When I joined the lions at dusk Manyari had already left the males and was heading north on her own calling repeatedly as she went. It would seem she’s looking for her lioness friend Magwaza.
The males would sometimes call back at her but she seemed to be ignoring them.
Having headed about 5kms north Manyari headed east, stopped calling and was now in hunting mode. She hunted impala, impala, wildebeest, impala, impala, impala, wildebeest, impala, zebra, giraffe, impala and wasn’t successful with any of them.
Around 3am she started calling again and kept heading east. Near HQ she hunted waterbuck unsuccessfully. And further east of this the males joined her with their usual competitive edge wanting to be by her side.
We lost them in the hills and near Simbiri camp and then heard all the commotion. After much negotiating through the hills I found them. Manyari was moving away, but one lion was on the porch of a small building and the other was behind the building staring at the window. Only then did I realise what was happening.
Imagine this: the lion sees his reflection in the window and being a highly territorial male, is now highly hacked off at this ‘intruder’ so he calls his brother. Thinking he’ll have the upper edge with 2 against one, he suddenly sees in the reflection another lion approaching just as his brother gets there. Mass confusion and a serious reason to fight any ‘intruders’. Luckily the lions weren’t able to get to the windows, as they would surely have smashed them.
And so the king finds himself a new fool.
The males only gave up on the ‘intruders’ about half an hour later and followed Manyari south across the airstrip to rest.
An elephant bull was close by trying to push over an Acacia tortilis tree. He tried from several angles but just couldn’t go it.
Seemingly embarrassed that we’d been watching his silly antics he sauntered right up to the vehicle, gave us the once over as he tried to save grace and then walked on by.
By now the sun was well up, Manyari hadn’t given us any time to rest last night and so it was straight back to camp.
AND oh no!!! I’ve still got a puncture to fix.
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