Wildlife artist gored to death by a buffalo

Times Online - Britain



By Mike Pflanz in Nairobi and Simon de Bruxelles



A WILDLIFE artist who dedicated his career to helping animals in Africa was gored to death by a bull buffalo in front of his wife and a friend.
Simon Combes, 64, was attacked by the one-tonne animal in dense bush as he returned from a clifftop which he had climbed to watch a sunset in the wildlife reserve in the Great Rift Valley in Kenya, where he lived.



Last night Kat Combes told how her husband died in her arms in the pitch-dark bush four hours later, just as paramedics arrived.

“We had just started to come back down from a 1,000ft-high precipice called the Sleeping Warrior and were in a patch of quite thick bush,” she said.

“Suddenly the buffalo was right there, right next to us. He was a lone bull, huge, a massive, massive animal, and he came charging out.

“We had no time at all to react. I was walking in the middle, Simon was on my right and it just got to him first. Simon tried to turn and run but the buffalo was too close. It just started throwing him up in the air, over and over and over.”

She and the friend, Mary Wykstra, a cheetah expert, tried throwing sticks and stones at the animal but it continued the attack until it lost interest. Mrs Combes stayed at her husband’s side trying to comfort him and encourage him to stay alive as they waited for help.

She said: “He was so brave and strong. He tried so hard to stay alive. I tried so hard to keep him alive. I don’t remember what I was saying — I was just talking to him, trying my best to make sure that he made it as long as he could.

“He was still alive when the doctor got to him, but even if he could have kept going, there was that very difficult climb down the hill. It is hard enough if you are fit and healthy.”

Mr Combes was renowned for getting perilously close to the animals he loved to paint. One of his best-known works was the portrait of a buffalo, entitled Menace. He was born in Shaftesbury, Dorset, in June 1940 but moved to Kenya with his parents and brother at the age of 5. He began painting when he was a young officer in the Kenyan Army, where he served as a major in the guerri-lla conflict with Somalia.

He moved back to England in 1978 so that his children could have an English education and they lived in Bushley, Gloucestershire, for 17 years, but he returned to Kenya every winter to work as a safari guide.

In that time he produced many of his best-known paintings of big cats and other wild animals. He was entirely self-taught, apart from mentoring sessions in later life with the wildlife artist David Shepherd. He published two best-selling books, African Experience and Great Cats.

He claimed to have no fear of dangerous animals, despite having been chased by elephants, forced to climb a tree to escape a rhino and been bitten by a Bengal tiger. He said it was mankind he feared the most.

His daughter, Cindy, who lives in Cheltenham, said: “Dad grew up in Africa. He spent the majority of his youth in the bush. He was very experienced when it came to African living.”

His work achieved worldwide recognition and won many awards, including the Society of Animal Artists’ Award of Excellence. He used his position to further wildlife conservation. Last year he was appointed project director for Kenya by the Rhino Rescue Trust. He married Kat, an American, in August last year.

His family will travel to Kenya in the next few days to be with Mr Combes’s son, Guy, 33, who works there.

Cindy said: “Dad just loved wildlife and he loved painting. He was in his element in Kenya.”