KENYA – Samburu : …….and Death……

What followed next was anticipation that we were about to encounter something very exciting. We saw a very anxious young giraffe on the far river bank looking in our direction and then running away. We knew something was up but could not see anything in our immediate surroundings so Peter moved the vehicle around the next bend. I heard an Impala give an alarm call and saw on our side giraffes looking towards the river. There had to be danger in front. Inching forward I could see over the top of a fallen tree that a young giraffe was laying down. We moved forward until I could see, that partial hidden in the shadows, there was a lioness. We had missed the kill, by…… one encounter with a Martial Eagle, less than a hundred meters away!

The lioness was panting heavily. She was laying down when we found her but soon stood up to stand over her meal for the day. And what a meal it must have been. The giraffe had to have been getting on for 2 years old, so it was not exactly small. Once she had mustered up the strength she decided to drag the victim about 35 meters into the dense underbrush of a toothbrush tree. Though the giraffe must have weighed maybe as much as 3 times her weight, the lioness showed her extraordinary strength gripping the giraffe at the top of the neck and pulling him about 15 feet at a time before resting.

At one point just before the final pull into the bush she sat on her kill which we all found highly amusing. For three quarters of an hour we watched all this excitement unfold, lucky enough to have been the first ones to see it and sorry that we could not have gotten into a position to see the feast. What a morning!

all photos © adrian binns