Elephants, Lions & Figure 8's

When we get closer to Kimana we start to see a swath of green hugging along the banks of a winding river. Agriculture springs up in vivid patchwork patterns nearby because of access to irrigation. We land on a tiny dirt airstrip and are met by some of the landowners and mzees (elders) from Kimana to discuss the Kimana Sanctuary; a small community sanctuary whose lease is up this summer. We’re discussing the possibility of linking conservation areas by using wildlife corridors and also discussing community projects and benefits to the landowners.

During the meeting Richard gets an urgent call from the Game Scouts that an elephant has been speared and we’ll need to go check on it to see if we need to send in a vet. The meeting continues and yet another urgent call comes in for Richard saying that the Game Scouts have found a dead lion. This is extremely rare since in the past two years they’ve started a new program called Predator Compensation Fund which has been paying the Maasai for livestock killed by predators in exchange for not killing lions. http://www.nationalgeographic.com/field/projects/big-cat-conservation.html

Our meeting wraps up, we bid the mzees goodbye and we fly to another airstrip. We land and wait for the lion researchers and game scouts to pick us up. Its afternoon and we’ve had only a Coke all day and it’s hot. Richard finds three tangerines in the back seat pocket of the plane and hands us each one. “Not sure how old these are but...lunch.” They are completely petrified but at least you can suck on the segments and then spit them out. A small group of curious Maasai women and children form under the wing of the plane and we share the small shady space, accepting each others’ presence.

The researchers show up and we’re off by vehicle to find the injured elephant. We have her GPS coordinates. Once we arrive we walk through the bush to reach the elephant. It’s a big female and her left front leg is completely useless and massively swollen. She can’t walk. She’s very anxious that we are somewhat near her, so much that she tries to stagger/hop on three legs to get behind a tree. Richard says that she won’t make it and radios the vet to let them know. The vet won’t be able to make it from Nairobi to put the elephant down until the next morning. So sad to see such a beautiful creature maimed so badly. She was speared because there is a lot of human/wildlife conflict in the area; obviously over using the same resources. Elephants raid crops along the river and people spear them to protect their livelihoods.

After we left the elephant we set out to meet up with another game scout unit. This was a much harder task since they were located on the side of a hill. We were trying to make our way through the whistling thorn which is not easy going. Besides the fact that the thorn trees can puncture your tires, thorns can come thrashing through the windows and roof and are not only sharp but are covered in huge colonies of ants. We were all covered in tiny ants swarming the car and poor Bill in the front seat got gouged by a thorn; you’d have thought he cut an artery the way it bled. The front seat was splattered with blood.

When we finally found the game scouts they were tiny dots on the side of a hill. We left the car in the lava field and made our way up the side on foot. The stench reached us before we actually saw the loin. They think it was a young male that had been dead about five days. It was well rotted. Luckily, it was not poisoned. Apparently you can tell because if it had been poisoned there wouldn’t be any maggots; and this carcass was covered with them. The team took samples and I took pictures since the researchers camera was not functioning. This was both good and bad – it gave me something to occupy myself with, but on the other hand it meant getting up close and personal. I think the closest I’ve been to a rotting animal was a mouse; an almost grown lion carcass downwind was a smell I will not forget.

The team removed the claws since they can be sold on the black market and they don’t want anyone to take them. They thought the lion probably died from natural causes and thought it may have been one of the cubs of a female that had been located in the area. The lion researchers have a few lions that they have been able to collar and they can track them using GPS and antennas. The team picked up a signal but could not track the lion because it was in the lava flow, which is almost impossible to maneuver through.

After a full day we packed up and headed back in the plane. Richard wanted to see if he could spot any lions in the area from the air, so he did some crazy figure eights, banking so hard we were completely sideways catching a perpendicular view of Kilimanjaro. The afternoon heat, lack of water and food, and the waft of rotting lion didn’t help. I thought I might lose it and was relieved when the eight turned into the straight line of a nine towards home.

When we landed four dogs (the Bonham’s pets) greeted us on the runway and on the corner of the forest a hyena watched us cautiously and then came out to greet us as well. HYENA, as he is lovingly known, was rescued by the Bonham’s when we was only a few weeks old, when he was orphaned. He’s now about seven months old. It really is quite an unusual think to commute home by plane and be greeted by your dogs and pet hyena at the end of a long day! I could not wait to wash my face and lay down, but during the day the ladies had decided we should do yoga, and that I needed to lead the class. I’ve never lead a yoga class in my life, much less had a hyena in the room…but we’ll save that for another story. Definitely not your typical day….