Written October 24, 2014.
By Karissa Killian (Westminster College)
On our second day in the Hoanib river bed on October 23rd, having seen five, young, collared male lions on our way into the Hoanib the day before, we decide to try and track them ourselves on our way to a new campsite.
Vehi, of course, sees the first footprints and we follow them for quite a ways until he realizes that they are heading to The President’s Borehole, a water hole created by the first president of Namibia, Sam Nujoma, to allow wildlife to travel throughout the Hoanib without being in danger of dehydration.
As we come closer to the borehole, we start to see Oryx, and once we come over a hill, we see two majestic lions, maybe 180 meters away. They are watching the Oryx and one tries to run at them. All of us students become ecstatic. We are sure that we are about to see a successful hunt, so when this lion runs at the Oryx and scares them behind a hill, we decide to drive around so that we can see this situation from a different angle. The lion is still obviously staring at this herd of Oryx, and, we figure, will pounce eventually.
Once we drive around, we see three more lions! Our leaders Vehi and Karimi proceed to tell us about the 5 Musketeers: that they are all young, male lions, with their mane shaved off to prevent them from becoming targets for trophy hunting. They also tell us that they haven’t learned to successfully hunt yet, but I think most of us were still naively rooting for them to make a kill. We watch them for quite a while and after drinking from the borehole and playing around, they all get up and start to saunter casually towards the Oryx. However, they take the rubber pipe with them that they have been playing with this whole time.
This is a picture of the rubber pipe that the lions thought was such an entertaining toy. Some things surprise us about lions, but others reveal obviously what they are: cats. Photo by Karissa K.
It was confusing to watch as they walked towards the Oryx, not trying to hide at all, and playing with the rubber pipe along the way. We slowly begin to realize how much of a failed attempt at hunting they had just made. 5 lions, 22 Oryx, 0 kills.
This is a picture of the lions walking toward the Oryx. By Sam W.
Top photo: This is a picture of two of the lions that we saw the day before, on our way into the Hoanib river bed for the first time. By Karissa Killian.