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  During the next few days Elsa often came alone to visit us. She was always affectionate but some of her habits had altered since she had given birth to the cubs. She now very seldom ambushed us, was less playful, more dignified.

  I wondered how she placed her cubs when she came out on these long visits. Did she instruct them not to move till she returned? Did she hide them in a very safe spot?

  When, on 19 February, George came ‘on duty’, I returned to Isiolo to meet Lord William Percy and his wife and bring them to see Elsa’s family.

  In general we discouraged visitors, but we made an exception for these old friends who had known Elsa since she was a cub and had always shown the greatest interest in her development.

  On our arrival in camp, George greeted us with the news that he had seen the cubs. That morning he woke up while it was still dark and heard quick, short lapping sounds, as well as long laps, coming from the direction of Elsa’s water bowl. He looked out and saw the cubs dimly outlined around the bowl; a few minutes later they all went off.

  He said that just at that moment in which he had first heard the vibrations of our car, Elsa had been about to cross to our side of the river with her cubs, but when she had become aware of a car approaching she had retired into the bush.

  Soon she emerged but seemed nervous and disinclined to enter the water. To induce her to join us I called to her and placed a carcase close to the river.

  She made no move till I had gone back to join our friends, then she swam quickly across, seized the goat and rushed back with it to the cubs. Once across she dragged it on to a grassy patch, where the whole family set to and had a good meal; we watched them through our field glasses.

  After it had grown dark we heard fearful growls and by the light of our torches saw Elsa defending her kill from a crocodile, which, when it observed us, disappeared quickly into the water.

  In the morning an examination of the spoor showed that in the end the croc had been successful in stealing the carcase. We were impressed by the fact that Elsa always seemed to know just how far she could go with these reptiles. She had never shown any fear of them, although we knew that in this river there were many crocodiles measuring twelve feet or more. She had her favourite crossings and avoided the places where the river was very deep, and besides taking this precaution there can be no doubt that she had some means of sensing the presence of crocs. How this worked we could not guess. We had our own method of discovering the presence of crocs; we knew that they invariably respond to a certain sound, which can roughly be represented by ‘imn, imn, imn’, and we often took advantage of our knowledge.

  If we suspected the presence of crocodiles we would keep ourselves hidden from the river and repeat ‘imn, imn, imn’; then if there were any crocs within 400 yards, they would come to the water’s edge as though drawn by a magnet. Often we went on until we saw many ugly periscopic nostrils sticking out above the water. If we moved, and our noises then came from a different place, they would follow them.

  George had learned this trick from African fishermen on Lake Baringo which is infested by crocs.

  Next day, Lady William started sketching Elsa. This was something Elsa usually disliked, but today she seemed to have no objection. All the same, I kept close by in case she might suddenly take a dislike to serving as a model. However, as she appeared quite indifferent to what was going on, after a while I went away. As soon as my back was turned she rushed like lightning at the artist and embraced her playfully. As Elsa weighs about three hundred pounds I admired the calm way in which Lady William accepted the demonstration.

  At teatime the next day we saw Elsa and the cubs on the opposite side of the river, but when she spotted us she moved her family a short distance downstream, then they crossed the river. We quickly fetched some meat which Elsa promptly collected and then took into the bush to her cubs who were out of sight.

  Later, they all got thirsty and came to the water’s edge to drink. I was glad that our guests should have this splendid view of them drinking close together, their heads stretched forward between the pointed elbows of their front legs, which were bent. At first they just lapped noisily, then they plunged into the shallow water and began to play. They were certainly not water-shy, as cats are said to be.

  How lucky these little cubs were to be living in such a lovely and exciting place. The rocky range on which they were born started on our side of the river, crossed it and circled for several miles on the other side. It was broken up by cracks and caves in which hyrax and other small animals had made their homes; around it on all sides stretched the bush, which was full of spoor and of the scent of wild animals, and then there was the river, with its rock and sandbanks on which turtles, looking like giant pebbles, basked in the morning sun.

  In other places the river is bordered by fig trees, acacias and phoenix palms from which lianas and tendrils dangle and twist their way into the thick undergrowth and thereby provide impenetrable hideouts for many animals.

  Here live the graceful vervet monkeys, the clowning baboons, the turquoise-coloured agamas, all kinds of lizards, some with bright orange heads, others with vivid blue tails, and also our friend the monitor. Bushbuck, lesser kudu and waterbuck come here to drink and the flattened, trampled ground shows that rhino and buffalo also visit it. Of all the inhabitants of the bush the most fascinating to us are the many coloured birds which throng the bush: the orioles, the brilliant kingfishers, the iridescent sunbirds, the fish eagle and the palm-nut vulture, black and white and very large, the hornbills whose rhythmic croaking rises to a crescendo and only drops to rise again.

  After our friends had gone to bed, George and I returned to see Elsa. We found her standing at the water’s edge facing a crocodile, whose head rose out of the water about four feet away.

  We did not want to frighten the cubs by firing a shot, so I tempted Elsa to leave the place by offering her a treat of which she was very fond; it consists of brains, marrow, calcium and cod-liver oil. I began giving it to her when she was pregnant and she found it irresistible.

  Now she followed the bowl in which I carried it and came with the cubs to sit in front of our tent, facing the bright lamplight.

  The cubs were unperturbed by the glare; perhaps they thought it was some new kind of moon.

  After I had gone to bed, George turned out ‘the moon’ and sat for a while in the dark. The cubs came within touching distance of him, then, having had a drink for the road, they all trotted off towards the Big Rock, from which immediately afterwards he heard Elsa’s mate calling.

  Later George went to collect the remains of the carcase, but found it had already been pulled into the water by a crocodile. He shot at the thief and rescued the meat.

  Early one morning Elsa visited the camp before anyone was up. I heard her and followed her. She was already in the water when I called to her, but she came back at once, settled with me on a sandbank and began to miaow at the cubs, encouraging them to come near us. They approached within three yards but obviously did not wish to be handled, and as the last thing I wanted was that they should become tame, I was very pleased about this.

  Elsa seemed puzzled that they should still be scared of me, but in the end she gave up her attempt to make us fraternize, took her family across the river and disappeared into the bush.

  At ten o’clock she returned alone, sniffed restlessly in the river bush and then trotted, scenting, along the road she had taken in the morning.

  After we had lost sight of her we heard her growling fiercely. She returned along the track still sniffing anxiously and finally roared at full strength towards the rock, after which she rushed into the river and disappeared into the bush on the far side. We did not know to what to attribute her strange behaviour, but thought perhaps she might have lost a cub.

  When at lunchtime Ibrahim brought in three tribesmen who said they were looking for a goat which had strayed, but carried bows and poisoned arrows, we felt sure that we had been right: no doubt their
arrival had startled the little ones and they had bolted.

  Elsa did not bring the cubs into camp again for a couple of days. That morning we had taken our friends to see the magnificent falls of the Tana River, which few Europeans visit because they are so inaccessible.

  On our return we found Elsa and the cubs in camp and while we had our sundowners they enjoyed their dinner. We were silent for we knew how sensitive the cubs were to the sound of talking. They did not mind the chatter of the boys, far away in the kitchen, but if we were near them and said a word to each other, even in a low voice, they sneaked away. As for the clicking of a camera shutter – it gave them the jitters.

  They were ten weeks old and Elsa had begun to wean them. Whenever she thought they had had enough milk she either sat on her teats or jumped on to the roof of the Land Rover. So if the cubs did not want to starve they had to eat meat. They tore the intestines of the kills out of their mother’s mouth and sucked them in like spaghetti, through closed teeth, pressing out the unwanted contents, just as she did.

  That evening one cub was determined to get some more milk and persistently pushed its way under Elsa’s belly until she became really angry, gave it a good spank and jumped on to the car.

  The little ones resented this very much; they stood on their hind legs resting their forepaws against the car, miaowing up at their mother, but she sat and licked her paws, as though she were quite unaware of the whimpering cubs below.

  When they had recovered from their disappointment they bounced off, cheerfully making explorations which took them out of her sight. Elsa became extremely alert if they did not come when she called them, and if they did not reappear quickly she hopped off the car and fetched them back to safety.

  The next two evenings Elsa came to the camp with her family. She was exuberantly affectionate and swept the table clear of our sundowners. On the third evening she brought the cubs with her and behaved in the same way. We were rather surprised to observe that the cubs were not in the least startled when our supper landed on the ground with a noisy clatter.

  They now seemed quite at home in our presence, so it astonished us that on the two following evenings Elsa left them at an open salt lick about a hundred yards away, and we were also puzzled to know how she trained them to stay put while she enjoyed a good meal in full view of them.

  During all that night it poured without stopping. On such occasions Elsa always takes refuge in George’s tent, and now, in she came, calling to the cubs to follow her. But they remained outside apparently enjoying the deluge and soon their poor mother felt it her duty to go out and join them.

  The following day I went off to Isiolo with our friends. George stayed on in camp. We knew that, now the rains had started in earnest, transport would soon become very difficult, so we had to make our plans accordingly.

  14. The Cubs in Camp

  When I came back to camp two days later to relieve George, I found that I had to be careful about letting any of the boys come near Elsa when she had the cubs with her. If even Makedde approached them she flattened her ears and looked at him through half-closed eyes which had a cold, murderous expression. Me, she trusted completely and gave proof of it by sometimes leaving the cubs in my charge when she went to the river to drink.

  For several nights we had terrific thunderstorms and the lightning and the crashes came so close together that I was quite frightened. The water poured down as though it were flowing through a pipe.

  As George’s tent was empty, Elsa and the cubs could very well have sheltered in it, but the youngsters’ inbred fear of man was so great that they preferred to soak outside. This trait was the most obvious sign of their wild blood and it was something we were determined to encourage, even at the expense of a wetting and even in defiance of Elsa’s wish to make them into friends of ours. Often she seemed to be playing a sort of ‘catch as catch can’ with them, circling nearer and nearer to the tent in which I was sitting, as though she wanted to bring them into it without their becoming aware of what was happening.

  Twice she dashed into the tent and peeping over my shoulder called to them. But whatever she did they never overstepped their self-imposed frontier.

  It seemed that our rearing of their mother in domesticity had in no way impaired the instinct which all wild animals possess and which warns them against approaching an unknown danger. Moreover, Elsa herself had shown by concealing her cubs from us for five or six weeks, that her own instinct for protecting her young was still alive.

  Now, she was plainly disappointed that her efforts to make one pride of us were proving unsuccessful, partly owing to the cubs’ fear of man and partly owing to what she must have taken as heartless lack of co-operation on our part. She seemed very puzzled, but had no intention of giving up her plan. One evening she entered my tent, deliberately lay down behind me and then called softly to the cubs inviting them to suckle her. By doing this she tried not only to make the cubs come into the tent but also to force them to pass close to me. No doubt they would have been pleased if I had retired behind their mother and she would have been pleased if I had done something to encourage them, but I remained where I was and kept still. To have moved would have defeated Elsa’s intention and to have encouraged them would have been against our determination not to tame them. I was sorry because I longed to help the cubs and felt distressed when Elsa looked at me for a long time with a disappointed expression in her eyes and then went out to join her children. Of course she could not understand that my lack of response was due to our wish to preserve the cubs’ wild instinct. She plainly thought me unfeeling, whereas I was suppressing all my feelings for the good of her family.

  The cubs were worried about our relationship for the opposite reason and became anxious every evening when Elsa, persecuted by tsetse flies, flung herself in front of me, asking me to dispose of these pests.

  When I started squashing the flies and in the process slapping Elsa, the cubs were very upset. Jespah in particular would come close and crouch, ready to spring should his mother be in need of protection. No doubt they found it odd that she should seem grateful for my slappings.

  On one occasion when Elsa, Jespah and Little Elsa were drinking in front of the tent Gopa was too nervous to come to the water bowl. Seeing this, Elsa went to him with great deliberation and cuffed him several times, after which he plucked up enough courage to join the others.

  Jespah’s character was quite different – he was rather too brave. One afternoon after they had all fed and when their bellies were near bursting point Elsa started off towards the rock. By then it was nearly dark. Two cubs followed obediently but Jespah went on gorging. Elsa called twice to him, but he merely listened for a moment and then went on feeding. Finally, his mother came back, and it was in no uncertain manner that she walked up to her son. Jespah realized that he was in for trouble, so gobbling the meat and with large bits of it hanging out of either side of his mouth, trotted after her.

  At this time I had to go for a few days to Isiolo while George came to look after the camp.

  By now Elsa had won the hearts of thousands of people and became famous over night. It was gratifying but we feared she might have to share the fate of all celebrities – lack of privacy.

  People from all over the world wrote saying they would like to come and see her. After all the trouble we had taken to keep her and the cubs wild we could not agree to Elsa and her family being turned into a tourist attraction. We could, of course, appeal to her admirers, to sportsmen and to our friends not to invade her privacy, but we had no legal means of keeping people out and we were very worried in case some visitor should, in our absence, provoke Elsa and accidentally cause trouble.

  The way in which the cubs were developing into true wild lions exceeded our hopes, but their father was a great disappointment to us.

  No doubt we were partly to blame, for we had interfered with his relationship with his family – but certainly he was of no help as a provider of food for them; on the contra
ry, he often stole their meat. Moreover, he caused us a lot of trouble. One evening he made a determined attempt to get at a goat which was inside my truck, and another time when Elsa and the cubs were eating outside our tent she suddenly scented him, became very nervous, sniffed repeatedly towards the bush, cut her meal short and hurriedly removed the cubs.

  George went out with a torch to find out what the trouble was; he had not gone three yards when he was startled by a fierce growl and saw the cubs’ father hiding in a bush just in front of him. He retreated rapidly and luckily so did the lion.

  The next day another menace appeared. Makedde reported that an enormous crocodile was sleeping at the place where Elsa usually crossed the river. George took a rifle and went to the spot. The croc was still there, and huge it was, for after he had shot it he measured it – it was twelve feet two inches, a record for that river.

  If Elsa had been attacked by such a monster she would not have stood a chance.

  When I returned to camp I took Nuru with me, he had only just returned to us; he had been home for six months because he had suffered from an internal illness. Now he was well again, but he blamed Elsa for his sickness. This surprised me as he had always been very devoted to her, but it seemed that the onset of his malady had coincided with the time at which we had engaged him to look after Elsa and her two sisters. Because of this he was convinced that she had cast the evil eye on him.

  It was to dispel this belief that I was now taking him to the camp with me. As we waited in the drizzling rain, I told him about the cubs and he seemed very interested.

  During the night the river fell, so we were able to reach camp in the early hours of the morning. Elsa, attracted by vibrations of the car, gave us a welcome which, in our exhausted state, we found almost too boisterous.