OPERATION RHINO

The Operation involves drugging, capturing and transporting the threatened Black Rhinos in remote parts of Rhodesia to the Gona-re-Zhou game reserve, and this is a blowsy, wild-eyed account by novelist Davis, who went along. The ""hunters"" have the toothy swagger of another era -- whether bossing the natives or propelled by bloody cheer and absolute fearlessness. High points of the narrative are close-ups of the thundering hooves, horns and beady eyes of the great beasts on the rampage. In spite of the slapdash style, Davis' eyewitness whoops about rhinos on a tear are memorable -- for example, a magnificent charge by a furious cow on a 2000-pound steel water tank which she demolished until ""it was clearly dead."" With a few earnest preservationist pleas and 30 photographs which should be fairly rousing.