The Kill - A Night Drive in Kruger National Park, South AfricaDecember 2004 by Lauren E. DarceySouth Africa reintroduced me to the scent of death. Not the whiff of road kill that prompts you to flip on the A/C fan as you drive along the highway, but a deeply disturbing stench that settles in the pit of your stomach and lingers for hours after an encounter. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never experienced it before; in some quirk of evolution, your body understands its primitive meaning when you encounter it.
Our night safari began just before dusk in the balmy spring evening in mid-October, our canvas-topped truck trundling out of Satara Bush Camp. Nestled in the northeast corner of South Africa along the Mozambique and Zimbabwe borders in the central area of Kruger National Park, Satara is best known as the predator camp for its lion, leopard, cheetah and hyena activity. Until recently, game fences kept the animals within South Africa – and more importantly, away from areas where poaching is a legitimate profession as opposed to a criminal activity and land mines are still suspected. However, economic pressures to encourage tourism and conservation (which tend to go hand-in-hand) in the neighboring countries, along with an ever-increasing African elephant population have recently triggered the Kruger to drop many of its fences and join with less-visited Mozambique and Zimbabwe parks as a transfrontier park. Experts are hoping that by allowing more natural migration routes for the park animals, they will be providing much needed grazing land and a more diverse gene pool. My South African comrades are nervous – will all the animals have journeyed elsewhere? Our guide’s only guarantee is that we can expect the unexpected. After all, this is Africa.
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Recently, the buffalo have had much reason to be upset – their species is battling a debilitating epidemic of tuberculosis. In the Kruger National Park alone, more than 50% buffalo are affected with this highly contagious disease, while predators acquire it by feeding on infected animals, and grazers catch it through close herd contact. Lion, cheetah, leopard, baboon, kudu, and many other park animals have already been identified with TB. Conversationalists are holding their collective breathes, and making significant efforts in TB research and prevention, for if TB reaches some of the more endangered animals such as the rhinos and wild dogs, they could easily be wiped out. So far, we’ve just been lucky.
We turn towards the recently departed sun, down an unmarked dusty road and come to a rather abrupt halt. Our guide and driver jumps out, rummages around, and hands out some high powered lamps. He them proceeds to jump back in the front of the truck, driving with one hand and scanning the darkness with his own spotlight in the other. He directs us to scan the surrounding darkness as we drive for the shining eyes of animals, and to call out if we see anything. This is a task I enjoy, and excel in – particularly at finding the little creatures like the shy and solitary miniature antelope called duiker and the spotted eagle owls in the trees. Several miles and many glassy-eyed impala herds (whom my friend confides she fondly calls “the rats of the park”) later, the truck jerks into a lower gear and slows.
My lamp beam is cutting through the darkness when the sour stench hits me full on the face, turning my stomach. My brain registers its meaning as I see a large, furry animal laying on its side in the road ahead, its face grinning at me as I shine the light on it for all to inspect. The spotted hyena is one of seven adults, all lounging around the three day old kill site of a young giraffe. Two smaller black-backed jackals scavenge along the outskirts of the kill, eyeing the fully sated hyenas warily. But the real surprise – and oddity for everyone, including the guide - is yet to come. Everyone gasps as they gaze upon the unthinkable – at the edge of the kill, a young male lion eats like a scavenger alongside the hyenas.
The hyena-lion quarrel is an age-old one, and quite well known to the world now due to media attention such as the National Geographic Television Special, "Eternal Enemies" and Disney’s “The Lion King”. Lions will normally kill a hyena on sight – even going so far as to hunt down the hyena matriarch - and leave it to rot, whereas a pack of hyenas can take out a solitary lion, especially a young one. Both steal each other’s kills and compete for the same resources, so what is going on here with these seven hyenas and a young and emaciated male lion sharing? Our guide provides an answer – the lion has been infected with TB and likely abandoned by his pride to fend for himself. The hyenas seem to, astutely, want nothing to do with him.
We gawk at the kill site for a good half an hour, the fascinatingly gruesome scene playing out before us, and the stench fades slightly as we become accustomed to it. Most of the hyenas loll about on the ground, their stomachs rounded to near-bursting staring at us with foul smelling grins. Occasionally, one ambles over to rip off another morsel of decaying flesh – for limbs are strewn everywhere - and a sickeningly distinctive crackle fills the air as the hyena uses its powerful jaws to eat bone, hoof and hide. The black-backed jackals cautiously taking a bite here or there, as the lion gnaws on a long, speckled leg joint, his movements jerky with thinly veiled desperation. Too soon, the guide starts the truck again with a roar, and we begin the trip back to camp. We stop for little else, for its late and what could possibly exceed the thrill of the previous sight? We see the lights of Satara in the distance and the heavy gate opens to accept us back into the relative safety of high electric fences, thatched bungalows and air-conditioning. As we head to get some rest before our early morning safari, we hear the hyenas laugh mockingly outside the walls, and the scent of death still lingers in my hair. Photography by Laurie Darcey & Monika Van Wyk. |
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