It happened in April, the rainy season in the Masai Mara. I had never been to Africa or any Safari place before. When our little propeller plane landed, we were chasing away zebras. There were Zebras on the runway. The pilot did not even seem to notice, but to me it was the coolest thing I had ever seen.
Well, that was about to change.
We were picked up by a tall and skinny man with pitch black skin. He was a Masai, that still lives in his original Village, that is when he does not work at the camp. After getting to our "tent" of the lodge we were offered to go for an afternoon safari. It was around 4PM. Just after entering the protected park throu the Oloololo gate, we were driving down a dirt road and saw a lioness looking thru the grass.
There were zebras on the other side of the road, several hundred meters away from the lioness.
Masai Mara means spotted land and gets its name from the grasland and the trees which look like spots due their high crown created by the giraffs. I had never seen such wild beauty before, it was simply stunning.
The lioness had a very focused look and keept watching over the other side on the road. Then it moved, slowly without any sound, but very deliberately. Soon another lioness appeared, close to the first one.
Are they hunting the zebras? The way they crossed the grass and later the road right in front of our car sure made it look it.
More and more lions appeared, smaller than the first lioness we saw. All but the first two were cubs.
The pride was scattered around a vast distance, yet somehow seemed to walk in concert. Everyone seemed to follow the first lioness. She was the dominant female. All in all there were 19 lions. Only two were fully grown. The cats were very lean and must have surely been hungry.
The road we were on formed a ridge that was particularly high on the left side. Every lion seemed to stop there and use it as a look out.
We were particularly lucky because some of the cubs used to watch mom move closer to the zebras and decided to camp out right in front of our car.
This gave us some perfect opportunities for pictures. I had received a new camera before the trip as a present from my wife and was not yet very familiar with it. Shooting the lions in the grass was not very easy. The cubs in front of our range rover gave us some wonderful opportunity to take som easier pictures.
More and more cars came to gather and watch. The drivers are all connected via walky talky and lions are always the number one attraction. Everyone watched the lioness move farther away from us and closer to the zebras....until we could not see it anymore. But we were still surrounded by lion cubs. They followed slowly and much more playfully, their looks were much less focused.
Watching the lioness in the grass showed how useful the black end of the back ears are that all cats have. It would have been impossible to spot the lion in the grass otherwise, since their furr belends into the color of the grass perfectly.
After about an hour or so we had lost the lionesses out of sight. We could still see many cubs. The zebras had moved in the meantime quite a bit as if they had seen the lions and we were sure the chase was over. Our guide explained that the cubs likely had screwed up the hunt. The humans started to get distracted.
That was a mistake. It happened very quickly, so quickly that I have neither picture nor video footage of any of it. The lioness apeared just a few yards behind the zebra that was fardest from the small herd. It was unbelievable to see how fast these cats can run through the gras. It took maybe 10 seconds before the lioness reached the zebra and leaped onto it, first hitting it and making it stumble and then immediatly jumping for the throat. The other lioness was right behind and latched onto the back of the zebra. It had absolutly no shot and was down immediately. The grass was so high that we could barely see the huffs of the zebra move for probably less than a minute. All this happened so fast that I had completely forgotten about the camera in my hand.
All the cubs now were walking towards the kill from everywhere. It was nice to see and I thought wow, that was over an hour of the best entertainment I have ever had. I had no idea that this wasn't over.
There was a herd of old male buffaloes close by. Buffalos leave the bigger herd when they are outmatched by the jounger bulls and tend to form small herds. These buffalos were not happy about what just happened and came running to help out the zebra. Of course it was too late to save it, but still heardwarming to see how the buffalos formed a circle around the dead animal.
Then they started chasing the lions all over the place. It was clear that these bulls did not like the lions very much. We were starting to get worried for the little cubs, but instinctively they knew what to do.
For us it was a great show as the lions kept running around our cars and kept crossing the road back and forth being chased by angry bulls. The Lionesses kept protecting the cubs and forming a close group: one in the front one in the bag. The buffalos chased the lions around our cars back and forth giving us another hour or so of entertainment.
After a while scarface appeared.
He is the dominant male of this pride and forms a coalition with two other male lions. None of which were around that day.
Scarface has a large scar just above his left eye from fights with other male lions.
He watched the scene with no particular urgency. Taking a rest close to where we were watching.
Then he moved towards the kill and the buffaloes slowly went away. It was beautiful to see the lions gathering together at the kill feeding as a family.
Here is also a video of it
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