Born Free Page 18

  In the afternoon, hoping to be able to show Nuru the cubs, we all walked in their direction. Suddenly we heard Elsa talking to them in the bush just ahead of us.

  Soon she came bouncing out and after greeting us made a great fuss of Nuru. Indeed, she was so overwhelmingly happy to see her old friend again after such a long absence, that he was very much touched; he began to pat her and discarded all his superstitious fear of her evil eye. After this reunion he became even more devoted to her than he had been before his illness. She did not, however, show him her cubs on this occasion and only brought them into camp after dark.

  Unlike their mother, they had never had any man-made toys to play with, but they wrestled in the bright lamplight and were never at a loss to find a stick to fight for. At other times they played hide-and-seek and ambushes. Often they would get locked in a clinch, the victim struggling on his back with all four paws in the air. Elsa usually joined in their games; in spite of her great weight, she sprang and hopped about as though she were herself a cub.

  We had provided two water bowls for them, a strong aluminium basin and an old steel helmet mounted on a piece of wood, which Elsa had used since her youth. This was the more popular of the two with the cubs. They often tipped it over and were alarmed at the clatter it made when it fell. Then recovering from their fright they faced the shiny moving object with cocked heads and finally began to prod it cautiously. We took flashlight photographs of these games.

  We had more difficulty in taking pictures of them at play during daylight, because they were then less active. Our best chance was in the late afternoon, when they went to a favourite playground near to a doum-palm which had fallen at the edge of the riverbank, some two hundred yards from the camp. This place afforded all amenities: it overlooked a wide-open space, it had thick bush close by into which they could disappear if any danger threatened, it was near to a salt lick, and also to the river, should they want a drink. Besides this I often placed a carcase nearby.

  George and I used to hide in the bush and take films of the family climbing up and down the fallen trunk, teasing their mother who was always there to guard them.

  They knew we were near but this did not disturb them; if, however, an African appeared, even in the distance, the game stopped at once and the cubs disappeared into the bush, while Elsa faced the intruder with flattened ears and a threatening expression.

  On 2 April George went back to Isiolo but I stayed on in camp.

  As the days passed I observed that the cubs were getting more and more shy even of me. Now they preferred to sneak through the grass in a wide circle to reach their meat, rather than follow their mother in a straight line, because this involved coming very close to me.

  To prevent predators from stealing the meat during the night I started dragging the carcase from the doum-palm near to my tent, to which I attached it by a chain.

  It was often a heavy load and Elsa used to watch me, apparently content that I had taken on the laborious task of protecting her meat.

  Jespah was much less happy when he saw me handling the kill. After several half-hearted attacks he sometimes charged me in a proper fashion, first crouching low and then rushing forward at full speed. Elsa came instantly to my rescue: she not only placed herself between her son and me, but gave him a sound and deliberate cuff. Afterwards she sat with me in the tent for a long time, totally ignoring Jespah, who rested outside looking bewildered. He lay by the helmet bowl, his head against it, occasionally lapping lazily.

  Touched as I was by Elsa’s reaction, I also understood that Jespah should be disconcerted by his mother’s disapproval of his instinctive reaction and I was most anxious not to arouse his jealousy.

  He was still too small to do very much harm but we both recognized that it was essential to establish a friendly truce with the cubs while they were still dependent upon us for food and before they had grown big enough to be dangerous. It was a difficult problem because while we did not want them to be hostile, neither did we want them to become tame. Recently Elsa herself seemed to have become aware of our difficulty and to be making her contribution to solving it. While she spanked Jespah if in his attempts to protect her he attacked me, she also dealt firmly with me if she thought I was getting too familiar with her children. For instance, several times when I came close to them while they were at play, she looked at me through half-closed eyes, walked slowly but purposefully up to me, and gripped me round the knees in a friendly but determined manner, which indicated very plainly that her grip would become much firmer if I did not take the hint and retire.

  15. The Personality of the Cubs

  One morning I was woken up by the arrival of a Land Rover bearing a message which told me to expect the arrival of two English journalists, Godfrey Winn and Donald Wise.

  This worried me as Elsa’s reactions were unpredictable when she had the cubs with her – she had lately even objected to Nuru’s presence. I sent the driver back with the message begging George to halt the party ten miles away from the camp and suggested that I should meet them there.

  Having taken these precautions I was rather surprised when the party nevertheless turned up, and I was trying to argue our guests into retiring when I heard Elsa’s ‘mhn, mhn’. Probably she had been attracted by the vibration of the engine; anyway, there she was and the cubs with her. In the circumstances all I could do was to make the best of the situation.

  I took our guests to the studio to have tea while George tied a carcase to the fallen doum-palm trunk, so that we could watch Elsa and the cubs eating. I told Mr Winn that I had no wish to monopolize Elsa and her family but was anxious that the lions should live a wild life, which entailed preserving their privacy.

  We spent a pleasant evening together, dining beside the tent. After a while Elsa jumped up on to the Land Rover which was standing not very far away from us.

  On the following evening we tied up a carcase near our tent. Elsa soon came for her meal and did all she could to induce the cubs to join her. She pranced round and did her best to cajole them and tried by every means to break down their fear, but not even Jespah ventured into the lamplight. That evening we heard their father calling and by the next morning they had all gone.

  When, on 8 April, George left for Isiolo I stayed on. One night Elsa turned up her nose at the meat I offered her; afterwards the boys told me that the goat had been ill; so her instinct had evidently warned her that the meat was infected. The cubs also would not touch it. As a rule, they were remarkably greedy, ate enormously and insisted on being suckled by Elsa as well as eating meat.

  Elsa spent that evening resting her head against my shoulder and ‘mhn-mhning’ to the cubs, a very sonorous sound, although it came through closed lips; fruitlessly, she tried to make them come to me.

  I was always touched by the way in which she discriminated when she played with me or with them. With the cubs she was often rather rough, pulling their skin, biting them affectionately or holding their heads down so that they should not interfere with her meal; it would have been most painful if she had treated me in the same way, but she was always gentle when we played together. I attributed this partly to the fact that when I stroke her, I always do so very gently, talking to her at the same time in a low, calm voice, to which she responds quietly. I am sure that if I treated her roughly, it would provoke her to demonstrate her superior strength.

  That night, after I had gone to bed, I heard Elsa’s mate calling, but instead of going to him, she tried to creep through the thorn fence into my boma. I called out, ‘No, Elsa, no,’ and she stopped at once. She then settled her cubs by the wicker gate and there they spent the night.

  The next day she did not appear till after dark and then only brought two cubs with her. Jespah was missing. Elsa settled down to her meal with Gopa and Little Elsa. I was anxious about Jespah but in the dark I could not go and look for him, so I tried to induce his mother to do so, by imitating his high-pitched ‘tciang-tciang’ at the same time pointing to the
bush. After a while, she went off. The two cubs did not seem to be worried by her absence and went on eating for at least five minutes before they made up their minds to follow her. A little later the three of them returned, but there was still no sign of Jespah. I repeated my tactics and Elsa made another search but again returned without him; a third time I induced her to go to find him but this proved equally unsuccessful.

  I then discovered that Elsa had a large thorn stuck deeply into her tail. It must have been very painful, and when I tried to pull it out she became irritable. Luckily, I did eventually manage to extract it, then she licked the wound and afterwards my hand, by way of thanking me. By this time Jespah had been missing for one hour.

  Suddenly and without any prompting from me she and the two cubs walked purposefully off into the bush and soon I heard Jespah’s familiar ‘tciangs’.

  Presently he appeared with the others, nibbled at some meat and came to lie within five feet of me. I was thankful to see him safely back as the hour he had chosen to go off on his own was the most dangerous so far as predators are concerned, and he was still much too young to tackle even a hyena let alone a lion. I suspected that he had been at the diseased carcase which his mother had refused to touch and which I had ordered to be thrown away at a good distance from the camp.

  To provide him with something harmless on which to spend his energy I got an old inner tube and wriggled it near him. He attacked it at once and soon his brother and sister joined in the new game. They fought and pulled until there was nothing left but shreds of rubber.

  That night it rained. In the morning I was much surprised to see not only Elsa’s pugmarks, but those of a cub inside George’s empty tent. It was the first time that one had entered the self-imposed forbidden area.

  On the following night Elsa, observing that the boys had forgotten to place thorn branches in front of the entrance to my enclosure, pushed the wicker gate aside, entered the tent and promptly lay down on my bed. Wrapped up in the torn mosquito netting she looked so content that I saw myself having to spend the night sitting in the open.

  Jespah followed his mother into the tent and stood on his hind legs examining the bed, but fortunately decided against trying it out. The other cubs stayed outside.

  We spent most of the evening trying to lure Elsa out of my tent – it was a difficult task since we dared not open the door in case all the cubs were to rush in and join their mother. What we intended was that Elsa should crawl out through the wickerwork door. For some time our hopes of success were pretty dim, then I began to make ‘tcianging’ noises round the camp and to flash my torch, pretending that the cubs were lost and that I was looking for them. This soon caused both Elsa and Jespah to rush out. She came through the door; how he got out I do not know. I now had my tent to myself but was unable to sleep because Elsa noisily attacked my truck. However, as on a previous occasion, to my surprise, she stopped when I shouted, ‘No, Elsa, no,’ to her. I could not understand why she went for the goats’ truck, for if she were hungry there was still some meat down by the river.

  The cubs were about sixteen weeks old and by now the family should have been guarding its kill. Had Elsa become so lazy that she expected us not only to provide her with food but also to relieve her of the task of protecting it?

  Were we ruining her wild instincts and should we leave her? The moment did not seem a propitious one for deserting her, because we had recently found the footprints of two strange Africans very near the camp. No doubt they had been reconnoitring our whereabouts, for the drought was again with us and probably they intended to bring their stock into the game reserves to graze, though this was illegal. In the circumstances, I felt I must go on providing the family with food; if not, Elsa would surely kill some trespassing goat. I comforted myself with the thought that very soon the rains would come, the tribesmen would go away and by the next dry season Elsa would have the cubs well on the run to hunt with her.

  Meanwhile, I was immensely interested in observing their development. Already they stretched their tendons; they stood on their hind legs and dug their claws into the rough bark of certain trees – preferably acacias – in so doing they exposed the pink bases of their claws. When they had finished this exercise, the bark showed deep gashes.

  I noticed a curious fact about Elsa’s faeces, which I had previously often examined for parasites. Before she gave birth to the cubs I had always found them riddled with tapeworm and roundworm, and although I had been told that the presence of tapeworm in a lion’s intestines is beneficial (and indeed in the post-mortems we made of any lion George had been asked to shoot, we always found quantities of them), I had nevertheless dosed Elsa from time to time to keep her clear of worms. But since she had had her family I never found a trace of a worm in her faeces nor were there any in those of the cubs. Only after they were nine and a half months old did I find tapeworms in all their droppings again.

  Another change related to cleanliness. In the past she had often wetted the groundsheet inside the tent and even sometimes the canvas roof of the Land Rover, but since she had become a mother she never permitted herself such bad manners and made the cubs walk off the path whenever they needed to relieve themselves.

  None of them showed any sign of the ‘ridge back’ which is so characteristic of lions. It is a patch about one foot long and two or three inches wide down the middle of the spine on which the hair grows in the opposite direction to the rest of the coat. Elsa and her sister, the Big One, grew their ridge backs very early, but Lustica, the third sister, never developed one.

  The cubs were very easily distinguishable. Jespah was much the lightest in colour, his body was perfectly proportioned and he had a very pointed nose and eyes so acutely slanted that they gave a slightly Mongolian cast to his sensitive face. His character was not only the most nonchalant, daring and inquisitive, but also the most affectionate. When he was not cuddling up against his mother and clasping her with his paws he demonstrated his affection to his brother and sister.

  When Elsa ate I often saw him pretending to eat too, but in fact only rubbing himself against her. He followed her everywhere like a shadow. His timid brother Gopa was also most attractive; he had very dark markings on his forehead but his eyes, instead of being bright and open like Jespah’s, were rather clouded and squinted a little. He was bigger and more heavily built than his brother and so pot-bellied that at one time I even feared he might have a rupture. Though he was by no means stupid, he took a long time to make up his mind and, unlike Jespah, was not venturesome; indeed, he always stayed behind till he was satisfied that all was safe.

  Little Elsa fitted her name, for she was a replica of her mother at the same age. She had the same expression, the same markings, the same slender build. Her behaviour, too, was so strikingly like Elsa’s that we could only hope that she would develop the same lovable character.

  She knew of course that for the moment she was at a disadvantage compared to her two stronger brothers, but she used cunning to restore the balance. Though all the cubs were well disciplined and obeyed Elsa instantly on all important occasions, when playing they showed no fear of her and were only occasionally intimidated by the cuffs she gave them when they became too cheeky.

  One evening when the whole family were lying in front of the tent, I started to light the Tilley pressure lamp. Suddenly it burst into flames and I had only time to throw it on to the ground outside the tent before it flared up so alarmingly that I ran for Ibrahim to help me put it out. We collected some old rags to beat it with but by the time we returned it had gone out. During all this commotion the cubs lay very close, quietly watching the strange behaviour of their ‘moon’. Elsa also came up to investigate the blaze and I had to shout, ‘No, Elsa,’ in my most commanding voice to prevent her from singeing her whiskers. She and the cubs then settled outside my tent for the night.

  Before I went to sleep I heard what sounded to me like the love-making of a pair of rhinos. These bulky beasts utter the most unexpect
edly meek sounds when mating. Another possibility was that the noises came from a pair of buffalo. But whatever it was I was glad that my rifle was near to my bed in case of an emergency. However, nothing more happened and I went to sleep, to be woken up next morning by the sound of crockery clattering on to the ground. The next moment the Toto rushed into the tent minus the teatray. Breathlessly, he told me that as he was carrying my early morning tea into the tent he had been nearly knocked down by a buffalo. He had only just managed to reach the gate of my enclosure ahead of the beast and to close it in his face. It made me smile to think that a light wicker gate should have given the poor fellow a sense of security when pursued by a charging buffalo.

  By the time the cubs were eighteen weeks old Elsa seemed to have become resigned to the fact that their relationship with us would never be the same as ours with her.

  Indeed, they were growing more shy every day and preferred to eat outside the area lit by our camp, except for Jespah, who, as he followed his mother everywhere, often came with her into the ‘danger zone’. Elsa now often placed herself between us and the cubs in a defensive position.

  As they were in excellent condition we thought that we should risk leaving them to hunt with Elsa, anyway for a few days. Their father had been about lately and as the family had only come into camp for short feeding visits, we assumed that they were spending most of their time with him.

  While the boys were breaking camp I went to the studio, and sitting on the ground, with my back against a tree, started reading a huge bundle of letters from readers of Born Free. They had come up with the Land Rover which had arrived to transport our belongings. I was worrying about how I should find time to answer them all, as I wanted to, when suddenly I was squashed by Elsa. As I struggled to free myself from beneath her three hundred pounds the letters were scattered all round the place and, when I had got on to my feet again and begun to collect them, Elsa bounced on to me every time I bent down to pick one up and we rolled together on the ground. The cubs thought this splendid fun and dashed round after the fluttering paper. I thought that Elsa’s admirers would have enjoyed seeing how much their letters were appreciated. In the end, I am glad to say that I recovered every one of them; I sent for Elsa’s dinner and this diverted her attention and that of the cubs.