Lion Cubs Are Little Piggies When They Eat

Today we saw lions! We found a mother and about 9 cubs. Apparently the cubs were young, 1-2 months old, but they were already nearly a meter long and maybe 40lbs. The mother was relaxing as the cubs devoured her most recent kill. Each cub was greedily tearing at the zebra carcass and making the lion equivalent of "nom nom nom" sounds. They were very loud munchkins and not a bit worried about hiding their enjoyment of fresh meat. Another adult lion was lounging around nearby. She was so relaxed that she almost looked dead. With her paws up and belly raised, she had a remarkable resemblance to my kittens.

Tomorrow we will return to Maun and the relative hustle of the city. This time in the bush has definitely left me with some valuable lessons. First, I didn't know that being only a few hundred feet away from lions would be so terrifying. When you are cruising around the bush and see lions, you give much more thought to their ability to charge and literally rip you to pieces you. Such a feeling defitely increases your reverance for the animals and the desire to return to camp for tea.

Similarly, I did not know that elephants are regarded as such a danger. Sven has told me horrific stories about how elephants have disposed of trespassers. It is not the lions and leopards, but the elephants that have us frantically shining our torches in all directions as we slowly make our ways to our tents at night. It is also the elephants that make it dangerous to go very far from the lodge or the car during the day. When we went to track impala earlier in the week, we did not walk about. We only got outside of the car to take measurements before driving on. The danger of elephants is increased by their silence. The little sparrows hopping around in the leaves make more noise than a herd of elephants, so it is easy to creep up upon them. Disney did well to portray waltzing elephants in fantasia. The elephants float across with slow movements as though the hot midday air was actually corn syrup. Even the elephant that came within 200 feet of the car was inaudible.

Finally, I have learned that getting a working knowledge of Tsetswana is going to far more difficult than I had hoped. Learning materials for tsetwana are sparse. Unless I can find some primary school books in Maun tomorrow, I will be left trying to piece together a vocabulary from lists of words, academic papers on the structure of the language, and many hours of humility. I promised the staff at the lodge here that next time I visit I will speak to them in tsetswana. They just looked at me and laughed.