The Big Stuff
Of Lions And Buff
One of the youngsters sensed something first. He lifted his head from the melee that was the rest of the pride, all squeezed around the meagre remains of a buffalo, a young cow that was one of two killed by the pride during the windy, cold and grey of the Sunday afternoon or evening. Then a lioness on the far side of the kill got up and sneaked around the back of those feeding, her tail low, ears flat in submission and she tried hard not to alert the others as she crept away behind me. Despite the growling and snapping and clawing that is the usual custom at meal times, the rest of the pride did notice and the young male was first to turn and run.
In much the same way that lion can go from sleeping to hunting at the sound of a twig breaking, they can go from feeding to fleeing at the arrival of a charging male and, although he has no intent other than to claim the kill and feed unhindered, this is by no means always the case and the cats in question usually never bother to find out, normally opting to scatter and hunt another day. This is what they did, leaving me to be the focus of an angry Black Maned Male.
Here is what led up to that moment;
The first I had heard about the Lion-Buff activity was early on the morning of their second day of their feeding but, having spent most of the morning trying to sort out an electrical problem of the Landie, it was almost noon when I eventually fired her up to head out to find them.
For the first time, after many years of countless lion sightings and near misses during hunts, I was finally able to witness the culmination of an event that is not likely to repeat itself on Masimvula for a long time. I didn't need to see the hunt and the kill, I have endured so many.
You see, Mansimvula is a very narrow strip of land lying on the edge of the Park itself but deep within the confines of the greater Kruger area that still extends far to the west. To witness something here is not only rare but very special. Animals traverse the area and very seldom actually do something that has them staying within our invisible boundaries so when there is a kill, there is a reason to spend as much time as possible in their company.
When we arrived there, most of the cats (nine in all) were flat or on their backs, panting away their discomfort from gorging . They had disemboweled the first young cow they had killed but had not fed on it so it lay unattended about twenty metres away. Most of them lay almost half way between the two kills.
I wondered whether it was similar to the conditions I experienced in the Selous Game Reserve in Tanzania in late ’97, also during a drought, when the cats lay await under the overhanging branches of the young Dhoum Palms, ambushing the starving buff as they came down to the lakes in the heat of the day. For a while, they would target the pregnant females and only take the unborn calf, leaving the mother’s carcasses to desiccate above the heat baked black cotton clay.
Then there were times that I have witnessed a lion hunt where part of the pride were in the process of collectively bringing down one individual whilst the opportunity arose for them to also subdue another and invariably, once both were killed, they would collect and feed at one kill rather than split up and feed on the two separately, defending the other from scavengers, in order to feed on it themselves a day or so later.
Anyway, the pride had pretty much finished the one carcass but a young male and a lioness eventually arose to go back to feeding. Now and then eyes opened without lifting their heads and there was typical posturing and positioning of cubs or sub-adults, eager for reassurance from a sibling or adult and getting nothing but snarls at their attempts to cuddle. Everyone was too full and uncomfortable to socialize.
Of course, by now vultures were gliding in and dropping from the skies, a pair even mating in a dead tree not far away. Without the patience of cats, some hooded vultures attempted to get close to the other buff, silently dropping from a dead tree nearby but one of the lionesses would have none of it, watching out of the corner of her eye as she lay belly up only metres away. She then slowly turned over, stalked intently and then rushed the little thieves back into the sky, returning to collapse with a deep, heavy sigh.
As other people arrived to experience the spectacle, I decided to move off and use this time up in the north of Mansivula to explore. I hadn’t been too far from home in recent weeks apart from the bimonthly trip to town so I decided to look in on the Klipspringers that had moved into our bend in the river after the floods a few years ago. I hadn’t seen them for some time, in fact probably since early summer and the last few times I was down there I hadn’t seen them at all.
I parked at Bev’s house and we made our way down onto the sand of the Ntsiri riverbed and as I rounded the rocks at the bottom for the view to the south, the male Klipspringer was standing erect on perhaps the best boulder he could find and undoubtedly the best boulder to photograph him on. I sank down onto the sand and willed him to stay there as I snapped off some instant shots without checking settings and when I pulled away to do so, he clambered onto the bank and made for the shade of a big Jackalberry.
His mate was there too and she scrambled onto a square piece of granite atop a promontory that gave me some of the best chances I had of capturing her exquisite face. After a while, she too moved into the protection of the Jackalberry but not before I tried my best to capture the moment. As small as Mansimvula is, we are lucky to have 4 of the different dwarf antelope, some of who I know personally. I was relieved to see that they have avoided our resident leopards.
Since I had visitors staying for but a night and despite the thrill of the lion on the kill and the interaction of the cubs and the serenity of our Klipspringer couple in the riverbed, I needed to talk to an elephant and have my friends experience the magic of their presence.
I headed East along the main road hoping to find a local friend who was expecting to help me with the problems of my Landie earlier. I didn’t find Nelson but heading further East to where an old ele bull died in December, I hoped we would find a pachyderm or two. And we did, just south of the ele carcass and audible within the Mopane veld, they were coming our way along a path that has become well worn since the ele died there so many months ago.
As soon as I had stopped and switched off, an old one tusk bull emerged first, posturing, raising his head and looking down his trunk and tusk at us. He soon relaxed and began to browse on the side of the road. Soon a couple of younger bulls emerged, walking parallel to the path that came out of the woodland, crossing to the bare patch of ground that had been the site of the old bull. By now not many bones remain. Half of the pelvis lies on the edge of the road. Vertebrae and long bones lay scattered around. I didn't see any ribs anymore, they are light enough to be taken by hyena but I suspect some have found their way to far-flung mopane shade, carried by his friends, family or just other bulls that knew him.
It was very touching to see these bulls touch and feel the bones. There was no caressing or dallying. As they walked past, their trunk tips followed the contours of the bones, barely disturbing them. Barely missing a stride.
Elephants merged with dusk and it was time to head back. After a short refill at Mopane Grove, I was edging to see what was happening at the kills. Hyenas had evidently already been sniffing around the first night so it wasn’t a great surprise to find both carcasses occupied by local clans engaged in their own gorge fest, trying to eat as much as possible as fast as possible. They were barely vocal, the odd cackle as a youngster moved from one carcass to the other as though there might have been anything different there.
A first quarter moon had little effect due to the last of a blanketed cloud cover that had persisted the last few days so a shadowless, subdued moonlight allowed us to make out individuals and their movement and we sat in this monochrome listening to the abundance of activity that was mostly the crunching of bones.
Suddenly, without warning or any perceptive change, hyena scattered. Their pounding footsteps trying to take them as far away as possible as the pride made their dramatic return. With shoulders hunched, ears flat and tails thrashing from side to side, they reclaimed both carcasses, vocalizing deeply.
I think the hyena had managed to pretty much strip the first buff and the cats settled in to begin on the other kill. It seemed to be that they had relinquished the other carcass and now and then a hyena crept in to retrieve something to carry away.
We sat in the semi-dark of the veiled quarter moon and as the grey grew darker and the temperature dropped, a drizzle began to fall. Slow heavy drops patted out a steady monotone on the folded down windshield and another tune on the canvas at back. It soon strengthened to a light rain, which required me reversing a way back from the crunching to cover the cab and close the Landie.
The rain brought with it the most incredible atmosphere of wet dust and damp cats and settled the rotting smell of decay and death and it was time to leave them be and head home to the squeaky rhythm of worn-out wiper blades.
On the third day, I only managed to get back there in the mid afternoon and I was blessed to be the only one there for as short as that lasted. The cats were tightly packed around the remains of the buff and a ribcage stood erect in the centre of the circle of tawny shoulders, hunched over their food, growling and lashing out.
The carcass had been dragged a few metres deeper into Mansimvula from the cutline and it happened to be on a major junction where a few roads intersect, allowing me to sit quietly without other human intruders, but not too far away to film and photograph such a powerful event in the day to day lives of the animals around me here on Mansimvula.
Since I was looking west into the afternoon light at the kill and the cats were so active, the light that filtered through the yellowing bushwillows lit up the dust with each scuffle and snarl and bathed the scene in a surreal dusty glow that glistened with the shining light through the thousands of wings of the flies that swarmed above their heads. The shadows stretched and patches of golden light illuminated whiskers and the tufts of hair on the tips of their ears and they gorged themselves once again, oblivious to not only me close by, but life in general around them.
The scene was that of any of a thousand prides feeding on a buff for the umpteenth time over history. Heads and faces matted in gunk and blood and jowls red and ripe from tearing through skin and ripping through flesh. Full, uncomfortable bellies of cats panting, and resting, with renewed bouts of growling and fighting adding new scars on the tips of noses, as though this was the last buffalo on earth.
And then in the height of that sunset glow and the heat of their feeding, watching the young male sense something and then that lioness cowering around the kill and run behind me, as the big male rushed in, my heart raced and a rush of adrenalin rooted me to my seat as he stopped over the remains of the kill. he stared at me, dust still rising from his entrance and the pride's departure, glaring, as if to say, ‘why are you still here?’.
In the same way that the hyena had scattered and fled the night before, so did the pride. One of the first to become invisible was the young male, I didn’t even see where he went.
I kept the camera rolling on the reaction of the rest of the pride, trying to record these moments in Mansimvula history and then my memory card told me it was full! At that very moment when the big male ran in and chased them away.
I frantically deleted stuff on the card, tried to film and tried to take a photo. The light was fading, the sun had set and every few Megs I could find, I pressed the button until it was full again. Most of all, I was so disappointed that I may not have caught that moment that the male arrived out of the blue.
However!
On downloading the card and seeing where I ran out of space at the crucial moment, I was amazed and overjoyed to find that the card filled up with just the right moments and stopped as he turned away. These stills are taken from a short video of that special moment and I will be working on uploading it. Amongst others.
Part 2 will follow.....
