Born Free Page 13

  George went on and pitched camp and left the remainder of the meat in the tent for Elsa, before going on to do his work. On his return to camp the meat was still untouched and Elsa did not appear during the night.

  At last Elsa had found her mate and perhaps our hopes would be fulfilled and one day she would walk into camp followed by a litter of strapping cubs.

  PART TWO

  10. Elsa Mates with a Wild Lion

  It was between 29 August and 4 September 1959 that George saw Elsa and her lion courting. Quickly he made a calculation – 108 days’ gestation – this meant that cubs might arrive between 15 and 21 December.

  When on his return to Isiolo he told me what he had seen I could hardly wait to start off for camp, for I was afraid that Elsa might now follow her mate into a world beyond our reach.

  But when we arrived she was there waiting for us by the big rock close to the car track.

  She was very affectionate and also very hungry.

  As our tents were being pitched her lion started calling and during the night he circled round the camp, while she remained with George eating heartily and quite uninterested in her mate’s appeal. At dawn we heard the lion still calling but from much farther away.

  For two days she remained in camp eating so enormously that she was too sleepy to move till the afternoon when she went out fishing with George.

  During the third night she ate so much that we were quite worried about her; yet in the morning, in spite of her bulging belly, she trotted into the bush with us and first stalked two jackals and then a flock of guinea fowl. Of course, each time she closed in on them they flew off, whereupon she sat down and licked her paws. I was walking ahead but stopped dead at the sight of a ratel; this animal, also known as a honey badger, is rarely seen. It had its back turned towards me and was so absorbed digging for grubs in the rotten wood of a fallen tree that it was quite unaware of Elsa’s approach. She saw it and crept forward cautiously till she was practically on top of it.

  Only when their heads nearly bumped together did the ratel take in the situation; then hissing and scratching he attacked her with such courage and so savagely that she retreated.

  Using every advantage that the ground offered the ratel made a fighting retreat, charging often, and eventually disappeared none the worse for its adventure.

  Elsa returned defeated and rather bewildered; plainly she was too well fed to hunt except for sport and there was no fun to be had with such a raging playmate.

  This incident made us sure that we had been right in suspecting a ratel when, in the early days of Elsa’s release, we had found deep bites and gashes on the lower part of her body. For no other small animal is so fearless and bold.

  On our walk home Elsa, full of high spirits and affection, rolled me over several times in the sand, while I listened to the trumpeting of elephants which were much too close for my liking.

  That night she slept in front of my tent, but just before dawn her lion started calling and she went off in his direction.

  Their calls were easy to distinguish; Elsa has a very deep guttural voice, but after her initial roar only gives two or three whuffing grunts, whereas her lion’s voice is less deep and after his roar he always gives at least ten or twelve grunts.

  During Elsa’s absence we broke camp and left for Isiolo hoping that she was in the company of her mate; we were away for about three weeks.

  We returned to the camp on 10 October. An hour after we got back we saw her swimming across the river to greet us, but instead of the exuberant welcome she usually gave us, she walked slowly up to me. She did not seem to be hungry and was exceptionally gentle and quiet.

  Patting her, I noticed that her skin had become extremely soft and her coat unusually glossy. I saw, too, that four of her five nipples were very large.

  She was pregnant. There was no doubt about it. She must have conceived a month ago.

  It is widely believed that a pregnant lioness who is handicapped in hunting by her condition is helped by one or two other lionesses who act as ‘aunts’. They are also supposed to assist in looking after the new-born cubs, for the male is not of much practical use on such occasions and, indeed, is often not allowed near the young lions for some weeks.

  Since poor Elsa had no aunts, it would be our job to replace them. George and I talked over plans to help to feed her and avoid any risk of her injuring herself during her pregnancy.

  I was to stay in camp as much as I could and, at the nearest Game Scout Post, some twenty-five miles away, we would establish a herd of goats from which I could collect a few in my truck at regular intervals.

  Nuru would remain with me to help Elsa and Makedde would guard us with his rifle, Ibrahim could drive and I would keep one boy, the Toto (the word Toto means child in Swahili), to act as personal servant.

  George would visit us as often as his work allowed.

  As though she had understood our conversation, Elsa hopped on to my camp bed as soon as it was made ready and looked as if she thought it the only suitable place for someone in her condition.

  From now on she took possession of it, and when next morning, as I did not feel well, I had it carried down to the studio, she came to share it with me. This was uncomfortable, so after a time I tipped it over and rolled her off. This indignity caused her to retire, offended, into the river reeds till the late afternoon when it was time for our walk.

  When I called her she stared at me intently, advanced determinedly up to my bed, stepped on to it, squatted, lifted her tail and did something she had never before done in so unsuitable a place.

  Then with a very self-satisfied expression she jumped down and took the lead on our walk.

  Apparently, now that she had had her revenge everything was again all right between us.

  I observed that her movements were very slow and that even the noise of elephants close by only made her cock her ears. That night she rested in George’s tent, unresponsive to the call of a lion who seemed to be very near the camp.

  As in the early morning the lion was still calling, we took Elsa for a walk in his direction. There, to our surprise, we found the spoor of two lions.

  When she began to show an interest in these pugmarks we left her and returned home. She did not come back that night, so we were surprised to hear a lion grunting extremely close to the camp. (Indeed, in the morning his pugmarks proved that he had been within ten yards of our tent.) The next day Elsa again stayed away. Hoping to make the lions kindly disposed towards her, George shot a buck and left it as a farewell gift; then we returned to Isiolo and spent a fortnight there. I then decided to go back to see how Elsa was.

  It was dark when we reached camp, but she appeared within a few moments. She was extremely thin, very hungry and had deep, bleeding gashes and bites on her neck, and also the claw marks of a lion on her back.

  While she gnawed at the meat we had brought and I dressed her wounds she responded by licking me and rubbing her head against mine.

  During the night we heard her dragging the carcase down to the river and splashing across with it, and later we heard her returning. Shortly afterwards some baboons gave an alarm and were answered by a lion across the river. Elsa replied from our side with soft moans. Very early in the morning she tried to force her way through the wicket door of the thorn enclosure which surrounds my tent. She pushed her head half-through but then got stuck. Her attempt to free herself caused the door to give way and she finally entered wearing the gate round her neck like a collar. I freed her at once but she seemed restless and in need of reassurance, for she sucked my thumb frantically. Though she was hungry she made no attempt to recover or to guard her ‘kill’ as she usually does. All she did was to listen intently when any sound came from the direction of the carcase. We were puzzled by this odd behaviour, so George went to investigate what had happened to the kill. He discovered that Elsa had taken it across the river, but the spoor he found on the far side suggested that another lioness had then dragged it ab
out four hundred yards, eaten part of it and afterwards taken the remains towards some nearby rocks. Assuming that this lioness had cubs concealed in the rocks, George did not go on with his search. He observed, however, that beside the spoor of the strange lioness were the pugmarks of a lion – and that they were not those of Elsa’s husband. The evidence suggested that this lion had not touched the meat but had followed the lioness at some distance, and left the kill to her.

  Does this mean that though lions are not of much use to a lioness who is in cub or nursing and therefore handicapped for hunting, they do make sacrifices for their mate? Had Elsa, though she was hungry, suffering from still unhealed wounds and herself in need of an aunt on account of her pregnancy, gone to the help of a nursing lioness? This was something we could only wonder about.

  She was now rather heavy and all exercise had become an effort to her.

  When she came with me to the studio she often lay on the table. I was puzzled about this, for though the table is perhaps a cooler place it was certainly a lot harder than my bed, or the soft sand below. During the following days Elsa shared her time between her mate and me. On our last night in camp Elsa made a terrific meal of goat and then, very heavy in the belly, went to join her lion who had been calling for her for many hours. Her absence gave us an excellent opportunity to leave for Isiolo.

  In the second week of November we went back to the camp. When we got near Elsa’s lie-up we found the spoor of many sheep and goats and the camp site itself patterned with hoof marks. I trembled to think what might have happened to her should she have killed one of the goats which had been grazing so provokingly in what she regarded as her private domain. Later our fears were increased by finding the body of a crocodile close to the river; it had been speared quite recently. George sent a patrol of Game Scouts to deal with the poachers while he and I went out to look for Elsa.

  For some hours we walked through the bush, calling to her and at intervals shooting into the air, but there was no response. After dark a lion began to call from the direction of the Big Rock, but we listened in vain for Elsa’s voice.

  We had run out of thunderflashes so when it became dark all we could do to let her know that we were there was to turn on the penetrating howl of the air-raid siren, a relic of Mau-Mau days. In the past it had often brought her into camp.

  It was answered by the lion; we sounded it again and again he replied, and this strange conversation went on until it was interrupted by Elsa’s arrival. She knocked us all over; as her body was wet we realized that she must have swum across the river and had come from the opposite direction to that from which the lion was calling.

  She seemed very fit and was not hungry. She left at dawn but returned at teatime when we were setting out for our walk. We climbed up the Big Rock and sat there watching the sun sink like a fireball behind the indigo hills.

  At first Elsa blended into the warm reddish colour of the rock as if she were part of it, then she was silhouetted against the fading sky in which a full moon was rising. It seemed as though we were all on a giant ship, anchored in a purple-grey sea of bush, out of which a few islands of granite outcrop rose. It was so vast a view, so utterly peaceful and timeless, that I felt as though I were on a magic ship gliding away from reality into a world where man-created values crumble to nothing. Instinctively I stretched my hand towards Elsa who sat close to me; she belonged to this world and only through her were we allowed to glance into a paradise which we had lost. I imagined Elsa in the future playing with her happy little cubs on this rock, cubs whose father was a wild lion: and at this very moment he might be waiting nearby. She rolled on her back and hugged me close to her. Carefully I laid my hand below her ribs to feel whether any life were moving within her, but she pushed it away making me feel as though I had committed an indiscretion. Certainly her nipples were already very large.

  Soon we had to return to camp, to the safety of our thorn enclosure, and the lamps and rifles with which we armed ourselves against those dark hours in which Elsa’s real life began.

  This was the moment at which we parted, each to return to our own world.

  When we got back we found that there were a number of Boran poachers in camp who had been rounded up by the Game Scouts. As a Senior Game Warden, one of George’s most important tasks is to put down poaching for it threatens the survival of wild life in the reserves.

  Elsa kept away during the night and the following day. This worried us as we would rather have had her under our eyes while so many tribesmen and their flocks were around. In the afternoon we went to look for her. As I came near to the rock, I called out to warn her of our approach but got no reply. It was only when we had climbed on to the saddle where we had sat on the previous evening that we suddenly heard an alarming growl, followed by crashes and the sound of wood breaking inside the big cleft below us. We rushed as fast as we could to the top of the nearest rock, then we heard Elsa’s voice very close and saw her lion making away swiftly through the bush.

  Elsa looked up at us, paused and silently rushed after her mate. Both disappeared in a direction in which we knew there were some Boran with their stock.

  We waited until it was nearly dark and then called Elsa. To our surprise she came trotting out of the bush, returned to camp with us and spent the night there, going off only in the early morning.

  George went back to Isiolo with the prisoners but left some Game Scouts in camp.

  The bush was full of sheep and goats which had straggled away from the flocks and several newly born lambs were bleating piteously. With the help of the Scouts I found them and returned them to their mothers.

  The evening was lit by lightning, a sure sign that the rains would start soon. Never had I greeted the first downpour with such a sense of relief. For this drenching meant that the Boran would return to their pastures and temptation and danger would be removed from Elsa’s path.

  Fortunately, as she did not like the crowd of Game Scouts who now shared our camp, she spent these last dangerous days on the far side of the river where there were neither Boran nor flocks.

  Daily now the parched ground was soaked by showers. The transformation which always results from the onset of the rains is something which cannot be imagined by anyone who has not actually witnessed it.

  A few days before we had been surrounded by a grey, dry, crackling bush, in which long white thorns provided the only variation in colour. Now, on every side there was lush tropical vegetation decked with myriad multi-coloured flowers, and the air was heavy with their scent.

  When George returned he brought a zebra for Elsa. This was a special treat. As soon as she heard the vibrations of the car she appeared, spotted the kill and tried to pull the carcase out of the Land Rover. Then, finding it too heavy for her, she walked over to where the boys were standing and jerking her head at the zebra made it plain that she needed help. They hauled the heavy animal a short distance amid much laughter and then waited for Elsa to start her meal. To our astonishment, although zebra was her favourite meat she did not eat but stood by the river roaring in her loudest voice.

  We presumed that she was inviting her mate to join in the feast. This would have been good lion manners, for according to the recorded habit of prides, whilst the females do most of the killing, they then have to wait to satisfy their hunger until the lion has had his fill.

  The next morning, 22 November, she swam across the heavily flooded river, came up to the zebra and roared repeatedly in the direction of the rocky range which is on our side of the river.

  I saw that she had a deep gash across one of her front paws, but she refused to have it dressed, and after she had eaten as much as she could, she went off towards the rocks.

  That night it rained for eight hours, and the river turned into a torrent which it would have been very dangerous for Elsa to cross even though she is a powerful swimmer. I was therefore very pleased to see her in the morning returning from the Big Rock.

  Her knee was very swollen and she
allowed me to attend to her cut paw.

  I noticed that she had great difficulty in producing her excrement and when I inspected the faeces I was surprised to see a rolled-up piece of zebra skin which when unfolded was as large as a soup plate. The hair had been digested but the hide was half an inch thick. I marvelled at the capacity of wild animals to rid themselves of such objects without suffering any internal injury.

  For several days she divided her time between us and her lion.

  When George returned from a patrol he brought Elsa a goat. Usually she dragged her kill into his tent, presumably to avoid the trouble of having to guard it, but this time she left it lying beside the car in a spot which could not be seen from the tent. During the night her mate came and had a good feed; we wondered whether this was what she had intended.

  Next evening we took the precaution of placing some meat at a certain distance from the camp, for we did not want to encourage him to come too close.

  Soon after dark we heard him dragging it away and in the morning Elsa joined him.

  We were now faced with a problem. We wanted to help Elsa, who was increasingly handicapped by her pregnancy, by providing her with regular food, but we did not wish to interfere with her relations with her mate by our continued presence in the camp. He had a good right to resent this, but did he in fact object to us? On the whole, we thought that he did not, and I think we were justified in our opinion for, during the next six months, though we did not see him, we often heard his characteristic ten or twelve whuffing grunts and recognized his spoor, which proved that he remained Elsa’s constant companion.