About ten minutes into our afternoon game drive, we came to a place where we found numerous vultures congregating and rather hyperactive – all flying to one direction. An Acacia was “blossoming” with as many as 18 vultures on it. Shreya and I actually counted the vultures on the tree one by one! All were looking keenly to the left of our front. Taking a cue, we goaded Ngorongo to drive quickly to the left of our front and soon came near a tree where, under it and well hidden by the surrounding tall grasses, a young lion was panting for breath. The wind, in the meantime, had picked up strongly outside and rains seemed imminent.
The lion got up and started “digging” into something that we could not yet see. Ngorongo opined that because of the nearing rains, perhaps the youngster was working out a shelter. This seemed rather far fetched and we decided to wait it out and see what happened.
Soon the young lion was dragging out a carcass – was it a warthog? No, too big – could be a buffalo. Only after it had dragged out the entire animal into a reasonably clear space (for the viewers ) did we realize that it was a huge wildebeest. How such a small lion had managed to kill such a big wildebeest was a wonder! For the next 45 minutes or more, we stayed transfixed at the spot and watched with keen interest and anticipation, as the young lion tugged and pulled and licked endlessly at the tough hide of the dead wildebeest, trying desperately and with all its might to tear open into the kill.
It went on and on – and once came up with blood dribbling from its tongue and chin. We hoped that it had finally been able to open a hole in to the body to start feeding only to realize that it had just soaked up some blood from the wildebeest’s throat, where it had first bitten in to to choke its prey.
Time went by and it had started to rain hard. For some reasons the youngster now appeared apprehensive and started getting fidgety. It was certainly not our presence that seemed to unsettle it; it had to be something else. Every now and again, it would stand up on all fours, look keenly somewhere behind us to our left and sniff strongly in to the air.
As it kept on with its efforts to tear into the wildebeest carcass, its looking out for an yet unknown adversary became more and more frequent.
Our cameras were all getting wet and we decided to leave the young lion at its task of opening into its wildebeest kill for a well earned meal. It seemed that the youngster was finally making some headway. Hardly had we driven off for a minute or so, did we spot another lion in the distance. It was rapidly striding towards our direction and closed the distance between it and us rather fast. So this is why the youngster was so fidgety! We realized that attracted by the smell of the dead wildebeest, it was quickly getting to the source! As it came near, we saw that it was a large, strong, magnificent beast. It was less than 20 feet from us when it stopped in its tracks, its path blocked by the line of Safari vehicles that also created a barrier of sorts between this big beast and the younger lion with the kill. It pondered for a while and then spotting a gap between two vehicles just ahead of us, bolted across the track towards the tree. As it neared the carcass, it growled - this was enough for the young one to leave its prize and flee!
We turned our vehicles around quickly – it seemed the youngster had finally made a breakthrough and had just started feeding when usurper chased it away. The mightier lion now had the wildebeest all to itself, happily dipping into a ready-made meal!
We watched it for sometime – the hard driving rain posed a major problem for any chance of good photography without damaging our cameras further – and left. As we retraced our way back to our Camp, we could not help but feel sad for the young lion. It had done all the hard work but in the end was chased away from its rightful reward by a mightier adversary!
