Hello friends from earth and other places. A brief-ish update from
the Liuwa Plain.
December 16, 2011 AD
I am in Kalabo for the day because we had to come down here to bring a
telemetry receiver to the park manager so that he could do a fly-over
of the park and search for one of the young female lions who has gone
missing again. The youngsters are afraid of the males and thus afraid
to stick around, so they keep wandering off and we keep trying to
bring them back so that they’ll meet Lady. Playing god. The main
reason being that we don’t want the youngsters to wander into villages
inside the park and kill people or livestock, and if they learn from
Lady, she’ll teach them to eat wildabeests instead of humans. And
currently, the youngsters (well, one of them at least) is near a
village and school.
The other night, the youngsters were found 25km away from our camp, in
an area with very little food for them. They were near the edge of
the park and the border with Angola--areas where they would be more
susceptible to poaching, getting into villages, or landmines (remnants
of the Angolan civil war). So we drove out to where they were with a
leg of a wildabeest carcass in the back of one of the trucks. I was
with the four film crew guys, which is mostly who I’ve been working
with lately since I am the only ZCP personnel currently in Liuwa.
Just after sunset, we tied the wildabeest leg to a rope and drug it
behind the truck at a distance of about 12 feet. We drug it past the
young lions and they immediately began to follow us. Trolling for
lions. We had to drive very slowly to keep them interested, and we
ended up pulling them 15km closer to camp, which took us about 5
hours. I sat in the back of the truck the whole time holding a
spotlight on the leg and the lions, making sure the lions lag too far
behind, and making sure they didn’t grab hold of the leg--which they
almost did about 4 times. The lions got distracted at one point by a
porcupine, which they proceeded to chase and get quilled by.
At about one o’clock in the morning time, it became apparent that the
youngsters were running out of steam and getting tired of following
us. I was completely exhausted as well and beginning to have waking
dreams. So, we cut the rope and let them have the meat. A lone hyena
had been following us for a couple of kilometers as well, interested
in the meat. When we cut the rope, the hyena started vocalizing but
was too afraid to approach the lions. The hyena disappeared and came
back 5 minutes later with another hyena, and they were being quite
vocal but still not bold enough to try to steal the wildabeest leg.
The lionesses would roar while still chewing every time the hyenas got
too close. The two hyenas disappeared again. Five minutes later, in
the spotlight I saw 14 pairs of hyena eyes running towards the lions.
They gathered around and started laughing like nothing I’ve ever
heard. The sound surrounded us, both haunting and amusing, and
strangely harmonic. Although 14 laughing hyenas could not persuade
the lionnesses to give up their food that they had walked 15kms to
receive, two male lions could. We didn’t see the males at first, but
we saw the effect of their presence. In an instant, all of the hyenas
and both lionesses darted off in various directions. I believe that
was the spark that cause the females to disappear of our radar again.
Tonight might consist of driving back into the park, searching for
both lionesses, and once again dragging a carcass or two away from the
villages and back towards our camp. It is a difficult situation, and
there is very little precedent for how to handle lion reintroductions
such as these (especially in a landscape where there are only 3 other
lions and several nearby villages).
Besides that, the mangos are getting ripe and delicious and the rivers
are a’rising. It rains almost nightly now, and all the dry ditches
became streams overnight. And there are new pools of water
everywhere. The lechwe (small antelope) are arriving along with new
birds and even more wildabeest and zebra. Flowers are blooming,
snakes and lizards are appearing, and the sand is hardening into
something easier to drive on. I ran over a 4 foot lizard the other
day, but did not visibly injure it. I was on the motorbike and I had
just seen a different one of those 4 foot dinosaurs a few minutes
prior, and when I saw the second lizard at the last second, a sound
came out of my mouth (or more out of my soul, really) that I have
never made before and will likely never make again. What the sound
was trying to say in less than one second was, “Holy Shoot! Is that a
giant snake I’m about to run over? and I can’t stop this bike quick
enough! I hope I don’t hit that thing, I hope it doesn’t bite me! Oh
man its another one of those huge lizards! Ahhhh, I’m gonna hit it!
Ahhh, I hit it!” Those words translated into sound was something
like, “ooohhhhhooggghhuhhhuuyoyu ahahh eeee!!!!” The lizard and I
were both a little shooken up, but fine.
The wild dogs have made an appearance before my eyes twice this week.
They are amazing, and probably my favorite of the carnivores. We
watched them take down a wildabeest calf the other day, and when they
were done feeding, they proceeded to splash around and play in a pool
of water for over an hour. While most big carnivores around here rest
for an entire day (or two, or three) after a big meal, the dogs
instead have fun. They eat some calories, play for hours, rest a
while, then go find something else to eat. Lions are great to
observe, but more often than not, they are just lying around. The
wild dogs are always up to something interesting, and they are always
on the go, which makes them hard to find and rare to witness, which in
turn makes witnessing them all the more special. Just to clarify,
these are not feral dogs or domestic dogs gone wild. They are a truly
wild species. Wild and beautiful.
I suppose that is all for now.
Hope everyone is feeling fine
Much Love
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