Predators I Have Known - Alan Dean Foster [69]
Half an hour passed. The elephants that had been drinking and gamboling in the river began to vacate the beach and move out in the direction of the forest. As soon as they started up the slight slope, the herd that had been waiting at the forest’s edge headed down. They passed one another like factory workers changing shifts. One particularly impressive female striding along less than a handful of yards from our jeep turned to glance at us as she headed for the water. Our eyes met. I received the distinct impression she would have liked to stop and chat except that she was thirsty and besides, in an hour or so, herd number three would be lining up to wait for their turn at the water, and she did not want to waste bathtime trying to make contact with yet another uncomprehending human.
I would have been satisfied to spend the remainder of the day there, watching elephants at play, rolling in the mud, marveling at how none of them stepped on the week-old baby frolicking without a care among tree-trunk-size legs. Instead, after forty minutes and a reluctant sigh, I signaled to Patrick that we should continue on upriver.
That was where, not too far inland at a place where gunmetal gray boulders flanked a small winding tributary of the Chobe, we came upon the devouring.
Lions working a fresh carcass are relentless in their single-minded ferocity. Unlike the jovial elephants that we had just left behind, nothing about the big cats’ gritty activity smacked of playtime of any kind. For big cats, feeding is an ancient and bloody business that is pursued with deadly earnestness. A youngster attempting to force its way onto the corpse is liable to receive a punishing blow from a feeding male or mature female powerful enough to crush a human skull. The intimidating, bloodcurdling roars that periodically erupted from the heaving leonine mass contained none of the melancholy of the plaintive nocturnal bellowing my wife and I had heard at Tarangire.
When a lion looks up from a meal in progress, eyes wide, face and muzzle smeared from one side to the other with bright red blood and bits of torn flesh, it puts one in mind of something other than a child’s smiling stuffed toy ready for nighttime cuddling. A feeding lion’s appearance and attitude are as raw and intimidating as anything in nature.
Despite the gruesomeness of the scene, despite the ongoing carnage, I stared. You have no choice but to stare. It is impossible to turn away. A mass lion feed is exactly what one would see at a car accident if the rescue workers, instead of helping the injured victims, began to gnaw at their bodies.
“What are they eating?”
My voice had dropped to just above a whisper. It was an automatic, instinctive response to something sunk deep in my genes, a reaction to a more primeval time when keeping one’s voice down in the presence of large carnivores was a matter not of politeness or custom but of life and death.
Patrick eyed the grand guignol with a professional squint. Though he must have come across similar displays of blood and bodily destruction many times, his expression was solemn. Unlike my voice, his did not change.
“Young elephant. Maybe five years old.” Both hands resting on the top of the wheel, he sat up straighter in the driver’s seat as he strained for a better look. “I don’t think they killed it.”
What? “Then how did it die?”
“Probably anthrax. Lots of anthrax in the park. Lions here don’t have to hunt. They see a sick elephant, they just follow it until it falls over.”
I had read that the lions of Chobe were among the biggest in the world. Now I understood one reason why. There was no shortage of food here, nor did hunting take a toll on their body mass. Feasting on dead elephants, the local cats had grown enormous.
Spine-chilling snarls continued to reverberate in the air as the members of the pride battled for the best spots, swarming the lifeless lumpy corpse like oversize piglets overwhelming