For more than 2 years I have been contributing back page articles to this magazine and I have also completed a couple of online courses with them.
My biggest Wildlife Campus achievement to date?
Probably the fact that I started a course with them about 20 years ago…and I have yet to complete it!
That being said, I have never missed the monthly deadline for my articles.
This article first appeared in The Wildlife Campus magazine in October 2021.
How many lions does it take to bring down a fully grown female giraffe? In a reserve recently I had seen a pride of 27 individuals complete this daunting task.
But on this particular afternoon in a different reserve, it seems like the single male that we encountered had not received the email stating that you needed backup to help complete a kill.
Unlike most stories that start with “Once upon a time”, in this instance that was not the case as we were trying to get back to our lodge before an incoming storm bumped large amounts of rain on us. But never let a lightning storm get in the way of a possible sighting…
“There is a dam close by that I want to check out before heading back,” said our guide as the first drops started to make themselves felt. But the actual storm was still a way off and we were all hoping that it would bypass us, so it was off to the dam at a slightly increased pace.
The dam, as it turned out was filled with Egyptian Geese and more Knob-billed ducks than I have ever seen before. Interesting but not exciting.
Until the tracker quietly said “There is a fallen giraffe on the far side of the dam”…and that got our adrenalin pumping.
We headed off for the far side of the dam expecting to find an entire pride greedily feeding on the carcass, however, we found one lone male lying and panting close by as the sky darkened and the rain became more insistent.
Usually, lions will drag their prey under a bush or into a thicket to protect it from scavengers, but trying to drag a giraffe is NOT n easy task and it turned out to be an advantage for us as this particular kill was in the open and easily accessible by our vehicle.
How could a single animal do this? Well from the signs on one of the sandy banks it looks like the giraffe had slipped and fallen and once down, giraffe are easy prey as they cannot get back up again.
Being alone, he was under threat from the other males in the area, so it was with excitement that we found that he had been joined by another male and that these two could be the beginning of a new coalition.
It turned out that she was pregnant which could have been part of the reason for her falling while being chased. Either way, this was an enormous amount of meat for one animal to consume.
Lions, once they have killed will not move far from the carcass and with the thrumming of the rain on the bonnet, we donned ponchos and headed back to the lodge hoping for two things… 1] The lion and the carcass would still be there in the morning and 2] we would be able to outrun the storm.
We were correct on the first and wrong on the second, arriving back at the lodge soaked to the skin but unphased by the experience. In an urban setting, being rained on is NOT fun, but in the bush, it becomes a memory to be shared around a fire with the others who were on the vehicle.
We did go back to the lion on several more drives and he was still busy working his way through what could have been about 1000kg of meat.
This young hyena was the first of the cleaning crew that arrived on the scene.
It was alone and seemed uncertain as to what to do with such a jackpot of meat.
The lion did not want to share yet and successfully chased it off without too much interaction.
Before we left the reserve, we stopped at the carcass one last time. By now the vultures had arrived and were helping themselves without any interferance for the lions that were lying a distance away sated and bloated.
This is the unending cycle of predator and prey, for the former to survive, the latter has to die.
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