This morning started off with another crazy encounter. No sooner had we left camp, than we came
across a Male Lion walking down the road in the early morning light. He eventually veered off the road so we got
up ahead of him and them pulled off the road to wait for him and photograph him
some more. No sooner did we do that,
than our guide heard another lion up the road calling out and he broke into a
fast trot right away. Our guide said he
also heard a few Hyenas calling out to each other, and realized the Lions must
have had a kill and the Hyenas found it, and he was running to chase them off
and protect his kill. We raced off up in
the direction of the calls, hoping to beat him there, which we did… only to see
at least a dozen Hyenas gathered together, one carrying what looked like a
blanket at first, until I realized it was the skin of an animal. The Hyenas all took off before we could get
any good photos of them. We turned
around to see where the Lion went and we couldn’t see him anymore. Our guide said the kill must be nearby and we
started to try to find it.
We drove back and forth a little bit not seeing anything, when the guide
decided to turn off the jeep, and listen.
His face lit up and he turned to tell us that he could hear the lions
eating and that the kill was very nearly, and he wasn’t kidding. He pulled forward about 30 feet over the
crest of a small hill, and there it was, with the Lioness and one of her cubs
eating away. Two other cubs were hiding
a little back in the scrub and we weren’t sure if they had eaten their share
already, or were hiding because they weren’t used to seeing the jeeps yet.
We parked and watched from about 30 feet away, and stayed
very still and quiet. The two cubs that
had been hiding, came out after a few minutes, but neither went to eat so
chances are it was just that they were already full. The male lion was just on the other side of
us, watching for any other predators that might try to come steal their
meal.
We noticed 3 Jackals that were hanging around, looking for any chance to steal
a bite.. and the Lioness and her cubs did eventually move away from the carcass
to go to the river for a drink. As soon
as they were out of site, one of the braver Jackals slowly worked up the nerve
to take a quick bite of food, and tore a piece off and made a run for it, only
to be jumped by another Jackal that stole that from him.
The Lion seemed to have enough of everyone knowing where his food was, and
decided to get up and drag the carcass off to a better location that he could
protect easier.
We decided to move away after all of the action slowed down,
and went to look for the Hyena den.
Turns out it wasn’t that far away after all, and we sat and watched the
opening for a bit, and saw a young’un come out and survey the area to see what
all the noise was.
That was the crazy action of the morning. We continued to drive around after that to
just see what we could see. We saw lots
of Zebra, Giraffe, Elephants, etc. The
morning ended with a very fun encounter with elephants, where we just sat and
watched them as they slowly worked their way past us. There were a couple of young babies and
yearlings in the group.
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