Survival

And let the fear and dread of you be upon all the beasts of the earth, and upon all the fowls of the air, and all that move upon the earth: all the fishes of the sea are delivered into your hand.

And every thing that moveth and liveth shall be meat for you: even as the green herbs have I delivered them all to you:

Saving that flesh with blood you shall not eat.

For I will require the blood of your lives at the hand of every beast, and at the hand of man, at the hand of every man, and of his brother, will I require the life of man.

Whoever shall shed man’s blood, his blood shall be shed: for man was made to the image of God.

But increase you and multiply, and go upon the earth, and fill it.

Genesis 9:2–7

Long ago, elephants walked the nyika scrubland between stands of thick forest. Gardeners and landscapers of their ecosystem, they bulldozed through the brush, clearing ground cover wherever they went. Bushes were trampled flat or uprooted with their tusks in their daily quest for food. In the absence of bush, tall grasses sprang up. Zebras, antelopes, kudus, elands, and many more creatures grazed across the treeless expanses. The plains were emerald-green in spring and summer, golden-brown in autumn and winter.

The world beyond the nyika lusted for the tusks the elephants carried. Ivory was a highly valued commodity. Hunters killed the largest land animal for their tusks alone, sending the ivory spears away across the sea. Ivory was used to produce everyday wares such as umbrella handles, hair combs, piano keys, billiard balls, and decorative knick-knacks. These articles were in demand in Europe and throughout the United States of America.

Elephants’ tusks reached records of 11 feet in length and 240 pounds, bulls usually sporting longer, thicker, heavier tusks than cows. The animals with the longest tusks were targeted first, and as long-tusked elephants died and produced no more offspring, tusks in successive generations got shorter and shorter. Massive tusks were supported by massive bodies, and elephants themselves got smaller through time. More elephants than ever are being born without tusks. The genes necessary to produce the tools are lacking in the population.

Accompanying harvested ivory, and often forced to transport it, were men and women who were to be sold as slaves. On a route from the continent’s interior to the Eastern coast, many slave caravans used a ford on the Tsavo River. The dead and the dying, the ill and the weak, were abandoned by the water. Babies were sometimes taken from their mothers if a woman was deemed too exhausted to carry both her child and an elephant’s tusk. The latter would fetch a better price.

And when the caravan moved on, some predators roving in search of a meal investigated the corpses. Food that did not need to be caught and killed was always welcomed by hyenas, jackals, lions, and other scavengers.

The Masai people of Africa lived all around the Tsavo river on the grassy plains, where they pastured their herds. On those animals depended all their living, for they did not farm at all. Instead, they sustained themselves mostly on the meat and milk of their herds of sheep, goats, and especially cattle. The Masai had an impressive army united under a king. The elmorani, the warriors, would attack other peoples to wipe them out and steal their livestock.

Then came strangers to the nyika, both man and beast. Families from Europe brought their lives and livestock with them to a new home. With European cattle came diseases no creature of Africa had ever met.

Rinderpest, called Sadoka by the Africans, swept through the cattle of the Europeans. Since they used local watering holes, and not separate water sources, their infection spread to Masai cattle and wild ungulates, such as giraffe, wildebeest, elands, antelopes, and massive cape buffalo. All those wild creatures were the primary prey for lions and other predators. The only ungulates left were rhinos and hippos, too big for lions to tackle. Of the smaller, more manageable species, only the healthiest and strongest had survived the ravaging disease.

Into this land of capable but starving predators poured an army of men from India, brought to advance the British railway across the African continent.

About the affairs of men lions care not at all. But notice those affairs? That they certainly do, when the affairs run into them.

Night is dark and cool in the land of many thorns. Numberless paths weave through fields and forests, hills and marshes.

One path here goes straighter than all others. No creature who calls this land home uses it. The metal trail was made by the newcomers who are slowly but surely overrunning this part of the world. Their metal beast screams and rattles roars back and forth, always in its trail, louder and faster than the elephants that lived here before the ivory trade wiped out many and drove the remnant away West, farther from the sea to the East.

The newcomers brought smaller beasts than the metal one with them as well. Real beasts that walked and made noise and ate and could be eaten.

At least, they could be eaten before most of them rapidly died.

The carcasses only lasted so long before scavengers consumed them, hyenas eating the final bones.

Whether or not food is present, it is still necessary for life to continue.

Two male lions walk silently through the night, toward the glow of human-fed fire. It is caged within a circular fence of thorn bushes piled higher than a man’s head, called a boma. This is no great obstacle to lions. They are built for athletic maneuvers such as traveling long distances, leaping up steep river banks, and wrestling large prey. Furthermore, their skin is impervious to the thorns that men and cattle regard as such hindrances. But the thorns do tend to render them maneless, ripping out tufts of the long hair that adorns most male lions. Both of these are completely bald, but there is no mistaking them for females. Their heads and shoulders are too large, too muscular.

The lions leap the boma easily and survey the area. It is as they are used to: soft white shelters that can be easily broken into. And they do. They thrust their great heads under the edges of the canvas and each seize whatever their jaws close on first. As they run and feel the live, fighting weight dangling from their mouths, they know they are successful.

It was not always this easy. They struggled at first. They would bite and run, dragging what they thought was prey from the weight and the excitement of the moment. Too late, they would realize their mistake. Once the mistake was a great soft thing, another time it was like an old skin full of dry and shriveled maggots. Those were the hungry times at the beginning when they were learning how to use this new food source. Only one of them would dare, and then there were scuffles over the food, for the catcher wanted to eat first, but the other was also feeling pangs in his stomach and did not want to leave his well enough alone.

Now the both of them are experts. There is no more tussling over one meal. They can each secure their own with little trouble.

There is the annoyance of the hunter who always seems to be waiting for them like a vulture. He thinks he is hidden and out of their sight. They can feel his tenseness, similar to their own but with much more fright. He is not confident in his abilities. They are. That is the difference between their hunting and his.

Back in March, Colonel John Henry Patterson had only been in Africa a few days when he heard news of railway workers being snatched by lions. He dismissed it as rumors, supposing the disappearances to be the result of violence and jealousy between men, with wild animals not at all involved. He was the newly-appointed overseer of construction, and had to think of the work to be done. His first order of business was to build a bridge across the Tsavo River, very near the traditional ford that had seen use for who knew how many years.

But then one morning he was told an Indian man he knew personally had been dragged off and eaten by a lion in the night, in the sight of multiple witnesses. Colonel Patterson could not but believe in man-eating lions when he followed the trail of paw prints and heel dragmarks, and was faced with a severed head amidst a gory aftermath of death. More tracks told him two lions had fought for possession of the body.

He chose to believe the previous disappearances to be the doing of the man-eaters, and vowed he would end their lives. His hunt began early in March of 1898.

The very next night after his acquaintance had died, Patterson climbed a tree and sat with his loaded gun in his lap, ready to blast any lion he saw, fully expecting to have the opportunity. Surely the beast would return to its previous fruitful hunting ground.

Screams erupted from a different camp full of railroad workers, and Colonel Patterson felt himself a failure.

For weeks, the Colonel would climb a tree near the camp most recently attacked, hoping he could end what he came to refer to as the reign of terror. The lions always seemed to evade him. He tried staking out camps not yet attacked, but they never struck where he waited. He built a trap once, with a separate compartment for human bait, and all the men inside were armed with guns. He and a friend perched in their own protective cage, ready to shoot from a completely different angle chosen to avoid shooting the workers inside the trap. A lion entered the trap, but made it out alive, as everyone in the bait compartment went mad with terror and forgot to pull the lever that would drop the lion's entry door.

The lions evaded bullet after bullet, until one was shot fatally on the ninth of December, 1898.

Many days after his ally fell to the hunter, the one remaining lion passed beneath a tree and noticed branches leaned together in an unnatural arrangement. He stopped and watched, noticing the small movements of two men perched up in the tree. One breathed in sleep. The other turned his head back and forth in fearful but blind observation.

The lion slowly stalked closer, moving from one bit of cover to the next. The ground under the tree was mostly open, but he managed to move only when the wakeful man was not looking at him.

The sleeping man suddenly stirred and sat up. With two men on the watch and so little cover, it was inevitable the lion would be spotted. He continued his stalk regardless, and was suddenly struck with a great pain in his shoulder. Wise in the ways of men to wound from afar, the lion fled.

Safe in thick forest, the lion lay hid until morning, when the hunter found him and struck him again. With no other choice if he was to survive, he charged. More pain struck and sent him to the ground, but he hauled himself up and kept going. The man climbed a tree and rained pain down on him.

For twenty more days, Darkness evaded Colonel Patterson, until on the twenty-ninth of December, the second lion joined Ghost in death. Such were the names the Colonel gave the animals.

After 25 years as Colonel Patterson’s floor rugs, the rather damaged skins are sold to the Chicago Field Museum for $25,000. The museum must restore them before they can be displayed. Finally, they are mounted as taxidermied figures, with their skulls nearby. The lion killed first is posed standing. His ally, killed afterwards, is posed in a crouch. The museum assigns them the ID numbers FMNH 23970 and FNMH 23969.

After so much time has passed since they lived, Ghost and Darkness are no more than mounts in a museum, preserved to be gawked at as “The Man-Eaters of Tsavo.” Their skins and skulls were not even left in dignity in their own land, but must be triumphed in a land where the slaves and ivory of their continent were sent. What, then? Do we boast of man’s might and wit in defeating the lions? If so, we are according the lions only a little less might and wit than the man, for he was very nearly killed by them himself. Are we then awkwardly, even unknowingly, lauding, applauding, celebrating, memorializing, their cunning and tenacity in hunting the sons of God? I understand it not, myself. What think you, oh reader?