindly agreed to host us again ‘Miss Parrot, no-one does blue hotpants better’ searching ‘Gotcha nose’ on Youtube. for this year’s event taking place on ‘You octipi my thoughts x’ The team were: Michael Brabant, Wednesday 1 May. ‘A woman needs a man like a fi sh needs a bicycle’ Sam Halse, Chris Henderson, Ollie Wards, Alex Dyson, Josh Harris, Tickets are priced at £15, Joshua Preston, Michael Grieve and tickets are on sale now. For tickets and info... and Neil Christian. Come along for a full day of rhino news, conservation topics, and Email our events manager Laura Larissa Benbow also climbed Kili panel debate from our speakers, Adams at [email protected] in October and raised over £4,000. all highly respected fi gures in the or call (+44)20 7357 7474 rhino world. You can visit the Grant For more info on Rhino events see And thank you to all of our other Museum of Zoology free-of-charge www.savetherhino.org/events fantastic fundraisers who took part on Monday–Saturday afternoons. in challenges for us in 2012. THE PITCHER 19.

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