09 Lion Adventure by Willard Price

and want one of those cattle. But the fence around the kraal is too high for them to jump over. Now, put your human brain to work on that. If you were a lion, how would you get one of those cattle if you couldn’t get into the kraal?’
    The ladies gave it some thought, and shook their heads. ‘Too deep for me,’ said Gladys.
    ‘The lions plan it this way. Most of them stay on one side of the kraal and make no sound. Two or three go on the other side and set up a terrific roaring. There’s nothing that terrifies cattle more than the roar of lions. The frightened cattle stampede away from the sound across the kraal and crash into the fence with such force that they break it down. They rush out among the waiting lions who leap on their backs and break their necks.’
    ‘That’s pretty smart,’ admitted Patricia. ‘But lions have such horrible habits. Some of them are cannibals.’
    They’re not cannibals,’ Hal protested. ‘A cannibal is one who eats others of its own kind. A hyena is a cannibal. He will eat another hyena. But a lion will not eat another lion unless he is starving.’
    “They do worse than that,’ said Patricia. ‘Some of them are man-eaters/
    Hal nodded. ‘I know. We’re after one now. But we don’t despise him because he’s a man-eater. After all, you and I are animal-eaters. But we don’t think we’re so horrible because we kill and eat cattle and sheep and pigs and wild game. We can sit down to a meal of roast beef without any guilty feeling whatever. And the lion has no reason to feel guilty when he eats that animal called man. Of course we must stop him, but we can’t blame him.’
    ‘But there are so many other animals to eat - why can’t they be satisfied with them?’
    ‘Lions do eat other animals when they can catch them. In fact most lions would rather have the meat of other animals, not man-meat. They don’t like the smell of man. But when a lion’s leg is crippled by a bullet or a spear he can’t run fast enough to overtake most animals. In that case, the hunter who crippled him is to blame. Or perhaps the lion has been badly hurt in a fight with an elephant or rhino. Or he may just be too old to hunt fast game. Or, as often happens, a porcupine has backed into
    his face and left a lot of painful quills sticking in him. The mango fly lays eggs in the quill-wounds and the eggs turn into masses of worms all around the mouth and eyes. The pain is terrible, the beast becomes irritable and savage, he can’t see well enough to hunt, it’s too painful for him to eat tough meat, so he overcomes his dislike for human flesh and starts eating that because it is soft and because humans are easy to catch. A human being without a gun is a very helpless creature. He can’t ran as fast as other animals. His sense of hearing is not as good, nor his sense of smell, nor his sense of sight. He doesn’t have horns like an antelope nor the tusks of the warthog and he can’t kick like a giraffe. So it’s quite natural for the starving lion to take the easy way out and begin eating humans. The worst of it is that a man-eater teaches its cubs to be man-eaters and so the habit is passed on from one generation to the next. Of course this has to be stopped and that’s what we’re doing right now - trying to track down a lion that has been killing the men working on the tracks. And we’d better get back to our job. Will you go with us down to the station?’
    They had not been away from their post for more than a half-hour. Yet in that short time two more men had been taken.
    Tanga waited near the balloon to tell them the news.
    ‘Where were you?’ he demanded angrily.
    ‘Mombo village. We saw a lion going there - thought it might be a man-eater. But it turned out to be their protector.’
    ‘You didn’t shoot it?’
    ‘Of course not.’
    ‘If you had, the whole village would be down on you.’
    ‘But this killing - how did it happen?’
    ‘The lion sneaked up through the grass.