Cry of the Kalahari Read online

  As much as we hated darting, on one occasion, at least, it allowed us to learn something about the strength of the social bond between male lions. Having grown up with each other, Pappy and Brother had traveled large expanses of the Kalahari together as nomads, without having found a pride of their own to rule. Young males, often brothers, frequently stay together as adults, and these two seemed inseparable.

  Immobilizing Pappy was a routine operation. After the shot he sagged to the ground and went to sleep on his side, the dart dangling from its needle just behind the shoulder. Brother, his head raised and his eyes wide, had watched intently as his partner had lost coordination and then consciousness. He looked from Pappy to us, and back to Pappy again, as if trying to understand. Then, ignoring the truck parked just eight yards away, he walked to the downed lion and sniffed along his body until he found the dart. Clamping it between his front teeth, he backed up and pulled. A cone of Pappy’s skin clung to the needle and then finally popped free. After chewing the dart up and spitting out the pieces, he walked to his companion’s side and licked the small wound made by the needle. He rubbed his head against Pappy’s, cooing softly. Then, lowering himself on his forequarters, he took Pappy’s neck gently in his mouth and began to lift. But the other’s bulk was too unmanageable. After struggling in this way for more than a minute, Brother put his jaws over Pappy’s rump and did the same thing; then under his neck again, while cooing. For fifteen minutes he went first to one end, then the other, trying to lift him with his mouth.

  Was he trying to stand his companion back on his feet? It certainly looked like it, though we can’t be sure. We know that elephants occasionally attempt to lift a fallen family member, and it does not seem unreasonable to suppose that lions might try to do the same thing.

  We were greatly moved by this, but Brother was so persistent that we worried that his canines might injure Pappy’s neck. I eased the Land Rover to Brother’s side and maneuvered him far enough away so that we could ear-tag, weigh, and measure Pappy. Then we rolled the immobile lion onto a tarp, lashed the comers to the back of the truck, and dragged him to a shade tree, where he would be cool during his recovery. Brother followed and lay nearby until Pappy regained consciousness. Then he eagerly rubbed his head and muzzle all over his fallen comrade.

  “Tau, Morena!” It was early morning, only a few days after we had darted the Blue Pride. We had followed hyenas late into the night before and were asleep on the tent floor when Mox roused us. He stood in a patch of sunlight just beyond the flap, pointing to a lion 300 yards east of camp. Through the tent door we could see the male’s tottering figure, hunkered over the months-old remains of a gemsbok, as he tugged at the few bones and the brittle skin. Normally, a lion would hardly have noticed such useless carrion—so parched and tough it could not be eaten. But this male was struggling urgently to get the wizened carcass to the shade of Topless Trio, a clump of trees opposite camp on the riverbed. Through field binoculars we could see that he was terribly emaciated and very weak. The gemsbok carcass must have weighed no more than thirty pounds, yet the lion could not move it more than a few feet at a time before stopping to rest, panting heavily. He would straddle the carcass again and again, trying to drag it forward, without much success. Then he would turn, take the paper-dry skin in his mouth, and pull in reverse, with the same result. Each attempt left him weaker, until he finally collapsed, clearly near death from starvation.

  We pulled on our clothes, jumped into the truck, and drove slowly toward him. When we got closer, he stared blankly, hardly noticing us. We were appalled by his condition. There was nothing but the shell of a once proud lion. His ribs stuck out sharply, his skin hung in great folds, and I could have encircled his midriff with my two hands. He must have been suffering for weeks, with virtually nothing to eat.

  With an enormous effort he stood up and began staggering toward the Topless Trio, and it was then we noticed a dozen or more porcupine quills deeply embedded in his neck, shoulders, and flanks. While trying to get food in his weakened state, he had probably botched a hunt. He made his way to the shade of the tree island, where he slumped to the ground as though his large, bony head and tattered mane were too heavy for him.

  We left him there but returned with the darting equipment in the late afternoon. We wanted to examine the lion more closely and to determine his age and his chances for survival. When the dart struck him he didn’t even flinch, and he quickly sagged to the ground. We began removing the festering quills, some of them lodged more than six inches deep.

  There was one quill that Delia could not pull out. It was sticking out from the inside of the upper right foreleg, and since the lion lay on his side, the left leg kept getting in the way. Mox was watching from a distance, his hand on the fender of the Land Rover. “Mox, tla kwano—come hold this,” she called, straining to push the heavy leg aside. Mox shuffled over hesitantly, his eyes shifting nervously. We didn’t know it at the time, but as a child he had apparently been taught by his tribesmen that if he touched a lion, his arm would rot off. He believed in this taboo, yet he still came forward.

  Noticing his halting, tentative movements with the lion, Delia tried to reassure him. “It’s go siami, Mox—go siamr, it’s okay.” She smiled. Mox took hold of the great furry leg as if it would spring to life at any moment and gently pulled it back. After Delia had removed the quill, Mox, still holding the lion paw, spread his palm and fingers against the great calloused pad. He held it there for several seconds and then looked up, the glimmer of a smile in his eyes.

  Dusk had fallen. We had nearly finished taking out the quills and treating the wounds with ointment. I was having problems with a broken quill lodged in cartilage just below the knee of the right hind leg. It would not budge, so I got some pliers from the Land Rover, seized it, and yanked several times. No matter how hard I pulled, the pliers just slipped off. It was getting dark, so I asked Mox to switch on the spotlight. When I could see better, I discovered I had not been pulling on a quill, but on the broken end of the lion’s tibia. He had a severe compound fracture.

  We were faced with a dilemma: According to the dictates of objective scientific research, we should simply allow the lion to die. Even if we tried to help him, neither of us had been trained to deal with such a wound and, furthermore, our efforts would be hampered by darkness. Yet we had already anesthetized him, and we knew from the small amount of wear on his teeth that he was in his prime, no more than five or six years old. So, although he would probably not survive, we decided to do what we could.

  The lion would never tolerate a splint. Our only hope would be to open the leg at the fracture, saw off the splintered end of the bone, sew up the tom muscle, and then disinfect and close the wound. If we could somehow entice him to stay off his feet for a few days, the bone might begin to knit.

  We drove to camp and assembled some makeshift surgical tools: a broken hacksaw blade, a razor blade for a scalpel, a dish-scrubbing brush to clean out the wound, and ordinary needle and thread for suturing.

  It was dark when we got back. Mox held the spotlight while we opened the wound further, scrubbed and disinfected it, and sawed about three-quarters of an inch off the splintered bone. We stitched the muscle and skin back into place and injected a large dose of antibiotic, then clipped an orange ear tag, numbered 001, into his left ear. We stood back and looked at this pitiful wreck of a lion. If he lived, we would call him “Bones.”

  He would need moisture and food immediately if he was to survive, but he couldn’t hunt without stressing his injured leg. Using an old poacher’s rifle loaned to us by the Department of Wildlife, I shot a steenbok, and while Bones was still sedated, we placed the twenty-five-pound antelope under his head, where it would be safe from jackals and hyenas until he regained consciousness. Several hours later Bones began to feed on the meat, slowly at first, then gulping down large red chunks. By dawn he had consumed the entire carcass, and he was sleeping deeply when the sun crept over East Dune.

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p; Bones would soon need much more to eat, and he would try to hunt unless we gave him another antelope. Early that same morning I shot a 530-pound gemsbok and pulled it to him at the end of a thirty-foot chain attached to the truck. Lions—Kalahari lions in particular—are prone to drag their kills to the nearest shade. If I unhooked the carcass too far from Bones he would get up and try to move it, perhaps permanently crippling his leg. The problem was how to get his food supply practically up to his nose without frightening him away or provoking a charge. He was fully alert now and, in his weakened and vulnerable condition, undoubtedly more nervous than he would ordinarily have been.

  I had the gemsbok no closer than about twenty yards from him when he began to tense. So I slipped out of the Land Rover, loosened the chain, and drove away. Bones got to his feet and limped over to the heavy carcass. He straddled it and, taking the neck in his jaws, began to drag it, putting full weight on his broken leg. The stitches began to separate and blood poured from the wound. The pain must have been intense.

  For an hour and a half he struggled to get the gemsbok into the shade, moving it only a very small distance at a time, then pausing, heaving from exhaustion. He managed to drag it only ten yards before his strength finally failed him. He staggered to his shade tree and collapsed, totally drained. It had been a magnificent, though grueling, performance, one we knew he would repeat unless we could get the carcass closer to him.

  Over the next hour I inched the Land Rover back to the gemsbok and rechained it to the ball hitch. Slowly we worked it closer to Bones, switching off the motor when he showed alarm, moving in an arc around the tree, until finally the carcass was within four yards of him. He grew more and more agitated as I backed the Land Rover up to the gemsbok, slid out my door, and crept to the rear of the truck. I slowly reached from behind the protection of the rear wheel and began fumbling with the knotted chain, sweat streaming down my face. Meanwhile, Bones, his shoulder muscles tensed and twitching, his eyes wide with fear and aggression, sat watching my nervous movements. I tried not to meet his piercing stare or do anything sudden that might bring on a charge. The chain finally came free, and I scrambled into the Land Rover and drove away.

  We watched from a distance as Bones, still not satisfied with the positioning of his carcass, and oblivious to the pain, dragged it safely to the trunk of his tree.

  From camp we could see him lying at Topless Trio, and each morning and evening we sat near him in the truck, watching as he gained weight and recovered lost strength. Daily he became more and more accustomed to us, and our hopes grew that somehow he would live. He was treating his leg better now, only getting to his feet to feed on the gemsbok, or to shift position under the tree. But we could not justify shooting more antelope for him to eat, and we believed that, once he had to hunt again, the stress of the chase would surely snap the weakened leg. He would never be able to survive alone.

  On the ninth night after his surgery, we were awakened by his bellows flooding through the valley as he moved south down the old riverbed. We doubted that we would ever see him again.

  Bones had been gone for ten days. We had seen no sign of him. Early one morning Mox and I were spooring a hyena we had lost in thick bush the night before. While we two tracked, Delia kept pace with us in the Land Rover, taking notes on the brown’s route of travel and foraging habits, all encoded in its footprints in the sand. It was slow, tedious work in the heat and thornscrub, and we were depressed by how far we had to go for each bit of information. But it was the only way to learn how far the hyenas roamed from the riverbed and what their activities were in the sandveld, where the bush and grass were too thick for us to keep up with them at night. Mox and I stalked along side by side, stopping often to discuss a spot where the hyena had rested, fed, and socialized with another, or chased a springhare. If we lost the trail for some reason, we often backtracked to learn more information. We weren’t trying to find the animal, so it made no difference to Delia and me which direction we went, as long as we learned where it had been and what it had been doing. But when we tried to follow the tracks in reverse, Mox was hopeless; he lost all interest. We often noticed him, standing with his hands clasped behind him, gazing absent-mindedly into the veld. No matter how we tried to inspire him, he could see no sense to “tracking backward.” He thought we were a funny lot for trying to spoor hyenas in the first place. To many Africans, and to many other people, hyenas are the scourge of the earth. Why anyone would want to follow their footprints for hours on end was incomprehensible to Mox.

  On this particular morning, we spoored the hyena to Leopard Trail. It had been tough going; we were often on our hands and knees, straining to find a single claw mark in the hard-packed soil. The tracks led us northwest into the soft sand of the duneslope, where, near the top, the hyena’s spoor cut the fresh tracks of a large male lion. We had had little contact with males in the area, and we were anxious to meet those of the Blue Pride.

  Following the lion now, we slowly moved off through the woodlands and into a complex of springhare burrows. Mox and I were abreast, casting around for tracks, when my eye caught the flattened, wedgeshaped head of a very large puff adder. The snake was coiled tightly, and Mox’s foot was descending toward it. With no time to warn him, I swung my left arm across his chest, knocking him off balance and backward. In the same instant, the adder hissed loudly and I jumped back. Mox gave me a peculiar grin, but his eyes were wide as we skirted the snake and walked on.

  Just beyond the adder, the lion’s tracks deepened—he had chased a porcupine. Rain began falling lightly while we spoored ahead, reading the story of the hunt in the sand: The porcupine had run over a low, worn termite mound and made a sharp turn south. Skidding clumsily, the pursuing lion had lost his footing on the greasy clay surface and had fallen. But he must have recovered quickly, for 200 yards beyond we found a pile of quills and a smear of blood.

  I felt Mox’s hand on my shoulder. “Tau, kwa!” he whispered.

  Under an acacia bush 100 yards ahead, a big male lion sat looking through the veil of rain into the open woodland and the valley beyond—it was a timeless picture of Africa.

  Mox and I joined Delia in the Land Rover. We drove toward the lion and he turned to watch us. Then we saw the orange tag, number 001, in his left ear. It was Bones. He had gained a lot of weight, and though his leg was not completely healed, the wound was scabbed over and obviously on the mend. Of course he was full of porcupine quills; we wondered if his lameness was keeping him from tackling larger prey.

  We sat with him for a long while, glad that this once we had interfered with the ways of nature. Finally he stood, stretched, and began to walk away, the only sign of his past ordeal a trace of stiffness that interrupted the rhythmic roll of his gait. Studying his spoor more closely, I noticed a slight twist in the track made by the right hind paw, a trademark that would follow Bones throughout his life. We would know his spoor anywhere.

  While counting antelope on the riverbed one morning, we rounded Acacia Point and discovered Bones on a young bull gemsbok he had just killed. It had been three weeks since we had seen him in the rain, and he had filled out remarkably. We were amazed that he had successfully tackled such a powerful and formidable prey little more than a month after we had taken three-quarters of an inch of shattered bone from his leg. As the sun rose higher, he began eyeing the shade of our camp, about 400 yards away. Panting from the heat, he dragged the carcass toward the trees, while kamakaze jackals circled around him, snatching meat from his kill. Though he rested every thirty yards or so, he hadn’t the trace of a limp, and we now believed he would survive. Killing the gemsbok had been the ultimate test, and a testimony to the remarkable recuperative powers of a Kalahari lion.

  Bones spent the following two days under a tree twenty yards outside of camp, feasting on his kill. In the evenings, we sat in the truck on the riverbed nearby, watching him feed and laughing when he rolled onto his back and pawed at the sky.

  We were following Star, ou
r favorite brown hyena, across the riverbed one night when she suddenly stopped and began to bristle, every hair standing out from her body. Suddenly she bolted westward: The Blue Pride was on the prowl. Sassy and Blue trotted to the truck and stood peering over the half door at us. At times this made us a little uneasy, wondering if their mood might suddenly become dangerous. But no matter how close they came, they were always playful.

  After their initial investigation, Sassy and Blue apparently tired of trying to spook us. Withut warning, they launched a mock attack on Spicy, bowling her over and then chasing her in circles around the Land Rover, their big feet drumming on the ground. Their mood was infectious, and the two male cubs, Rascal and Hombre, joined in the fun, all the lions romping in the bright moonlight, except for Chary, who remained aloof as usual.

  Abruptly the nine lions stopped their play and lined up shoulder to shoulder, looking north. I swung the spotlight and saw Bones charge into the beam with a powerful stiff-legged trot, his massive head and mane swinging side to side. He strutted to the waiting pride and stood there while each female greeted him in a fluid fusion of her body with his, beginning cheek to cheek, then rubbing along his length until she sidled off his ropey, tufted tail. After their exuberant greetings, the pride lay together quietly, Bones a few yards away. The master of the Blue Pride had come home.

  Bones’s arrival seemed to have changed the mood of the females. Their playfulness had given way to a calm sense of business as they stared intently into the night, hunting even as they lay there. Sometime later Chary stood and moved off silently, followed soon by the two youngsters, Spicy and Sassy. Then Blue and Gypsy were gone, and finally the entire pride had slipped away into the growing darkness, a long procession, with Rascal, Hombre, and Bones bringing up the rear. The moon was setting toward West Dune.