Predators I Have Known - Alan Dean Foster [72]
I was not worried about getting lost. Patrick had been a guide in the park for some time and knew all the dirt tracks intimately. Besides, with a major river always on our immediate left, it would be difficult to lose the way. His only real concern, other than the prospect of receiving a mild chewing-out from his supervisor for returning a guest well after dark, was the always-present chance of encountering elephants.
We were fifteen minutes from the lodge when he hung a sharp left at an intersection and followed it with a startled oath. I was thrown forward by the impact but managed to catch myself before my upper body could slam into the jeep’s metal dash. My eyes fought to focus in the darkness.
In turning the corner, the jeep had not caught the couple in the twin beams of its headlights until it was too late. More than a little nonplussed, the female trotted hurriedly off to the right while her outraged mate nearly fell as he stumbled off in the opposite direction. I will never forget the look on that lion’s face, so closely did his confusion, uncertainty, distress, and annoyance mimic that of a human male surprised in the same circumstance. Plainly, he was at that moment torn between a desire to slink off into the bush with his tail and everything else slunk between his legs and one that would see him leaping for the jeep with an eye toward ripping both of us to shreds.
To this day, I am not sure who was the more startled by the inadvertent collision, but I do know who was the most disappointed.
Giving the pair no time to decide what to do next, Patrick floored the accelerator and the jeep leaped forward, careening down the dirt road. Looking back, I could see only faint signs of the couple we had so rudely interrupted in the midst of their business. In another moment, they had been swallowed up by the African night.
I looked at Patrick. He looked at me. Then, despite ourselves, we both began to laugh. The jokes lasted all the way back to the lodge. Partly because such an encounter could not avoid engendering a certain amount of humor and partly because had any number of things gone wrong at the critical moment (the jeep overturning in the brush, or stalling out, or the lions reacting more quickly and antagonistically to our interruption) what had turned out to be merely amusing could have become deadly serious.
Back at the lodge, the two of us examined the front of the jeep. The glass over the left front headlight was cracked, and there was a small dent in the metal. Nothing major. I wondered if the lodge’s insurance would cover it. Had the lions been humans, I have no doubt they would have filed suit. After bidding Patrick good night with a heartfelt “Ke a leboga or “thank you” (the only words I knew in Tswana), I retired to my room having acquired another bit of animal lore not generally to be found in the available handbooks.
Lions are especially aggressive at night, but if you happen to (literally) run into them when they are mating, I can say that their embarrassment seems equal to that of any human couple surprised under similar circumstances.
That’s one day in the African bush. Travel agents will tell you that in order to see animals and experience a place you have to spend days there, or weeks. I have to disagree. As with anything else in life, quality trumps quantity. If you really want to experience the herd, blend with the herd, you have to find a way to get away from your own herd. The species people on a package tour end up seeing and hearing more than any other are the other people on the same package tour.
On that one day in Botswana, I saw common animals and rare animals, cooperation in drinking and bathing and cooperation in feeding. Life ending and life beginning. The circle of life is not a neat, perfect circle, but one that’s cracked and distorted; frequently beautiful, sometimes ugly. But no matter what you’re fortunate enough to see,