Today is the Feast of Beasts - the day I'll get to hide and watch the lions race for food - and my foot hurts! I can barely walk, but I'm gonna soldier through. Maybe I'll convince my foot that it's okay before long. I'll sure give it the ol' college try! My driver was on time (maybe a few minutes early). He's got jokes! He told me he was concerned about me because the tour operator called and asked if he could hurry me there because the lions were hungry! We got there, and I met Liki (the operator) and Angela (a photography intern from Alberta, Canada. I'm going to have to look into this program!). He put us in a caged truck because the lions are wild animals, and though they are well fed and likely wouldn't make any moves toward us, he didn't want to take that chance. Imagine getting in and out of that contraption when you're having difficulty walking and lots of pain! But it was worth every second!
The lion enclosure is huge, double fenced and reinforced to prevent the wild elephants from the national park damaging it. There are five lions in the main enclosure, four females and a male. The male is 20 years old, which is six years past his normal life expectancy. You can definitely see that he is in the final portion of his life.
There is another, younger male in a smaller (but still pretty large) pen inside the enclosure that Liki is trying to get ready to introduce to the females of the pride. When it is time, they will take the old man out and let him retire. Liki said the females are wearing the old man out, as they come in and out of heat, and require his services every 20 minutes or so! At one point, the old lion decided to challenge the new young male. The fence was between them, though, so neither of them got hurt. Liki feels confident that if they went after each other for real, the old man would not survive. That's why he's getting the females used to the new male and will remove the old man before letting the young male out with the pride. Liki does expect there to be a bit of a row between the females and the new male before they accept him, but it shouldn't be so bad since they're growing used to his scent.
After seeing the lion pen, we moved on to the hyenas. This was a welcome surprise, as the only hyena I had gotten to see was the one in Murchison Falls that was on the side of the road after dark. Liki let us out of the cage in the hyena pen. These guys could certainly kill us if they wanted, but they tend to be more scavengers than predators. We got much closer than the 3-5 meters he said, especially when they decided to follow us and walk right up to us. If it had been allowed, I could have reached out and petted one of the males that followed me. It's sometimes hard to tell the males from the females because the females grow a false penis. These guys are members of the cat family, but act, look, and move more like dogs. These particular hyenas are all wild born. There was a community in Zimbabwe where the hyenas were highly destructive to crops and livestock, and after having tried several measures to control the situation, the government finally issued a kill order, allowing community members to eradicate the species from the area. Liki went to the community and asked for the opportunity to trap and relocate them into a fenced in area where they could not return to the community, and they gave him a few days to trap as many as he could before they started killing them off. He managed to get a few. We saw the tracks where the wild hyenas from the park come up to the fence and play with the ones he captured. He says it sometimes looks like the wild hyenas have tried to get in, but he has never seen signs of his hyenas trying to get out.
After the hyenas, it was time to feed “the boys”. We went to a cave-like area with large-guage wire fencing. We were eye level with the ground. When we picked our spots and said we were ready, Liki phoned up and told the caretaker to release them. You could hear the ground thundering before any of the lions got close enough to see. I just had my camera taking burst shot after shot. I didn't want to miss a thing! And I didn't! I got some really great shots. I think I can make my favorite one multiple different shots because it has three out of the four lions that were feeding. The fourth wasn't interested to begin with, so he never even left his temporary enclosure, leisurely strolling down a little bit later. The third wanted to be shy, so he grabbed his meat and took off. The other two tore into the meat. You could hear them growling and munching. Soooo close to them! You could even hear the meat tearing off the bone! It was amazing!
This is a separate shot of the guy bringing up the rear with the dirt in his face!
After that, we went to see the ostriches. Not a big deal to me, and my foot was really hurting. In fact, I was starting to feel nauseous from the pain and the heat, but I just had to soldier on. We saw the crested eagle who is blind and can't fly, the duiker, and the two vultures, one of whom has only one wing (the other isn't injured and can fly away whenever he feels like it, but he hasn't felt like it yet).
When we got back to the lodge, a large breakfast was set before me. I just couldn't eat it. I had a couple of bites, but thought I was going to throw it up. I did have an apple that was delicious, some tea and pineapple juice. Those things went down well. I wished the protein would have. I tried the sausage and the egg. They were both good, but I just couldn't tolerate them. When I finally got home, I laid down and started removing items of clothing as I felt like it between naps. It was only 9:30. Finally, by about noon, I felt good enough to start looking at photos and around 1:00, I was able to fix and eat a bowl of ramen noodles.
Tomorrow is another early morning. I need to spend today working on my foot and getting things together. It's a motorized game drive, so I need to get The Baby ready for her last foray in Africa! Hopefully, I'll feel better in the morning with some exercises I learned in physical therapy and some extra meds!
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