by Joy Adamson
Later a scout arrived from Elsa’s camp and reported that during the night of 5/6 April a young lion had been there and left pugmarks all over the place where George usually pitched his tent; afterwards he had gone off towards the Big Rock. On the following night he had returned in the company of a big lion. The latter did not come into camp but crossed the river. The young lion had gone first to the tree we used as a ‘bush-fridge’, then to Elsa’s grave, and finally into the old crate. This confirmed our belief that it must be Gopa. No doubt disgusted at being chased out of the bomas before he could get a meal, hunger had prevailed over his natural timidity and he had made the journey home on his own, hoping to find us in camp with a square meal ready for him.
If Gopa were to act as a guide to the other cubs and induce them to return to Elsa’s camp, this would greatly facilitate our task.
That night the cubs passed within a hundred yards of George, on their way from a boma where they had eaten part of a dead goat which the tribesmen had thrown out. We were desperate. All we could do was to reinforce the thorn enclosures around all the bomas and set scouts to guard as many of them as possible.
During the next day the atmosphere was heavy with rain and after I went to bed it started to pour. I felt worried about George, sitting up in this deluge in his small tent surrounded by lions; also the hippos’ booming sounded very much closer to my tent than I cared for. But in spite of these anxieties, I dozed off.
I woke suddenly, conscious of a rhythmic swish-swishing noise, but as it was mixed up with the drumming of the rain on the canvas of my tent and the roaring of the flooded Tana a few feet away, I could not make out what it was – perhaps a broken branch brushing against my tent. I paid no further attention to it. Then one of my tent-poles collapsed. I flashed my torch and saw that the swishing noise was made by waves lapping against my tent.
We had pitched camp about nine feet above the normal water level; within three hours the waters of the Tana had risen by this amount. In whatever direction I looked I could see nothing but water. By the beam of my torch I could see that the hinterland was already a swamp pocked with deep pools, and this was the only place to which we could move – if the river did not get there first; another foot rise, and the water would sweep over it.
I was near to panic. I yelled to the boys, but their tents were about two hundred yards away, and in the thundering roar of the Tana they could not hear me. I ran over to them as fast as I could. The flaps of their tents were tightly fastened and they were all sound asleep in what were now proper traps. Indeed, if I had not reached them when I did, they might all have been drowned.
As soon as they staggered out, they realized the danger. First they pulled down George’s large tent, which held our rifles, medicines, food and kit. It was already half-flooded, so we dumped all we could snatch in the hinterland and then pulled down my smaller tent. My torch was the only one which worked, but soon this too dropped into the water and was useless. I thought how lucky it was that Ibrahim was here, for he organized the panic-stricken men and got most of our kit out of the torrent.
We were safe for the time being, but I realized that unless a miracle happened it would only be a matter of minutes before the hinterland, our only refuge, was also flooded.
I stuck a stick into the mud to mark the water level, and watched it anxiously. I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw that the water remained at the same level; the flood had reached its full height just before it would have carried our camp away.
Quickly, we set about rescuing George’s Land Rover, which was temporarily out of action and half covered by the flood. Luckily it was close to a tree and, with an improvised pulley, we were able to hoist it and keep it suspended above the water, so that it could not be swept away. Again, I was glad that Ibrahim was there to help with the operation. When it was completed we waited, drenched and exhausted, for dawn to break.
At first light George arrived, stiff, cold and wet. He told us that before the rain started Jespah and Little Elsa had arrived and eaten an enormous meal and left soon afterwards. When the downpour began all the tent-poles gave way and the tent collapsed on top of George. For the rest of the night he had huddled beneath the wet canvas. He felt very uneasy, for if the cubs had returned to investigate the wreckage he would have been quite helpless. But Little Elsa and Jespah were, as it later proved, otherwise occupied, for in spite of having eaten so heartily they had gone off to a boma and killed a goat.
By breakfast-time the river had fallen six feet. Scanning the lashing waves with field glasses, I saw amongst the debris a dinghy perched upside down on the top of a tree growing on one of the islands. I also observed a beautiful Goliath heron on the opposite bank; he was smashing a fish in rapid strokes against a rock. I thought how hard he had to work to prepare his breakfast.
31. Preparations for Trapping the Cubs
I laid out our soaked belongings to dry in the sun, while George went in search of the cubs. He did not find them but that night, as he sat up in my car with a meal ready, Jespah and Little Elsa arrived, ate ravenously and stayed till 11 p.m. In the early hours of the morning George heard both cubs roaring. So far as he knew, this was their first attempt, and though the sound was a little immature, it was quite a creditable performance. We wondered whether they were calling to Gopa – or asserting their right to their new territory.
On the following night the two cubs came in early, ate half the meal George had prepared for them, and then, when it started to rain, went off and apparently out of sheer devilment attacked a boma, killing three goats and mauling four more.
The next evening, on his way to the cubs, George got bogged down in the mud. When he arrived he found Jespah and Little Elsa waiting for him, and for some time he sat in the dark and heard them contentedly eating the meal he had provided. Later, when he switched on his headlights, he was surprised to see three cubs. Gopa must just have arrived, for he was formally greeting his brother and sister. When this ceremony was over, he got down to the meat and would not let the other cubs come near it. He must have been very hungry, but looked fit. He had been away for over a week, and George thought that during this time he must have had at least two good meals or he would not have been in such good condition. All the cubs took their cod-liver oil, after which they went off in the direction of the bomas. George fired a warning shot, so the scouts were on the alert when the cubs arrived and greeted them with thunderflashes which scared them off.
Although, up to now, the cubs had not collaborated in our plans to catch them in the crates, we thought it essential that everything should be ready for their capture. Day by day the weather was getting worse, and it was vital that we should get the crates up before the rain made transport by lorry impossible.
To collect all the things we required, I set off with Ibrahim for Isiolo; there I heard from Major Grimwood that after negotiating with a number of game reserves he had obtained permission for us to take the cubs to the Serengeti National Parks in Tanganyika. I was most grateful to him and extremely pleased, for the Serengeti is famous for lions and an abundance of game; I felt that we could not have found a better home for Elsa’s cubs.
I wrote to the Director of the National Parks, thanking him for his generous offer and pointing out that for a month or two at least the cubs would still need our help, since they were only sixteen months old; and a short time ago still had their milk teeth and would not be able to hunt independently until they were two years. Of course I also mentioned that Jespah had an arrow in his rump.
It rained without stopping while I was at Isiolo and I itched to get back before we were cut off by the floods. When I finally arrived, complete with three crates and a lorry, George told me that the cubs had come to him during each of the four nights I had been absent, and that though they had tried to make some raids they had been driven off before any damage was done. The precautions he had taken – reinforcing the thorn enclosures, guarding the most vulnerable homes with scouts and giving a warning shot
when he suspected that the cubs were bent on mischief – had proved successful.
George described how on one occasion he had given the cubs two guinea fowl. This had immediately started a fight; with guinea fowl available they showed no interest in the carcase he had put out for them. He said that Little Elsa was limping badly, probably from a thorn in one of her pads, but as she was as wild as ever he could do nothing to help her.
The cubs were now in excellent condition. Jespah still carried the arrowhead in his rump, but it did not appear to cause him any discomfort or interfere with his movements. They had recovered their trust in George and were quite at ease as he walked amongst them while they fed, refilling their water bowl and their pie dishes of cod-liver oil. Nor was it only during the hours of darkness that they proved trustful. The day before, in broad daylight, George had come upon them asleep under a bush. They had shown no alarm and only slowly moved a short distance before settling down to sleep again.
This was certainly an improvement, but we still felt as though we were living on a volcano. The bush all round us was swarming with herds of goats and sheep and these herds were in the charge of small children. The sooner the cubs were captured and removed the better for everybody.
To this end, we cleared an opening in the bush close to the place where they were in the habit of lying-up during the day. There we placed the three crates side by side. George suspended their trapdoors by ropes running through pulleys fastened to a straight tree-trunk which he had secured horizontally above the crates by driving both ends into the forks of the two trees between which the crates stood. Having done this, he then brought the ends of the three ropes together and spliced them into a single rope; this he tied with a slip knot to a tree about twenty yards in front of the crates where he intended to wait inside his Land Rover. Thus, if the three cubs entered separate crates, all he had to do was to release the rope and all three trapdoors would fall simultaneously.
The first thing to do was to accustom the cubs to feed in the crates, and then wait for the critical moment. For eleven nights now they had come more or less regularly to be fed by George, so to entice them from the vicinity of the bomas and in the direction of the traps, he gradually moved the place at which he fed them towards the crates. When he had lured the cubs to within a quarter of a mile of them he attached two carcases to the Land Rover and when the cubs appeared slowly towed the meat towards the box-traps.
The cubs did not show any fear of the large boxes – Gopa even sat inside one of them while he ate his meal.
At last it looked as though we might capture the cubs fairly soon.
Meanwhile, we wanted to remove the arrowhead from Jespah’s rump. George had asked the elders who could still remember tribal warfare how they used to extract arrows embedded in flesh. They said that they twiddled the shaft and thus loosened the barb with less damage to the flesh than if it were pulled straight out. We didn’t think that Jespah would allow us to do much twiddling, so George invented a device consisting of a larger copy of the barb, with razor-sharp edges. This he hoped to slip under the arrowhead and then pull both out together without enlarging the wound more than was necessary. To do this would involve confining Jespah in a crate and then using a local anaesthetic of the freezing-spray type. George hoped that it could be done after the three cubs were trapped and before they started the journey to the Serengeti. So, to get the spray, and some chains for our four-wheel-drive vehicles, I set off for Isiolo with Ibrahim. We travelled in Ken’s Bedford lorry which needed repairs and had some nasty moments when the huge five-ton truck skidded on the wet road. The sky was black and there was plainly more rain coming, so I was in a great hurry to get back before conditions got any worse.
Luckily it only took me one day to make my purchases. I also rang up Julian McKeand who promised to join us next morning to help with the capture. Then I rang up John Berger the Naro Moru vet and one at Nairobi, both living along the route we should take with the cubs, and asked them if they would operate on Jespah if we passed at a convenient time, for I was doubtful whether the freezing spray would take effect on Jespah’s thick pelt and didn’t want to risk an operation that might be a failure.
When Julian arrived, I told him how we planned to capture the cubs. He advised fetching the large communal crate from Isiolo. He thought it might be much easier to catch the cubs in this and afterwards move them into separate crates, for he doubted whether they would each simultaneously enter a separate crate. We could not of course risk trying to capture them separately, as the first to be caught would be certain to warn the others.
So we loaded the lorry with the cumbersome communal crate, filled with as many goats as it would hold; Julian took his Land Rover so that he could move independently.
During the night the rain poured down as though it were coming through a hose. All along the road cars were slithering about in and out of deep ruts, their drivers fighting to avoid landing in a ditch or colliding with other vehicles; sudden cloudbursts made the situation still worse. Long before we reached the river, the roaring of its torrent told me that we were not going to be able to get across. Nearly nine feet of raging water was flowing between the steep banks. All we could do was to camp beside the river for the night and hope that by next day the level would have fallen.
But in the morning we saw that the water instead of falling had risen to a still higher level. There was nothing to be done except send two scouts across country – a distance of not more than fifteen miles in a straight line through the bush – to tell George of our predicament and to ask him to send us his Land Rover along the newly cut track and, when the water receded, to tow us across. We then settled down to wait for our rescue party.
32. The Capture
Among the mail I had collected at Isiolo I found press-cuttings with most alarming headlines. Elsa’s cubs may have to be shot. Death threat to Elsa’s cubs. Elsa’s cubs sentenced to death.
I was terrified. The reports stated that Major Grimwood had told reporters in Nairobi that he had instructed George to try to capture the cubs and transfer them to a game reserve, and that if he failed to do so he must shoot them. That Major Grimwood should tell the press that he was giving such an order without first informing us was utterly unlike him. I felt sure then, as I afterwards discovered to be true, that the press had misunderstood what he had told them.
I knew, of course, that if the cubs scratched anyone, even slightly, they would be sentenced to death; mercifully they had not done so, but it was vital to move them as soon as possible, and meanwhile we had to remain inactive, facing the unfordable river.
Suddenly the rain stopped. Ibrahim and I anxiously watched the water slowly subsiding. As I feared that the scouts, making their way on foot to the camp, might have been delayed, I suggested that Julian should drive as near to the camp as he could, taking Ibrahim with him so that when they could go no farther in the Land Rover Ibrahim could walk the rest of the way and deliver my message to George.
They set off, and after the car had reached its limit, Ibrahim plodded for many miles waist-deep through slush and, as I expected, reached the camp long before the scouts turned up. George sent Ibrahim back to us in his Land Rover, and at noon the next day we saw him waving cheerfully to us from the opposite bank.
When we reached the far bank we left the lorry and driver behind to follow later, squeezed into the Land Rover, and were soon bumping along the newly cut track.
Soon after his arrival, George took us to see the box-traps and demonstrated his device. We were very much impressed when, as soon as he released the rope, the three doors crashed down simultaneously like guillotines, leaving a small gap to accommodate a protruding tail if necessary. No professional could have designed a better way of trapping the cubs, and I felt very proud of him.
He told us that the cubs had come every night and that each had entered a crate to eat the meat he had placed in it. Jespah had even spent a whole night inside one of them. The trouble was that sometimes two
cubs would go into the same box; or if all three were in different crates, then a head or a rump would protrude beyond the door, making it impossible to use the guillotine device. Would they ever, all three, be at the same time in a position which would make it possible for us to capture them?
We were full of hope that our anxieties might be nearing an end when the mail brought us a bombshell. George received a letter from the District Commissioner in whose area we now stayed, containing an ultimatum to capture the cubs within a stated period. The DC added that he was sorry to have to give this order, but since the situation was being exploited politically he could not give us his support after this date.
We were most distressed; for although we believed that we were nearing the time when we might hope to capture the cubs, we were working under great handicaps: my injured leg, sickness amongst our staff, the fact that though George had recently handed in his resignation, so as to be able to spend all his time with the cubs, this could not take immediate effect and he might be obliged to return to Isiolo, then Julian had had to leave and, finally, there was the possibility that at any moment heavy rains might stop us. The one satisfactory thing was that for the last nine days the cubs had ceased raiding bomas and had come every night to George for their food.
It was 24 April. I had not seen them since 27 February, when Jespah had played with me on the Whuffing Rock. In the hope of seeing them again I joined George and after parking my car close to his, I prepared lumps of meat in which I concealed doses of terramycin and placed them inside the crates with the carcases. Then we waited inside our Land Rovers.