Part of the Pride (22 page)

It was a busy time. The best times to film in Africa are the so-called golden hours, just after dawn and just before sunset, when the light is soft and mellow and the grassy veld and tawny coats of the lions really do look like they're made of precious, molten metal. I had to be up at four in the morning to get the lions ready for the day's filming, and in the middle of the day I would spend time with
little Meg and Ami, and load the others onto vehicles and prepare them for the afternoon shoot.

I couldn't stay mad at Maditau—I'd known her as long as I had Tau and Napoleon. She was a great mom and was really looking after her cubs.

She was in a separate enclosure with her cubs, in order to simulate the eight-week period that occurs in the wild when new mothers take their offspring away from the rest of the pride. The theory was that male lions might not recognize newborn cubs as their own and would kill them, or that tiny cubs were simply not strong enough to endure the rest of the pride's rough play.

When I approached her, Maditau would come to the fence as she always did, and start talking to me. “
Wuh-ooow, wuh-ooow
.”

“
Wuh-ooow
,” I'd say back to her. “How's my girl today?”

I would tickle her through the gate and it seemed as though nothing had changed between us. The next time I stopped by, Maditau was out in the open with her cubs in tow and they trotted over to the gate on their tiny little legs to see who their mother was talking to. Cubs are curious, and soon they were weaving in between Maditau's legs to try and get closer to the fence and see what all the fuss was about.

I knelt to look at the cubs. Where the sliding security gate met the fence there was a small gap, and as I was chatting to them all one of the cubs pushed its way to the front of the litter and fell through the gap.

“Shit!” I thought Maditau would have a fit. I scooped up the little squealing cub in the cupped palms of my hands. Maditau lowered her big face to the wayward cub and looked up at me. She was totally relaxed and looked at me as if to say, “Thanks, Kev,” as I pushed the tiny bundle back through the gap to her.

Helga and I were doing the rounds a couple of days later and
Maditau was still in her night pen with her cubs. “I'm going to go in with them,” I said.

“Kev, you're crazy. It's one thing to check the cubs through the fence, but are you sure you want to go inside with a lioness and young cubs?”

“I'm going in,” I said to Helga. “But I want you here, just in case something happens. I wouldn't want to try this by myself.”

I opened the gate, closed it behind me, and went to the night pen. I opened the door, but instead of leaving I waited in the open area of the enclosure. Maditau came running out and gave me her greeting the same way she would have if I had been on the other side of the fence. The cubs came out of their house a few seconds later and started to explore. I sensed no enmity from Maditau at all. Helga was looking on anxiously from outside and I started to think that we humans were making a bigger deal out of this whole interaction than the lioness was.

The cubs came up to me and I started to pet one. Maditau could see what was going on, but she seemed fine with the interaction. It might have been different if I had walked over to the cubs and tried to pick one up in front of her. It's kind of like when a human mother has a baby. It's okay if she says, “Here, Kev, hold the baby”, but if you go “Come on, let me hold it,” or just grab the kid without permission, some moms can be a bit nervous.

I'd been accepted by the males of this pride, Tau and Napoleon, and Maditau was happy for me to be in the same enclosure as her and her young. When the cubs came over to me and Maditau showed no sign of aggression, I knew something big had happened. If I had been accepted in this way, how much closer could I get to this family? People have said to me that lions tolerate people, and that is the extent of their relationship with humans. It's like the old saying, dogs have owners and cats have servants. I don't believe that about lions. Some lions only tolerate me—just as
some people only tolerate me—but that day I knew I'd been accepted by Maditau.

I knew that I was part of the pride.

Filming began a couple of weeks after the two lionesses had given birth and Maditau still seemed comfortable with me being around her own cubs. As a result, we were able to let the French film crew get some shots of her picking her cubs up, moving them around and feeding them.

As usual, the crew was behind bars in a cage within the enclosure, but Maditau was happy for me to work with her in the open. The filmmakers were ecstatic, as they had planned on filming hand-reared cubs separately and superimposing them on film of lionesses. Conventional wisdom had it that lionesses with cubs would be incredibly protective and very aggressive towards outsiders, and that we would not be able to get close enough to her to film her interacting with her cubs. Maditau was happy to move her cubs around when I wanted her to, and it was an honor and a privilege for me to work with her on that film.

We were already doing ground-breaking stuff with Maditau, so I took another chance and introduced Tau and Napoleon to their young offspring. Conventional wisdom, of course, had it that the males would kill the cubs because they were less than eight weeks old. With me standing by expectantly, we let Tau and Napoleon in to see Maditau and her three cubs.

Tau and Napoleon were on edge, Maditau was on edge, and I was on edge. I didn't know how the lioness was going to react—if she was going to be more aggressive now because of the males. It was Tau who broke the ice. He walked up to the little cubs and gave them a good lick, as if to say that he really wanted to be part of their lives.

Napoleon, however, was acting really strange. He was like a cat
on a hot tin roof, or Tigger in
Winnie the Pooh
—all wound up and bouncing around the enclosure. Occasionally he would stop and sniff the cubs, and they were just lapping up the attention, calling, “
Wa-OW
,
wa-OW
.” Of course, it wasn't all fun for the cubs. When lion cubs are first released they're nervous, on edge. Sometimes they even urinate and defecate out of sheer stress.

It was amazing, all the interaction that was going on, and none of it violent or aggressive. Maditau was greeting all the other lionesses for the first time since she'd gone off to give birth; Tau was greeting the cubs; and Napoleon was bouncing around with excitement, all at once. And I was there at the center of it. It felt like another moment or milestone of pure acceptance and I was privileged to be a part of that special day.

Tau and Napoleon and Maditau and the cubs were all fine, and no one killed or ate anyone. Perhaps my boys were just exceptional dads, or perhaps conventional wisdom needs to be challenged a little more often.

Pelokghale was a huge lioness.

She must have weighed in at around four hundred pounds, and was as big as some adult males I've seen. She could be monstrous and vicious, and I wondered what sort of a mom she would make—whether having cubs would make her even more foul-tempered.

When Pelo had her cubs she started coming up and talking to me when I passed her enclosure, but then she would trot back to her night pen, where her young were denned.

Eventually I thought I would go in with her. I'd always had a very close relationship with Maditau, but I could see no reason why Pelokghale should act weird with me if I entered her enclosure, as she had been just as communicative with me through the wire of the fence as Maditau had been after she gave birth.

I went into Pelo's enclosure and called her. This enormous lioness
came bounding up to me, then paused. She turned back towards her night area, where her cubs were, and then looked back at me. Next she closed the distance between us and started nudging me.

“Come, come. Check this out, Kev,” she seemed to be saying to me. She led me towards the den.

I took my cue, and walked steadily behind her towards the pen. Pelo walked inside. I'm not completely stupid, so I waited at the entrance to the night enclosure. I knew that if I crawled inside, I would be confined and have no means of a quick getaway.

I peered inside, letting my eyes adjust to the gloom. Pelokghale had walked to the other side of the den where her cubs were sitting in a nest of straw. She picked one tiny bundle up in her mouth, brought it across to my side of the pen, and set it gently down on the concrete floor for me to look at. I was close enough to touch it, but I didn't. One after another she repeated the process, depositing each of her cubs, which were only a few days old, in front of me.

At the time we were filming the documentary
Dangerous Companions
, about my relationships with the various animals at the Lion Park. The next time I went to visit Pelo and her cubs I arranged for the cameraman to come along, and I took a small digital camcorder with me in case Pelo repeated her offering of the cubs to me.

While the camera was rolling, I went in and Pelo again led me to the night area. I kneeled down at the doorway and once again she picked up one of her cubs and plonked it down in front of me. She was standing there licking the cub and talking, and the next thing I knew she was pushing the cub into my hands.

I knelt there, hands outstretched, with this tiny cub in my palms, holding it while its mother licked and cleaned it.

What happened with Maditau and her first litter, and Pelokghale and her cubs, doesn't happen with every lioness, or even with those two every time they give birth.

At the time when I was so fully accepted by Maditau and Pelokghale, I had no hidden agenda and no intentions about why I was going in with them and their cubs, other than to see if it was possible. I wasn't trying to strengthen our relationship so I could film a lioness and her cubs, or get pictures of me holding a cub. I did it because I wanted to, and because the lionesses were happy for me to be there. In Pelo's case, she trusted my innocence enough to deliver her offspring into my hands.

Relationships change, however, in both the human world and in the animal world. One day I might go in with Tau and Napoleon and one of them will say, “Don't come any farther, Kev.” At that point, I'd have to say, “Thanks for a great ten years, guys.” I'm not going to push our friendship. That would be hard, but I would have to respect the fact that change happens, and perhaps look at myself a little closer.

One of the scariest moments I've ever had with a lion—including my encounter with Tsavo—happened while I was working on this book, and it involved Maditau. I had been in Johannesburg at the recording of the soundtrack for our forthcoming feature film,
White Lion
. It had been a busy couple of weeks working with the production team, putting the finishing touches on the movie, and I was conscious that I hadn't spent time with the lions for quite a while. Tabby had given birth to three cubs a week earlier—again an unexpected though pleasant surprise—and I was eager to get back to the Kingdom of the White Lion and see how the youngsters were doing.

The Sunday afternoon we finished recording, I rushed home. “Do you want to come see the lions with me?” I asked Mandy.

“No, thanks. I'm going to put dinner on,” she said.

It's hard to explain, but the feeling that I needed to spend some time with the lions had been nagging away at me. I got into my Land Cruiser Prado, and on the short but winding and scenic drive through the Kingdom I was still feeling uncomfortable, even though I was on my way to see the pride.

I went straight to Tau and Napoleon's enclosure because I wanted to see Tabby's cubs, but when I got out of the vehicle I saw the big males were in the far corner and Tabby was obviously distressed. “
Wuh-aaah
,
wuh-aaaah
,” she moaned, almost as if she were calling her cubs.

“What's wrong, my girl?” I said to her. I thought it was strange that she would be calling for her cubs when they were most likely in the night pen, where the lionesses usually den their newly arrived cubs.

Suddenly I noticed a flurry of activity in the middle of the enclosure. I saw Maditau and her three latest cubs, which at fifteen weeks were much older than Tabby's and already proving to be a handful. Two of Maditau's older daughters—each about three-and-a-half years old—were also with her, and mom and all her children were huddled together, totally engrossed in something.

I went closer to Tabby, and it was plain she was definitely very distressed. I checked the night pen and saw, with a sense of growing dread, that only two of her three cubs were in there.

Maditau and the others had managed to drag one of Tabby's cubs out of the pen into the wider enclosure, and as I strode closer to them I saw that the lions were all fixated on the missing cub. They were in the process of almost pulling the little one to pieces. It was then that I heard the cub's terrible wailing, a tortured, raspy
raaarrr, raaarrrr
noise. The plucky little thing was fighting for its life.

I ran at Maditau. It wasn't the first time I've acted before engaging my brain, but I couldn't stand by and let them torture the cub to death. Maditau turned on me when I got to within five meters of her, and in the nine-and-a-half years I've known that lioness I have never seen such aggression in her eyes. She had the cub in her mouth. She could have killed it immediately if she had wanted to, but instead she was taunting her own offspring with it, letting them bite and bully it, but also challenging them by taking possession of the hapless baby.

I could see the cub was badly lacerated and would probably die soon if I didn't get hold of it. It wailed away in pain and pure fear for its life. Maditau stooped low to the ground and curled her tail, her eyes as wild as a snake's. She charged me.

It's common knowledge that one shouldn't run from a charging lion, and I have honed my senses over the years to try and ensure that I say calm in potentially dangerous situations. This time, however, I wasn't sure that my base human instinct to flee wouldn't overpower me. As it happened, my legs froze on me. If, for some reason, I'd decided I had to run, I couldn't have.