Cry of the Kalahari

by Mark James Owens

  Later on, Chary and Sassy killed a young hartebeest in the woodlands of West Dune. They had fed for twenty minutes when Muffin and Moffet trotted up, chasing the females from the carcass. The lionesses returned to the cubs’ hiding place, but instead of nursing them, they started walking slowly in the direction they had just come from, and cooing softly, encouraging their young to follow them to the kill. Muffin and Moffet completely ignored the youngsters and made no protest when they fed with them, but Chary and Sassy never got another bite.

  Now that the cubs were old enough to eat meat, the pattern of their daily lives changed. The females would leave their litters hidden in the grass to hunt and to feed themselves. They would then return and lead their young to the kill—sometimes several miles away. Whenever Muffin and Moffet found the females on a carcass, they chased them off, but they always shared the meat with the cubs. Chary and Sassy also continued to nurse their young, but less frequently and for shorter periods.

  The mothers seemed to be making every effort to insure that their offspring were well cared for. But with the skies clearing, the grass dying, and the antelope dispersing as the dry season began, their kills were becoming fewer and smaller. And the cubs were getting larger and hungrier.

  18

  Lions with No Pride

  Delia

  and my tribe is scattered . . .

  —Stanley Kunitz

  OFTEN, in those wild open spaces of the Kalahari, even a tent seemed too confining. So some nights we pulled our canvas cots onto the ancient riverbed to sleep under the stars. The fresh smell of drying grasses and the soft, cool air were more effective than a sedative. By this time we knew almost every species of bird or insect that squawked or clicked around us, and these familiar sounds, along with the cry of a jackal, would send us off to sleep. Periodically during the night, I would check on the position of the Southern Cross, following its gentle sweep across the lower sky, before going back to sleep again.

  Once, about four o’clock in the morning, a loud rustling in the bushes suddenly opened my eyes wide. The massive form of a lion loomed in the starlight not five yards away, and he was walking directly toward us.

  “Mark! The lions are here!” I whispered urgently, feeling around on the dark ground for the flashlight.

  Buried deep in his sleeping bag, his voice thick with sleep, Mark mumbled, “Don’t worry, if they get too close we’ll move inside the tent.” At that moment the lion was actually standing at the foot of Mark’s cot, looking down at us.

  “Mark,” I said, trying not to move my lips, “they’re right here. Get up!” I found the flashlight, slowly raised it, and switched it on. Moffet’s amber eyes blinked in the light. Now Muffin walked in from the shadows of camp and stood two or three yards behind him. We were lying at the base of one of their favorite marking bushes.

  Mark poked his head from his sleeping bag and peered at the lions over his toes. Moffet squatted over his hindquarters and began scraping back and forth with his hind paws while dribbling urine loudly onto the ground between his legs. He was marking his territory.

  Even if it was Muffin and Moffet, I didn’t like the idea of being between them and their tree. I struggled out of my sleeping bag and, without taking my eyes from the lions, began moving toward our tent, sixty yards away at the other end of the tree island.

  As I passed the head of Mark’s cot, he was feeling around on the ground for his clothes. “I can’t decide what to put on,” he said, standing there nude and half asleep.

  “What difference does it make, for heaven’s sake!?” I hissed between my teeth. The two lions watched Mark stumbling around, gathering up his clothes and his sleeping bag. Finally, I grabbed Mark’s arm and pulled him toward the tent. At the edge of the trees we looked back at Muffin and Moffet, rubbing their heads together, paying no attention whatsoever to our bungling getaway. I wondered, myself, what all the fuss had been about.

  The rains of 1978 had been generous, but they ended prematurely. The blustery dry-season winds had begun much earlier than usual, and the grasses had turned to straw much sooner. The skies were dull grey from wind-blown dust and sand, and the savanna looked as dry in June as it had in August of previous years.

  As always, the short grasses on the shallow, heavy soils of the ancient riverbed dried faster than the vegetation on the dunes. The plains antelope moved from the river channel to the bush and tree zones on the duneslopes, where the leaves stay green longer. Slowly the herds broke up, and the smaller groups dispersed into thousands of square miles of rolling bush savanna.

  Each dawn we hurried to Echo Whisky Golf to look for the lions from the air. We were afraid that if we missed a single day’s radiolocation, they might travel to some distant part of the Kalahari where we could never find them again. But weeks passed and the prides still had not migrated. True, they had abandoned the dry river channel, now that the antelope had gone. Muffin and Moffet no longer marched up and down Mid Pan marking their scent trees, and Blue and the other females stopped visiting camp. Yet the Blue Pride lions were not very far from their wet-season territory. With most of the large antelope gone and no water to drink, how were the lions surviving? By following them with the truck and radio gear at night, we began to get some answers.

  Moffet had been separated from Muffin and the females for several days and had not eaten. Moving through the thornbush east of the valley, he quickly broke into a trot, his head low as he zigzagged after a chicken-sized korhaan scurrying through the grass ahead. When he was ten feet from the bird, it took flight, but Moffet lunged forward and, standing on his hind legs, swatted it down with a wide forepaw. Lifting his lip, he chewed into the feathery breast of the bird, sneezing and shaking his head to clear the down from his nose. Minutes later, feathers still clinging lightly to his mane, he began hunting again.

  At first we did not take Moffet’s new sport of bird hunting seriously, for surely a 450-pound male lion did not intend to feed himself on such morsels. Later that same evening, however, he killed a four-pound springhare and chased a mongoose to its burrow. The diet of the lions was changing drastically.

  The Blue Pride still preyed on the occasional giraffe, kudu, or gemsbok in the dune woodlands, but because these large ungulates were scarce and widely scattered over the savanna, the lions hunted smaller animals more often. Instead of killing 500-pound gemsbok, as they had done during the rains, now they fed on fifteen- to twenty-pound porcupines, steenbok, honey badgers, bat-eared foxes, or kori bustards. But these prey are hardly enough to make a meal for one or two lions, and they certainly wouldn’t feed an entire pride. The seven females of the Blue Pride who lay around together in the wet season, always touching and reassuring each other, were forced to break up into smaller groups, so that when a kill was made there would be enough meat to go around.

  From the air we found that Chary and Sassy and their cubs had again separated from the main pride and were roaming near Crocodile Pan, about five to six miles east of Deception Valley. Instead of hunting on the borders of fossil riverbeds, they prowled the bush savannas and woodlands, where a few bands of gemsbok and giraffe, and more small prey, were available. The lionesses had to travel from five to ten miles almost every night to find food.

  Gypsy and Liesa hunted near Paradise Pan; the rest of the pride roamed interdunal valleys two to three miles west of Deception. The Blue Pride had splintered into small groups of females, with Muffin and Moffet trekking from one group to the other. Because of the time needed to locate the different fragments of their pride, the males had to spend more time apart from their females and do much more of their own hunting.

  The pride’s home range had more than doubled in area, to about 600 square miles. Still, the lions had not really migrated in the true sense of the word, but had simply expanded their range greatly to the east and west. We drew a map with colored dots showing their daily locations and their patterns of distribution over the range. It looked as if it had been sprayed with BB shot.

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p; The other prides had responded to the dry season in the same way, by breaking up and traveling greater distances away from the valley in search of prey and by hunting smaller animals. The drier it became during the winter months, the more the diet, range movements, habitat utilization, and social system of the lions differed from the wet season. We began to fly on moonlit nights to better document these changes.

  Midnight takeoff: Cast in soft moonlight, the pewter desert fell away below us. Except for our gas lantern, set out on the airstrip to guide us home, not another light on earth could be seen as we sailed over the quiet, forgotten world of the Kalahari. Our faces glowing eerie red from the cockpit instrument lights, we followed the night movements of the lions and hyenas below.

  Straining to recognize the subtle landmarks beneath us, we found Happy of the Springbok Pan Pride one night, on the boundary of the Blue Pride’s territory. Within two weeks after Muffin and Moffet had killed Satan, another male, Diablo, had taken over the Springbok Pan Pride. The females had adjusted to their new male, and in recent weeks we had even seen Happy and some of the others mating with him. But now, as we circled overhead in the moonlight, we could see that Happy was within a few yards of Muffin and Moffet, who were patrolling the border of their territory. We were curious to know whether the two males would chase this foreign female back into her own territory or mate with her—if she was in estrus. In the Serengeti, male lions will court females from other prides, but we had never had the opportunity to observe this in the Kalahari. We flew back to camp, and then drove south to look for the lions.

  When we found Muffin and Moffet, they were walking fast through brambles near Cheetah Pan, their noses to the ground. They stopped abruptly and looked up; Happy’s eyes met theirs at less than thirty yards. The two lions stared intently at her for a few seconds, their tails twitching. Happy stood above the males on a low, scrub-covered sand ridge.

  The lioness walked slowly forward, her head tall above the grass, her ears perked. Chests rumbling and tails lashing, Muffin and Moffet sprang to their feet and chased her for over 100 yards. But Happy was too fast for them, and when they broke off the charge she stopped just out of reach. They stared aggressively at her, raking their hind paws through the grass and roaring.

  Again Happy walked cautiously toward them, and again they chased her, roaring and swatting the air just behind the tuft of her long tail. After each chase she ventured closer to them, but they seemed less and less inclined to pursue her. When she managed to get within twenty yards of them, Muffin and Moffet lay down side by side and watched what amounted to a feline burlesque.

  Her hindquarters swaying sinuously, eyes half closed and jaws parted, Happy slunk toward the mesmerized males. Muffin quickly stood and strutted toward her, but she galloped away. When he stopped, she turned and wound her way toward them again, this time passing within a few yards of their noses. Muffin stood as tall as he could and, with all the savoir-faire he could muster, swaggered toward Happy. She lowered her hindquarters suggestively, inviting him to mount her. But when he stepped to her rear she suddenly spat and cuffed him hard across the nose. Muff roared and drew back, his ears flat and his long canines exposed, as Happy minced away, her tail flicking flirtatiously. After a few more attempts by both males to gain her favor, Muffin and Moffet seemed to tire of the game, and they walked back north into their own territory. Happy followed about thirty yards behind, apparently unconcerned that she was on foreign soil.

  We knew that Liesa, Gypsy, Spicy, and Spooky of the Blue Pride were finishing a warthog kill on the crest of West Dune. Muffin and Moffet, with Happy trailing by fifteen yards, were moving directly toward them.

  Since it was not unusual for male lions in the Serengeti to associate occasionally with females of another pride, it had not been totally surprising to see Muffin and Moffet interact with Happy. However, we knew that Serengeti pride females form closed social groups that do not accept new female members or tolerate foreign females in their territory.1 There the pride is sacrosanct: a stable social unit of closely related lionesses and their young, who associate with the male or males who help defend the territory. A lioness may be kicked out and become nomadic, but these nomads do not join other prides. In the Serengeti, a single pride lasts for generations, with the same kin line, and at any one time, it has in its membership great-grandmothers, grandmothers, mothers, daughters, aunts, and female cousins.

  Now Muffin, Moffet, and Happy padded steadily toward the crest of West Dune. We followed in the truck, preparing our flashes, cameras, and the tape recorder for the coming fight between Happy and the Blue Pride females.

  By the time we could see the four Blue Pride females in the spotlight ahead, they had finished the warthog and were casually licking one another’s faces. The two males greeted the lionesses, smelled the skeleton, and then lay down a few yards away. Happy sauntered past Spicy and Spooky and lay down next to Muffin and Moffet. Incredibly, there was not the slightest sign of aggression on the part of any of the lionesses. We switched off the tape recorder and pulled the cameras back inside the truck. It was astonishing: A foreign female had ambled into the heart of the Blue Pride camp, and its members had hardly noticed!

  For the next four days, Happy was courted, first by Muffin and then by Moffet, just as though she were a Blue Pride female. During the heat of the day Muffin lay as near to her as he could, watching her every move. If she sought out better shade, he strutted so close beside her that their bodies rubbed together. Sometimes he would initiate copulation by standing at her rear. More often, however, she would walk back and forth in front of him, her tail flicking and hindquarters swaying, or she would brush her body along his before crouching in front of him. When he stood over her to copulate, he nibbled at her neck and she growled and flattened her ears. As soon as Muffin had finished, he would step back quickly to avoid getting clouted by Happy’s paw, for invariably she would whirl around, snarling fiercely, and swat at him. Then, lying on her back, her legs extended, she would roll over and over in the grass, her eyes closed in apparent ecstasy. They mated in this stereotypic fashion every twenty to thirty minutes for part of two days and all of two nights. Small wonder that Muffin did not object when Moffet took over the courtship at sunset on the third day.

  During the day Happy rested—Muffin or Moffet always at her side—under the same bush as Spicy, looking very much as if she belonged. Then, on the fifth night, she walked south alone and returned to Diablo, Dixie, and the others of the Springbok Pan Pride.

  This mixing of females between prides had never been reported in lions. Was this wandering lioness an aberration, a passing “stranger in the night”? Was her behavior unique? We could hardly think so. Since Happy had been so readily accepted by the Blue Pride females, it appeared that such exchanges of lionesses between prides might occur quite regularly.

  The desert winter ended overnight—there was no spring. In late August there was a gradual warming of the days, but the nights remained bitterly cold. Then one silent morning in early September, the temperature suddenly shot upward.

  When the hot-dry season had settled over the Kalahari, the thermometer often reached one hundred and twenty in the shade during the day; at night it fell to as low as forty or fifty. Differences of more than sixty degrees, sometimes even seventy, were not uncommon in a twenty-four-hour period. The relative humidity was lower than five percent at midday, and the sun beat down unmercifully, burning the last traces of life from the vegetation. The blossoms of the acacia and catophractes bushes—the blanket of pink and white magic that usually spreads over the Kalahari in the driest time of the year, providing succulent food for the antelope—never appeared that year. Here and there a puny flower hung with its withered brown face to the ground, only to shrivel and fall to the sand. The wind blasted across the scorched valley and the dry, brittle grass disintegrated, leaving stubbles sticking up from the cracked earth like broken broom heads. We had survived four dry seasons, but this was the worst.

 
By October there were almost no large antelope left on the dunes and in the sandveld around Deception Valley. During the rainy season over fifty percent of these animals concentrated on the ancient riverbed; now less than one percent wandered across its barren surface.

  Chary and Sassy were still nursing their five- and six-month-old cubs, yet they had not had a drink of water for five months. In order to get meat for their growing families they searched farther and farther east, toward the game reserve boundary, where pockets of antelopes browsed the woodlands. They often traveled more than fifteen miles a night for several nights before they managed to kill a lone gemsbok.

  Then one morning Mark found the two mothers and their young, together with Muffin and Moffet, outside the game reserve. They had crossed over the boundary into cattle country, as Bones had done, and again it was hunting season. Old Chary, with her sagging back and somber ways, was wise. She had survived many dry seasons, and probably a drought or two, by hunting outside the game reserve; she seemed to know the dangers.

  A cow must seem the ideal prey to a lion: fat, slow and clumsy. But even though Chary led Sassy and their cubs to within 300 yards of cattle posts, they never killed a single domestic animal, as far as we knew. Instead, they preyed on the antelope moving out of the reserve to find water. Of course, neither Chary nor the others would have been rewarded for their discretion, had they been seen by ranchers.