The lionesses began to walk more slowly and deliberately toward Delia, staring intently, raising and lowering their heads, watching her every move. She could hear Echo Whisky Golf turning lazy circles in the sky not more than half a mile away, but she had no way to signal me.
Slowly she began to back away, trying to read the lions’ expressions and postures. But suddenly she realized that, by retreating, she was inviting their pursuit, so she forced herself to stand still. The lions kept pressing forward, and when they closed to thirty yards, her fear reached a primal level. She raised the spade, wielding it like a club, and from deep inside her came a sound so primitive it could have come from a Neanderthal woman. “HAARRAUGGH!”
As if on command, the lions stopped and slowly sat down on their haunches in a long line, their heads and necks craned forward, watching the primate that stood before them brandishing her weapon.
Delia held her ground, terrified that if she moved, the lions would again follow. Yet she had to get past them to the safety of the truck. The longer she stayed where she was, the greater the chances that they would come for her. Slowly she took one step, then two, then began moving obliquely past the lionesses, holding her spade at waist level, her eyes fixed on the pride. They tracked her like radar, their heads slowly turning as she worked her way past them, waving her spade and beginning a long arc toward the truck.
She had flanked the pride and begun backing away when one of the lionesses abruptly stood up and stalked quickly toward her, her head low. Resisting an overpowering urge to run, she stomped the ground, screamed, and waved the spade high above her head. The lioness stopped, one forepaw poised above the ground. Delia stood still. The lioness sat down.
Again Delia backed toward the truck, and again the lioness followed. She yelled and slammed the spade on the ground, and the lioness sat. Once more the predator and her ape-prey played the game to the same conclusion. But now Delia was nearing the truck. When she was about ten yards away, she threw the spade toward the lioness and ran for the Land Cruiser. The lioness leaped for the spade and was sniffing it when Delia jerked open the door and scrambled to safety. For several minutes she lay on the seat, trembling.
The sound of the plane grew louder, and Echo Whisky Golf glided in for a landing, the lions watching it intently from nearby. I taxied next to the truck and cut the engine. “Great! You’ve found the lions,” I said cheerfully. Then I noticed her face, pale and wide-eyed, her chin resting on the window frame. I jumped from the plane into the Land Cruiser and held her tight.
That evening we darted and collared three of the lions, naming the group the Tau Pride. The next day, flying low over our section of the valley, we spent several hours searching for the Blue Pride in all of their favorite lying-up places. We had not seen them since Bones had been shot, and we found no trace of them now. Perhaps, after their encounter with hunters, they would not come back to Deception Valley.
Instead, we found the Springbok Pan Pride, who held the territory south of camp. Early in the evening we put transmitter collars on Satan, the dominant male, and Happy, one of the females. While they were recovering, we set up a small camp under the wing of the plane, just 100 yards or so away from them. Delia hung a mosquito net from the wing strut and unrolled our bedding and I set out the jerrican of water and the chuck box and built a small campfire. Before long the kettle was steaming and rattling over the coals and a hash of dried meat, potatoes, and onions was sizzling in the skillet.
The fire died to red coals and the moon peered over the dunes, flooding the valley with silvery light. Sitting under Echo Whisky Golf’s broad wing, we could see springbok herds grazing along the riverbed. The lions were beginning to roar when we slid into our bedrolls.
Sometime later I woke up. The moon had set and a layer of cirrus clouds obscured the stars. I fumbled for our flashlight. Its batteries were nearly spent, as usual, and the weak yellow light hardly penetrated the darkness. But as I brought the beam slowly around, I caught the faint glow of nine pairs of large eyes in an arc around the plane. The entire Springbok Pan Pride was peering at us from no more than twenty-five yards away.
Echo Whisky Golf was still an object of curiosity to the lions, and I had the feeling they would love to sink their teeth into her tail and tires. She must have looked to them like an enormous powdered milk can with wings. Delia and I sat up for an hour or so, talking quietly and occasionally switching on the flashlight to check where the lions were and what they were doing. Eventually, one by one, they slowly disappeared into the night.
Later, a large herd of springbok stampeded past us, grunting and “whizzing” their nasal alarm calls. Then a deep, rattling groan was followed by slurping, cracking, tearing sounds, and the throaty rumbles of feeding lions. With our flashlight, we could just make out the Springbok Pan Pride quarreling over the spoils of their kill, about thirty yards off the wingtip of the plane. We had trouble falling asleep until they had finished feeding.
The morning sun was streaming through the netting that hung from the wing above us when we were awakened by Satan’s feet swishing through the wet grass nearby. His thick mane rolled over his massive shoulders as he sauntered along, his radio collar scarcely visible in the tumble of jet-black hair. He lay down under a small tree and watched sleepily while we brewed coffee and toasted slivers of biltong on the fire.
We spent the day lolling under the wing of the plane and watching the sleeping lions. They seemed totally unconcerned about their collars, wearing them like light necklaces. About four o’clock that afternoon we took off in the plane to check the operation of the transmitters from the air and to search for more lions farther south along the valley. We were delighted to find that even at a distance of forty miles, we could still pick up Satan’s radio signal.
As we turned back toward Springbok Pan, I was alarmed by a wall of black clouds rolling in. We had been preoccupied with the radio equipment and hadn’t noticed the storm gathering behind us. We had to get back on the ground and secure the plane before the squall line hit the valley, so I gave Echo Whisky Golf as much throttle as I dared and pushed her nose down in a race for the riverbed.
Suddenly we were bouncing and rolling violently in the severe drafts that ran before the gale. The winnowing grass below indicated a wind of at least forty miles per hour, and when we reached the valley it would be blowing directly across the narrow rivercourse. We would have to make a crosswind landing and keep the plane from weathercocking, ground-looping, and digging its wing into the ground. Little of my flying experience had prepared me for this, and I vaguely remembered the plane’s flight manual warning against landing in crosswinds of more than twenty miles per hour.
We made the valley as the first raindrops splattered fat against the windshield. “Push your seat back, tighten your safety belt, and put your head on your lap,” I shouted to Delia over the crackle of hail that pelted the fuselage. I could just make out the tire tracks that marked the hole-free landing zone on the riverbed. We banked at a dizzy angle and dropped toward it. I crabbed Echo Whisky Golf into the sheets of hail and rain blown by the incredibly strong wind. I held full left rudder and rolled the starboard wing hard down into the storm.
Finally we were on a semblance of a glide-slope toward our touchdown point. But it took a balancing act to keep the plane lined up in the gusts. First too little bank and not enough rudder, then too much—we were slewing away from our airstrip and the riverbed. I crabbed even more to hold us in line. It seemed as if we were landing sideways!
I would have to straighten the plane and drop the right wing heavily into the wind at the same instant the right wheel touched the ground. If I straightened out too soon the gale would blow us sideways, and either shear off the landing gear or flip us onto our backs. As soon as the left wheel hit the ground and we had slowed enough, I would stand on the brakes and turn into the wind.
We slid sideways over an island of acacia trees, the ground rushing toward us. When we were gliding just above the grass,
I pulled back the throttle and tried to line up for the landing. The stall warning horn bawled. Then suddenly the wind held its breath; without its force, all my maneuvers were wrong. The right wheel slammed into the ground and there was a loud cracking sound. Before I could react, we bounced out of control.
I rammed the throttle to full power and tried to recover flying speed and gain some height. But a gust slapped a wing and the plane reeled across the riverbed toward the dunes. I held full throttle and at the last instant it recovered, turned, and climbed away. I glanced at Delia; her head was still resting on her knees.
A thunderstorm ends the hot, dry season and brings life-giving rain to Deception Valley. Occasionally these storms blew down our tents and wrecked our camp.
The Pink Panther often lay in the tree above our camp and once slept an arm’s length from us near the open flap of our tent.
Top: Delia puts a radio collar on the Pink Panther. Bottom: Chief, a hornbill, searches for a snack in one of our pots.
Chief gets a handout from Delia.
Top: Bandit and another wild dog play-fight after feeding. Bottom: A wild dog from Bandit’s pack smells Mark’s feet. Most of the animals in the Kalahari had never seen humans before.
Top: Captain, the jackal, narrowly escapes the jaws of the brown hyena Star.
Bottom: Brown hyenas dismember, carry off, and cache legs and other parts of carcasses for later meals.
Top: Brown hyenas like McDuff are among the rarest and least-known large carnivores on earth. Bottom: We carry Ivey into the shade to recover from immobilization.(Photo: Bob Ivey)
Top: Star picks up her cub Cocoa to carry him to the communal den over three miles away. Bottom: As Star nurses her cubs. Pippin, her offspring from her previous litter, smells Cocoa, Pepper, and Toffee, his new half-brothers and half-sister.
On her first foraging expedition away from the communal den, Pepper surprises Delia as she emerges from the bath hut.
Pepper ventures away from the protection of the communal den at sunset. At such times she became more vulnerable to predators such as leopards.
Top: Pepper greets Delia during one of her observation periods. Bottom: Dusty and Sooty, brother and sister brown hyenas, greet each other at the clan’s communal den.
Top: Springbok pranking in alarm at the approach of predators. Bottom: Starbuck, Happy, and Dixie of the Springbok Pan Pride teamed up with Spicy of the Blue Pride for a springbok hunt and share the kill.
Top: While searching the Kalahari’s fossil riverbeds for lions, we often landed far from camp and spent the night under the wing of the plane. Bottom: Moffet made some unexpected visits to our toilet in the early morning.
Top: Muffin, Moffet, and the Blue Pride often rambled into camp to drink our dishwater and play with our gear. Bottom: Bimbo, now two years old, peers through the branches at Mark.
Chary rests beneath a ziziphus tree in the rainy season.
We survived the 120° heat of the drought by lying under wet towels. The moisture attracted hundreds of honeybees.
The wind was too strong. I would have to fly onto the ground with power on and the tail up. Once again I put the plane on the approach. I kept nursing the power, holding the aircraft in stable flight against the wind. Now we were just above the ground, but too far from the touchdown point. I eased on more power and we lifted slightly. The wind picked up—more bank. I thought we were on track, but the rain was pouring down so hard I couldn’t see. I looked out my side window and found the faint line below. I bled off a little power, and the right wheel began to rumble. We were down! But the plane was trying to swing too soon, and neither the rudder nor the brake would stop it. We shot off the landing strip and through the grass toward the trees where the lions were lying. Leaning heavily on both brakes, sliding the main wheels, I prayed there were no holes. The outlines of trees loomed in the storm ahead. But the headwind helped to slow us. Finally we skidded to a stop.
Delia was out before me, dragging stakes and tie-down lines from the aft hatch. I cut the engine and jumped into the stinging rain. Together we secured Whisky Golf against the storm.
We pitched our billowing pup tent beneath the wing of the plane and heated steaming cups of tea and soup over a backpack burner. Wind and rain lashed the tent all night long, the plane rocked and creaked, but we were warm and content inside our sleeping bags.
During the following weeks we flew all over the Central Kalahari, collaring lions farther and farther from camp. Delia often drove for hours, on a compass bearing, to meet me on some distant pan or dry riverbed. When we couldn’t find lions from the air, we landed Echo Whisky Golf near an antelope herd and spent the night camped under her wing, watching and listening for some pride on a hunt. And always, when we returned to our base camp area, we searched for the Blue Pride.
Time was running out. It was already nearing the end of March and the rainy season would only last another month or so. When the antelope began to leave the valley, we would be less and less likely to find these lions. They were our most important group because they were nearest camp and we knew them best, but we hadn’t yet equipped them with radio transmitters. Maybe more of the pride had been killed by hunters or ranchers. Whenever we came back to camp we anxiously asked Mox if he had heard them. “Wa utlwa de tau bosigo ya maa-bane?”
“Nnya” was always his answer.
But one morning, after sleeping out with the plane on Passarge Valley, we taxied into camp and found Mox standing at the fire, his face beaming. He pointed to lion tracks imprinted everywhere on the ground, then led us through camp on a pantomime broken with bits of English and Setswana. He stalked to the bath and kitchen bomas, then pawed at the gap between two wooden posts where a line full of biltong had been drying. He pinched his ear, then pointed to the blue in my shirt and pulled at his chin with his fingertips, meaning it had been the lions with the blue ear tags and a couple of young males with scraggly manes. In his final act, he drew a J in the dust with his finger and patted his backside; one of the males had a J-shaped scar on his hip. It was the same two males who had serenaded Delia, Roy, and me from the airstrip some weeks before.
The three of us piled into the truck and drove the 400 yards to Bush Island, where Mox had last seen the pride. We drove slowly, giving the lions ample opportunity to see us and the Land Cruiser in advance. They sat up as we approached, and we watched their expressions and postures for signs of fear or aggression.
We need not have worried. As always, Sassy and Blue came straight for the truck, chewing its tires and peering at us over the half door, their whiskered muzzles and resin-colored eyes just an arm’s length away. I was tempted to reach out and pick off a tick above Sassy’s eye, but then thought better of it. The two scruffy young males, whom we named Muffin and Moffet, lay a few yards away from the lionesses. Despite their youth—they were only about four years old—they had apparently laid claim to the Blue Pride and its territory. Only time would tell if they could hold it against older and larger challengers.
We sat with the pride while they lay in the shade of the truck. It was just like old times. Except that Sassy, Gypsy, Liesa, Spooky, and Spicy were now full-grown adults. Together with Blue and old Chary, they made quite a pile of lions.
After we darted the Blue Pride, more than sixteen individuals, from five different prides holding territories along the Deception, Passarge, and Hidden Valley fossil rivers, were wearing radio transmitters that we could home in on from the plane or truck. Through the association of collared lions with their pride-mates, many of whom we had already ear-tagged, we had direct contact with more than thirty-six individuals. We also put transmitters on six brown hyenas, members of the Deception Pan clan, and another clan near Cheetah Pan.
Now that all the collars were in place, all we had to do was keep track of the lions daily with the airplane during the remainder of the rainy season, and then document their migration. Throughout the dry season, the brown hyenas would remain close to the valley, making it easy to find
them from the air. We began to feel the tensions of the past few weeks drain away. We had done it! The stage was set for our aerial telemetry studies of lions and brown hyenas.
On the morning that we had finished collaring the last hyena, we proclaimed the rest of the day a holiday and headed for camp. When we parked between our two tents, we were met with a rush and flurry of wings as Chief, Ugly, Big Red, and forty other hornbills settled on the guy ropes, clucking for their daily ration of mealie-meal. “Horn billy-billy,” Delia sang out to them as she started down the path into the shade of our tree-island home. Ugly settled on her shoulder, pulling at her earring with his curved yellow beak, and Chief struggled to hold a perch on her head. The whole flock followed her toward the kitchen, where Marique, the Marico flycatcher, swooped to the ground in front of her, shaking his wings and vibrating all over, begging for his share of the handout. I had to wait my turn after a hundred or so camp birds, William the shrew, and Laramie the lizard. Then I, too, was remembered and fed.
Cry of the Kalahari Page 27