Sleeping with the Lions

              Two days ago I had an experience that I have only dreamed about.  I witnessed firsthand a chase, kill and devour of a wildebeest from a pack of lions.  It was absolutely incredible.  We were at Schotia (the game reserve) and it was our last night there so we got the idea of sleeping outside in Justin’s tent to watch the lions.  He had this suped up Land Rover that you could practically live out of and it includes this small tent on the roof.  It’s about 9 at night and we are driving back from dinner to the homestead.  As we go down a road we see a pair of eyes glowing at us- low and behold it’s the big male lion just casually walking towards us.  We stop the car, roll down the windows and pull out our cameras.  He stopped and laid down next to our car maybe 10 feet away from us.  My body was shaking with adrenaline- he was massive and so close.  My window was down and I bet he could have been inside the car in less than .001 second if he felt like it.  Justin wasn’t worried however and said we really didn’t bother the lion in the slightest.   We sit there with this lion for a while and then decide to pack up our bags and find them again.  Justin figured they were going to hunt tonight and we wanted to be there to watch.  We get a call on the radio letting us know where one of the lioness is currently located and we head off in that direction.  We found her relatively quickly and weren’t there for 10 minutes before the big male and smaller male came over.  We stopped the car and watched patiently for maybe an hour and half with nothing really happening besides us taking thousands of pictures and rolling the video cameras.  We also did our best impersonations of growls and roars to try and get the males to move J- it didn’t really work.  So anyways- Justin climbs up to bed around 12ish and says to wake him if something exciting happens.  He’s up there maybe 15 minutes when we see the lioness take off into the night- we bang on the roof and yell like mad for Justin to get his butt down here to drive us off in that direction- we knew there was wildebeest that way.  He practically falls down into the Land Rover and we take off just in time to see her leap and grab onto the neck of a wildebeest.  It was indescribable. I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn’t watching TV and it was right in front of me- wasn’t staged or planned or anything like that.  As soon as the lioness downed the wildebeest the big male came over and took hold of the neck.  He didn’t let go for a good 20 minutes- he was the only one with the power in his jaws to hold a tight grip for so long.  By now Whitney, Kelleigh and I are just screaming and jumping up and down with excitement and just trying to believe what’s in front of our eyes.  It only gets better from here! Justin backs the Land Rover within 20 feet of the kill; we get out, climb up top and lay down to watch the feeding to our hearts content.  I have no idea what time it is by now, but we probably lie there and watch them feeding and tearing into the wildebeest for a couple hours.  We were so close you could smell it and hear the flies- It was a dream come true for me.  I have video that will knock your socks off and I can’t wait to share it with everyone!!!  Okay so the feeding goes on and on and eventually they sort of just stop and walk a bit away to lay down.  We try to get some sleep ourselves but we are smushing four people in a tent that is four feet wide.  Needless to say we spent the night spooning and every 15 minutes saying switch and we would all flip to the other side.  It wasn’t possible to lie on our backs or stomachs without half covering your neighbor.  With so many of us shoved into this small tent you can imagine we got hot.  Justin opened the front flap in order to let a breeze in and we all laid back down to cool off and try and get some sleep when all of a sudden he goes “I think the lioness is on the front of the land rover.”  Uhhhhh needless to say we were freaking out a bit until he looked and it’s not a lion but Whitney’s shoe.  He wanted to go down and get it because he knew the lions would grab it and have fun chewing it to pieces – well he started to climb down and we get the biggest fright because he immediately starts yelling “GET BACK! SHOO! GO! GET! AHHH! GET BACK!” at the top of his lungs and banging on the roof.  As it turns out the younger male (when I say younger I mean he was the son of the big male- he still had a full mane, was a good 8 feel long with 8 in paws.. in other words not really any smaller) was coming over to investigate what had fallen out of our tent.  He was maybe 10 feet away as Justin was going to jump down.  Us girls immediately start telling Justin to come back here and not to be silly it’s only a shoe and yada yada because honestly- what are we supposed to do if something happened to him??????   Justin just calmly tells us to keep an eye on the lion as he starts up a firestarter and throws it at him in order to scare and distract it as he jumps down and retrieves the shoe.  It was a scary experience; we hit him and acted like mother hens when he got back into the tent J.  After the shoe incident- I’m guessing it’s a little before 4am at this point, we try to get some sleep but the male lions decide to have a roar off.  It was awesome hearing them roar back and forth trying to out do each other, but I was constantly on edge.  They might have moved about 30 yards away by now, but the sound made them seem as though they were directly outside the Land Rover.  I can confidently say that I did not sleep one wink that night but that it was worth it a thousand times over.