We had just finished dinner. Fifteen clients from Spain sitting around the fire chatting in Spanish when one of them, looking over my shoulder says, “que es eso?” Meaning “what is that?” in Spanish. In the light of an almost full moon, I turn to see a large female lion walking around behind us, her sister following in short order as they circle around to where we are seated at the fire.
Paul calmly says, everyone stand up and get closer to the fire. Somehow I recall a variety of Spanish commands, “be calm,” “come over here,” “be quiet,” “be careful,” etc. I’m not sure what it says about my personality that I remember the commands best?! But they do come in handy when a lion approaches your camp when you’re on a five-day trans-Kalahari safari with Spaniards. Who knew I’d ever need my Spanish for that scenario?
We all quietly draw closer to the fire and Paul instructs one of the other guides to start the car so as to intimidate them out of camp. We had suspected they might be coming to visit when we saw them just at dusk as we were driving to our campsite. One male and two females strolled down the road in front of us settling in at the junction of two dirt tracks to make their long guttural moans marking this territory as clearly theirs. If only I had had the presence of mind to audio tape their call but I was so awestruck by the depth of the tones and the vibration of my own chest that all I could do was manage to involuntarily get the hair to stand up on the back of my neck.
Unfortunately, the younger of the two sisters is looking a bit “cheeky” – kind of like my mother’s old cat Delilah used to look right before she pounced out from underneath a chair to attack your leg as you walked by. My niece Becca described her as “cute but fresh,” and that’s one thing in an 8 pound house cat and quite another in a full grown female lion. Her tail flicking a bit, eyes staring right through you, head down, ears slightly back…she seemed to be sizing us up as a potential appetizer.
Paul instructs, “Slowly make your way to the vehicles. Nobody run. Just back away.” We move as fast as “slowly” will allow and pile into the vehicle. It seems like an eternity as we wait for Paul to join us and I’m thinking, “Damn, I should have driven this vehicle more often and learned how to use the satellite phone.” My brain going to “worst case scenario” if, heaven forbid, something were to happen to him. Fortunately, Paul joins us in short order and we are on the move to “push” the lions out of camp. While one vehicle has already gone out to do this, when they turned back towards camp the lions just followed them back. We decide we need to “drive” them off farther.
It is believed that animals see a vehicle as a large object (not a vessel carrying small objects that can be eaten) so the idea is that we will “intimidate them” by approaching them and flashing our high beams at them. The male lion seems uninterested and makes his way off down the road not even looking back. The younger of the two sisters, the cheeky one that came within three feet of the circle of chairs around the fire, is undeterred. She strays off into the grass hiding behind a bush until her more responsible older sister waits for her in the road, spots her, then crouched down like a house cat and springs on her. She grudgingly gets back on the dirt track and starts walking.
When we’ve hit a stalemate and they won’t go any further, we turn back. Later we notice the vehicle lights of the next campsite up near where we’ve driven the lions on high beams and we fear they’ve had uninvited guests too. We decide to see if they are OK and fear that they might get in their vehicles and “push” them back down our way.
When we arrive at the campsite the place is a shambles and the father of the family informs us that they lions just came through and ransacked the place, tipping over chairs, tearing down hammocks, stealing his daughter’s shoes. They’ve now gone past their campsite, away from us and we decide to push them on a bit further. At one point the cheeky one walks off the road into the nearby grass and plops down. Paul goes up into the grass, probably two feet from her, flashes the high beams and she barely blinks. She’s got a look on her face that says, “Bring it!” We decide to go past them hoping they will follow us even further away from camp.
As you might imagine the excitement and tension among the group is palatable. We’ve made a bunker with our vehicles and trailers and the clients have managed to squeeze all seven of their tents in a rather small area, tent corner to tent corner. The women make “pee pots” out of large used water jugs by cutting them in half so as not to have to leave their tents at night. Unfortunately they use them all before I get one. Drat!
I spend most of the night lying awake listening for their return. Paul sleeps like a baby and snores away. I fear he’ll sleep through whatever might happen in the night so, between and lack of pee pot (which inevitably makes me have to go the bathroom) and fear that they may return…I don’t get much sleep that night.
Fortunately, they don’t return to camp and when the sun comes up in the morning we all have an amazing story to tell our friends that they will find unbelievable. Not many people can say they had three full grown lions come into camp in the Kalahari!
