One morning, on the same trip as the one described above, I was having breakfast with my PH when he asked, "Did you hear the rhino in camp last night?" I replied, with surprise, that I hadn't, and he proceeded to show me the tracks in the dust just a few feet from the dining tent. He went on to say that the camp had inadvertently been located on the rhino's normal path to water, but that only once had he had a problem with such a nocturnal visit, when a rhino took a dislike to the latrine tent and thoroughly demolished it.

I thought nothing further about it until that night, when an urgent call of nature took me to the latrine tent. I was seated there, contemplating my sins, when I suddenly heard the same steam-engine-releasing-steam sound I had heard on a previous occasion. I was completely unarmed, and the rhino was between me and my tent, so there was nothing I could do but remain where I was, hoping he would depart peacefully, which he eventually did.

I never visited the latrine tent at night unarmed again.