“There they are—at the edge of that clearing!” I shouted.
“Okay—that’s where they’ve been for the last few days. We’d better get the truck and have a closer look.”
This style of flying, for hours every day, eventually began to unnerve me, but even later, when Mark began doing aerial locations alone, I didn’t feel much better. This was high-risk flying, and with his attention divided between the telemetry work and the plane, there was a greater chance that he would have an accident. But he insisted that for both of us to be in the plane locating the lions was a waste of man-hours.
Now we flew back to camp, loaded the radio gear into the truck, and followed Sassy’s signal up the face of West Dune. The long bodies of the lionesses were sprawled in a patch of drying grass on the crest of the dune. Except for the constant flicking of their tails to ward off the flies, they did not budge as we approached.
When we were six yards away, we stopped. A tiny head with woolly ears and dark eyes peered over Sassy’s belly. Another pair of soft round ears and sleepy eyes appeared, and then another, until a line of five wee faces stared at us. Sassy and Gypsy, whom we had known since they were youngsters, now had infants of their own.
The cubs toddled around their mothers on stumpy, unsteady legs, stumbling into one another and falling backward onto their plump, fuzzy bottoms. Their straw-colored fur was peppered with freckly brown spots. When eventually they settled down again, three of them suckled Sassy and the other two went to Gypsy.
The mothers were about four years old, and as far as we knew, these were their first litters. They kept their cubs in the “nursery,” a grass thicket with an unusually tall, spreading Terminalia tree at its center, near the top of the dune.
We were particularly excited to find the cubs because, in order to develop recommendations on how to conserve Kalahari lions, we had to know more about aspects of their reproductive biology: how often these lions bred, how many cubs they had, how the mothers fed their litters through the long dry season, and the number of cubs that usually survived from each litter.
Studies in the Serengeti of East Africa have shown that lionesses are notoriously poor mothers. Only after they have had enough to eat themselves do they allow their cubs to feed on a kill. They often abandon their young, sometimes for no apparent reason, other than that they seem to prefer to socialize with their pride-mates rather than face the responsibilities of motherhood.
Although prey is relatively abundant for most of the year on the Serengeti Plain and life is generally easier for predators than in a desert like the Kalahari, only twenty percent of infant lion cubs survive to adulthood.2 Of those that do not survive, one-quarter die of starvation, often because their mothers simply fail to lead them to kills. Another quarter die from predation or accidents, and one-half die of undetermined causes. According to George Schaller, adult lions live many years, have a fairly low death rate, and do not rear very many young.
We thought things might be different in the Kalahari. If mortality among adult lions was higher, if their lifespan were shorter in the harsh desert environment, maybe they would take better care of their offspring. We stayed with Gypsy and Sassy as much as possible, hoping to gather this and other information.
Lionesses in a pride often come into estrus, breed, and give birth synchronously, in any season of the year. Then females with cubs will frequently separate from the pride to form a small group of their own until the young are old enough—at about four months—to keep up with the movements of the adults. At birth, lion cubs weigh only about three pounds and are almost totally helpless; their eyes usually do not open until between their third and fifteenth day of life. Gypsy’s and Sassy’s cubs were probably between two and three weeks old.
For the rest of that day the mothers lay with their infants in the shade of the nursery tree. Mostly they slept, a ball of cubs cuddled under Sassy’s neck or next to Gypsy’s forelegs. All five, snuggled together, were about the size of Sassy’s head. Now and then a cub would waddle over to suckle one of the mothers, and the others would follow. Neither Gypsy nor Sassy ever appeared to notice which cub she was nursing. In the Serengeti, pride-mates communally suckle one another’s young; now we knew the same was true in the Kalahari. They would suckle for five to eight minutes before wandering a few feet away or falling asleep at the mother’s side.
At sunset, Sassy rolled onto her stomach and alertly scanned the three-mile strip of riverbed visible between the dunes. Gypsy, sensing the mood, lifted her chin and watched. Then abruptly they both stood up, rubbed their faces together, and stretched their long backs like bows, pushing their forepaws through the sand. Then, without looking back, they walked northward. Three of the infants followed their mothers through the grass for a short way, but Sassy and Gypsy quickly disappeared in the bush. The cubs all scrambled deep into their thicket beneath the nursery tree, where they would hide until their mothers returned. There was nothing to suggest to any predator that the lion family was there, except for the pugmarks left between the grass clumps on the face of the dune.
By exchanging roars with the other females, the two mothers joined the rest of the pride in the north end of the valley for a springbok hunt. When they had finished feeding, just after midnight, they returned to the nursery. Their soft coos brought the meowing infants tumbling from their hiding place. While the cubs wobbled about between their mother’s legs, Gypsy and Sassy lapped their faces and backs, their rough, heavy tongues pushing them to the ground. Rolling each infant over, the mother licked the cub’s underbelly and beneath its tail while tiny paws pushed at her muzzle. Then the two females began to nurse their youngsters.
Toward morning Muffin and Moffet came by the nursery and lay down next to Sassy. One of the cubs tottered up to Muffin and stuck its tiny face up to his giant whiskered muzzle. He ignored the pesky infant until it walked between his two front legs and turned to snuggle beneath the shag of his full mane. Mildly irritated, Muffin slowly raised the right side of his upper lip, wrinkling that side of his face and showing his long canine in a crooked, half-hearted snarl, as if this puny cub couldn’t possibly be worthy of more threat. The tot turned its ears back, scampered to Sassy and pushed under her chin, looking back with round eyes at the crotchety old Muffin.
The males took no part in rearing the cubs, and perhaps only visited the nursery so that they could follow the females when they left to hunt.
Though both females nursed the five young cubs, it soon became apparent that Sassy was a much better mother. When the least bit of bickering arose from the tangle of tiny bodies at Gypsy’s teats, she would often swing her head around and snarl and then roll onto her belly or walk away, leaving the infants crying for more milk. Soon all five cubs would be fighting over Sassy’s four teats. Meowing loudly, the odd one out would go to Gypsy, and sometimes she would nurse it, sometimes not.
As the days passed, Gypsy stayed away from the cubs for longer and longer periods. Sated and apparently content, she would lie around all day with her other pride-mates. Meanwhile, Sassy was doing more than her share to raise both litters.
One day when the cubs were about eight weeks old, we found that Sassy and her three young were gone. Gypsy was lying on her back nursing her two cubs, but when they fought briefly, she bared her teeth, wrinkled her nose, and hissed wildly at them. Then she walked away and they were left gazing after her, their ribs showing through their scruffy coats.
Gypsy joined the pride on Leopard Trail and lay around with them for the rest of the day. The next morning, instead of returning to her cubs, she relaxed in the shade with her head snuggled along Liesa’s back. Except for her swollen teats, she showed no sign that she had two hungry infants waiting for her.
Both of Gypsy’s cubs were in poor condition, but one was especially scrawny and weak; it would not survive much longer without milk. Flying in Echo Whisky Golf the next morning, we found Sassy and her cubs with the old lioness Chary several miles from the nursery. By circling low in t
he plane we could see that Chary had four cubs of her own, several weeks older than Sassy’s. The two females were lying together, peacefully nursing their young.
We switched channels on the radio and found Gypsy with Liesa, almost ten miles from her cubs. Later, when we drove to the thicket, we found that the weakest cub had died. Alone and emaciated, the other one was hunkered down between two forks of the tree, watching us with frightened eyes. If we did not feed it, the cub would probably be dead within twenty-four hours, but there was still a remote chance that Gypsy would come back for it. After much agonizing, we finally rationalized that, although it would be a lot of trouble to have a lion cub in camp, we would also learn a great deal. If Gypsy did not come back to her infant by the next day, we would adopt it.
The next morning the roving mother had moved even farther from her cub, and we knew it probably would not survive another day without milk. We took a cardboard box and an old blanket to the nursery to rescue the abandoned infant, but to our surprise, we found Muffin lying under the tree with it. The cub staggered on trembling legs to the big male, feebly pushing its tiny muzzle into his belly, groping for milk-filled teats that were not there. For several minutes it just stared up at Muff, dizzy with hunger, and then it stumbled back to the tree and with its head hanging down, it swayed forward and back, bumping, bumping, bumping its forehead into the trunk, over and over again. Its wasted body made its head and paws seem overlarge. Finally, in the last stages of starvation, it just stood there leaning the top of its head against the baric.
We weren’t sure how Muffin would react if we tried to take the cub, so we decided to come back that night when he had moved off to hunt. In the meantime it might starve to death, but at least no other predator would harm the infant so long as Muff was there.
It was an unusual day for late in the rainy season. Instead of moderate temperatures with a light breeze, it was muggy and still. The hornbills sat quietly in the trees, their bills open, wings cocked out from their bodies, trying to cool themselves. Nothing moved but the flies, which buzzed our faces or sat on our towels, rubbing their grimy feet in apparent glee.
Late that afternoon, a long black tunnel of low clouds rolled in from the southeast. Skimming rapidly over the dunes, it filled the valley and rushed toward camp. The sun dipped lower in the western sky, and the clouds turned brilliant shades of pink and mauve streaked with gold. But when they swirled overhead, the air became a frenzy of wind and sand.
We hurried to ready camp for the storm, zipping the tents, tying down the plane, and putting equipment boxes up on blocks—Mox was on leave in Maun, so there was no one to help us. Suddenly, the wind slapped the trees, thunder cracked, and tongues of lightning split the wounded sky.
Lashed by rain and hail, we finished tightening the guy ropes on the tents. Mark yelled over the roar of the wind, “Get in the truck—we’ve got to get out from under these trees!” We jumped into the Toyota and drove twenty yards from camp. The ziziphus and acacia trees reeled about madly above the tents, and sheets of rain scudded parallel to the ground. We could barely see the camp or the plane through the gale.
“There goes Echo Whisky Golf!” Like a wild horse, the plane reared up against its tie-down ropes, the starboard wing high in the air. The line holding the tail wheel snapped, and as the aircraft weathercocked into the wind, the port wing tore its stake out of the ground. The plane slewed around and slammed into a fuel drum and the fence.
Mark bounded over the fence and grabbed the starboard wing tip to keep the aircraft from flipping over while I staggered against the wind toward Echo Whisky Golf.
Mark shouted, “Grab the other wing and hang on or we’ll lose the plane!” I stood on my toes to reach the wing. We clung to the plane in the blinding rain. The powerful wind caught under the broad airfoils and lifted our feet from the ground for seconds at a time. My arm and back muscles throbbed with pain, and I worried that I would lose my grip.
The lightning was a buzzing blue hue in the sky, and dangling from the metal wing, I felt like a lightning rod. The sleeping tent gave one last mighty heave against the wind, and collapsed in a tattered heap, draping itself like a wet spider web over the poles.
A few minutes later the wind slackened slightly, and we were able to tie drums of fuel to the wings to help stablilize the plane. We quickly inspected for damage and discovered that the port-side stabilizer had been crumpled by a drum.
Again the wind slammed into us, this time from the north, and once more we hung onto the wings, pounded by wind and hail. By now I was extremely weak. My arms felt as if they were being pulled from their sockets, and the cold sent sharp spasms through my back and shoulders. Just when I knew I could hold on no longer, the wind eased a bit. My fingers slipped from the wing and I sat down in the mud, utterly exhausted.
Mark came sloshing through the water and helped me into the truck. “Well done, Boo,” he said, putting his arm around me. “We’d have lost her for sure if you hadn’t hung on.” He wrapped his shirt around me and hurried away to restake the plane. I felt a warm stickiness on my leg; when I reached down I discovered it was blood. I switched on the flashlight and saw a deep gash in my calf, probably made by the fence. I tried to stop the bleeding with tissue.
Mark jerked open the door of the truck. “I’m going to try to fix the tent. Come and help me if I whistle.”
I sat shivering uncontrollably, hoping that he would not need my help. Although the wind had slackened, the rain was still pelting down, and the plane stood in a growing lake of muddy water. Moments later I heard the faint shrill of Mark’s signal. I jumped from the truck, losing my sandals in deep ooze.
He heaved up the tent’s center pole and we both struggled through the muck to retie the guy ropes. A few poles were broken, one side sagged, and the floor was covered with inches of muddy water, but at least it was a roof over our heads.
When Mark lit the lantern, he saw my bloody leg. I tried to tell him what had happened, but my teeth only chattered. He wrapped me in a dry blanket, and then bound my wound. When he started for the door I asked, “Aren’t you going to dry off?”
“First, I’m going to get some hot food.” And he ran out into the storm again.
Minutes later he was back, carrying a tray with mugs of steaming soup and tea. The dripping tent was beginning to warm from the lantern, and we sat on the tin trunks drinking our hot soup, feeling quite cozy.
Five hours after the storm had hit, it finally ended as suddenly as it had begun. All that remained was an occasional grumble of thunder and great drops of water that plopped from the trees onto the tent. We sat listening to the quiet and warming ourselves. A jackal called from North Bay Hill. Then from south along the valley, a lion roared—and we remembered the cub.
We grabbed the driest blanket, filled a canteen with hot water, and drove across the valley toward the dune. The thirsty earth had already soaked up a lot of the rain, though much of the riverbed was still under water. There were split and scattered trees everywhere in the fractured woodland. Using the spotlight, we finally found the nursery. Muffin was gone. Next to the tree the crumpled cub lay like a soggy rag doll, his eyes staring sightlessly into the night.
As far as we knew, Gypsy never went back to the nursery. She went on hunting and sleeping with the Blue Pride females until her udders lost their milk. From her behavior, it appeared that Kalahari female lions were no better mothers than those in the Serengeti, but it was too early to draw any firm conclusions. Gypsy, young and inexperienced, had been just one example of how not to rear lion cubs in the Kalahari. New mothers are often poor mothers and improve with experience.
The dry season was beginning, and we continued our study of maternal care of desert lions by watching Sassy and Chary and their seven cubs. Now that Sassy had joined Chary, an old and experienced mother, perhaps their litters would have a better chance of surviving.
Sassy’s cubs were now about two months old, Chary’s about three. They all played and fought as brother
s and sisters, rolling over and over, mouthing and pawing at one another’s faces and forequarters like kittens. They often attacked their mothers, and sometimes Sassy joined in the game. Chary, although patient with all the cubs, never joined in the tomfoolery.
In carnivores, as in all animals, play is not just for fun. The types of behavior important for hunting—stalking, chasing, jumping on a moving object—require coordination and practice, and they are the very ones exhibited in play. Lion cubs do not have to learn all the motions for hunting; they are born with most of this information in their genes. But by play-fighting and play-hunting, the cubs polish the skills needed for bringing down a moving prey.
One afternoon as a cub rested next to Sassy, a fly lit on the tuft of her tail. Lying with his chin on his paws and his eyes crossed, the cub watched the fly roam around the tassel. Sassy flicked her tail and the youngster pounced on it, rolling over in a somersault. Another cub joined in, batting and pawing at the tail snaking around on the ground.
Sassy jumped to her feet, whirled around, and pawed playfully at her cubs’ heads. They reared up and swatted at her, and she took off through the grass. Instantly, all the other cubs joined in pursuit.
Eventually old Chary fell into the long line of lions racing after Sassy. In and out of the thorn shrubs they twisted and turned, swatting at whomever they encountered. Sassy, stopping abruptly, took a long, thin stick in her jaws and pranced through the tumbling cubs, her head and tail held high. The youngsters pulled at the baton, rolling over and over in the sand, trying to yank it from her teeth. None of them stood a chance of out-tugging the adult. But then Chary, her sagging back swaying, grabbed the other end. The lionesses romped and chased each other, pulling and tearing at the skinny stick as they swung about. Eventually the cubs all lay down in a row, and watched their mothers rolling and fighting over the twisted twig. When only a plug of shredded wood was left, Chary and Sassy gave up the contest and, panting, sauntered to their shade tree. When she passed the truck, Chary turned her ears and avoided looking at us. I could have sworn that she was embarrassed by her brief loss of control.
Cry of the Kalahari Page 29