My Lion

Well, I hope my loyal reader(s) had a good Christmas and New Year’s. Sorry I haven’t posted in a while – I’ll try to be a little more consistent in the New Year. It was definitely different being away from family and friends and in 100 degree heat during the holidays. Not having to brace yourself against the cold for a Christmas Day walk is totally new, and I was definitely wishing for a nice cold snap for my Christmas present. But we had fun cooking out, drinking beer and playing Risk (yes we are dorky scientists) over the holidays. On New Year’s eve/morning, we partied with some German tourists that just happened to be camping next to us. We heard them singing German drinking songs just after midnight so we decided to go join in the party. They were an older group so only a few of them spoke English well, but luckily my German is flawless after a couple of beers (or more likely was that my pidgin German/English was at least understandable) so we had a rousing good time. We were already full of beer and wine from our New Year’s feast but the Deutschers insisted upon feeding us whiskey and Amarula cream (a cream liquer) so one member of our group (not me) ended up conversing by just raising their glass and saying “HEY!” I think their hangover ended on January 2nd.

Anyway, I wanted to finish my tales of lion captures. Just before the Christmas we went on a year-end lion capture with Craig (the lion researcher). This capture was different than all the others in that we just staked out a spot, circled the wagons (trucks), and waited for the lions to come to us instead of going after the lions using their radio collar signals. We had a nice cookout and drank beer and brandy while waiting for the lions to come to the bait – nicely dulling the motor skills before you deal with potentially man-eating animals - definitely the way to capture lions. The bait this time was a male zebra that we shot (well Marius the game capture guy shot it). After he killed the zebra, we gutted it and then tied it to the back of the truck and dragged it about 5 kilometers back to the lion capture setup to leave a nicely smelly trail for the lions to follow. We then shackled the zebra to a sturdy fence so that the lions could feed off the zebra close to our site and the vets could dart the lions we needed. Unfortunately the lions would have nothing to do with the free meal. They looked fat and happy like they had fed recently and obviously knew something was up with this too-easy meal.
The next step was to go “fishing” - fishing for lions that is. Once we had hacked of one leg of the zebra and tied it to the back of Craig’s truck, off we drove into the bush to tempt the lions. I was in the truck with the vets ready to dart the first lion that latched onto the zebra leg on Craig’s truck. The willing participant was a huge male lion who held onto the zebra leg so tightly it actually stopped Craig’s truck from moving forward. Once darted the male bounded into the riverine vegetation making him hard to find. Undaunted, we careened through the bush almost driving over the passed-out male before we saw him. It took eight of us to load him into the back of the truck to move him back to the processing station inside the circle of trucks. The vets processed the lion – weight, condition, blood samples, etc. Then I got to collar this big chap. What a great experience being face to face with a 450 pound lion and strapping a collar onto him. Once the collar was secured, the vets gave him the antidote to the drug and the male walked off ignoring the rest of the free zebra. So now I have my very own lion in Africa.