I will tell you the secret to surviving an encounter with a lion that I learned from a seasoned safari guide. But first a joke that an American lawyer in Zimbabwe told me.
Two lawyers are camping out on the savanna on their first trip to Africa. One lawyer wakes up in the tent to see his lawyer buddy frantically lacing up his running shoes.
"What are you doing?" he asks his friend.
"There's a lion outside the tent."
"Are you crazy? You can't outrun a lion."
"I don't need to outrun the lion. I just need to outrun you," says the lawyer to his friend.
Actually, the joke is on both of them. If these two lawyers knew what they were doing in the bush, they could both have survived their encounter with the lion.
On my first walk-around in lion territory, our guide who was a seasoned expert coached us on what to do in the unlikely event that we were charged. He had a rifle and he told us that he would use it to kill the animal if necessary. However, we could prevent that from happening by following a very simple protocol.
If coming face-to-face with a hostile lion in the bush, the most important thing to remember is not to turn and run, as that is sure to elicit the lion’s predatory instinct to charge and pounce. Instead, you continue to face the lion and slowly back away to a place of safety, such as your vehicle.
Before we went out, he begged us not to make him kill any animals by breaking protocol and by way of illustration told us a story about a group of tourists he led years before. Encountering a lion in the bush, the animal behaved exactly as predicted, by showing only mild interest in the group of tourists. The guide instructed the group to slowly back away in the direction of the Land Rover. Then the lion did something uncharacteristic and began to charge. Only by standing his ground and raising his rifle was the guide able to halt the lion’s charge.
Once more, he instructed the group to back away and at that point, the lion charged again. This happened two more times, causing the guide to wonder why the lion so stubbornly refused to follow protocol. After the fourth charge, the guide turned ever so slightly towards the group to coach them through the situation. It was then that he realized he was alone on the veld facing the lion. Every time he started to back away, two more of the tourists lost their nerve and ran back to the Land Rover. Fortunately, it was now just the lion and the guide on open terrain, and he was able to back away without having to harm the animal.
You would think that after hearing such a sobering story and spending time on foot with such a wise and experienced guide, I would know how to conduct myself around lions. Not so.
On two occasions I have been charged by lions and while I survived both encounters, it was not for a lack of stupidity on my part.
The first time was completely innocuous, as it happened in a protective enclosure called a “boma” with this cute little guy named Brian the Lion…
Brian was an orphaned lion cub who was being prepared for reintroduction into the wild. He was as playful as a kitten, licking me on my hands and arms with a tongue that felt like 220-grit sandpaper on my skin.
He was not tame, only young and partially habituated to humans. So what do I do once I’m finished petting him? I stand up and turn around to leave. Pounce! That cute little pussycat weighed close to 100 pounds, which I learned a moment later when I felt his full weight on me.
Later, one of the naturalists running the program explained that the moment I turned my back, I looked like prey to him and instinct took over. She said I was lucky to leave the boma with just a scratch on the back of my calf.
Here’s a picture of a beautiful lioness taken from our Land Rover on Fothergill Island in Lake Kariba, Zimbabwe.
Believe me, you never want to get this close to a lion on foot in the wild. At this range on foot you are in her space and she is not going to tolerate that. The curious thing is that if you are inside or in any way attached to a vehicle, she probably won’t mind because she doesn’t really see you as the one living creature on the planet who poses a potential threat to her: a human being. Even up close, like we were when we took this picture, she sees you more like a part of the big metal thing with wheels you seem to be attached to and doesn’t really mind so much.
Once when my in-laws were visiting from the US I took my father-in-law for an early morning game drive in my South African-manufactured Toyota HiLux. Spotting several vultures circling the sky a few miles off, I decided to investigate and soon found several lions on a young giraffe kill by the side of the Zambezi River just below Victoria Falls.
This was a very privileged sight, as lions don’t often take giraffe. When we arrived, I gave my father-in-law the standard lecture for up-close lion viewing: NEVER GET OUT OF THE VEHICLE. Then we settled back to watch the spectacle of feeding lions from the safety of the HiLux.
After about fifteen minutes most of the other lions wandered away, leaving one lone lioness like the one above. At this point, I decided I should try to get some pictures of the lioness on her kill. Not satisfied with the angle of the shot through the window, I had the bright idea of sticking my torso out the window, sitting on the sill with my legs inside the cab. That was fine, because to the lioness I still looked like part of the big metal thing with wheels.
No problem… Until my father-in-law decided that if I could stick my body halfway out of the truck to shoot some still photography, he could get completely out, to shoot in video.
The moment he opened his door and stepped away from the truck, the lioness roared and charged, coming very near to pouncing on him. With his camcorder running at the time, he came very close to being one of those posthumous Youtube sensations whose folly in the moments leading up to death is recorded for millions of people on the Internet to marvel at.
I wish I could claim that my father-in-law was the only stupid one that morning, but not so. The realization that there were actual humans so near her kill was making the lioness nervous, and I decided to get out of there. I put the HiLux in reverse, but we went nowhere as the wheels started spinning in the sand. No problem, I’ve got 4-wheel drive!
Did I mention that our African-made HiLux had the old fashioned manual locking hubs that require you to get out of the vehicle and manually turn the hub on each front wheel in order to engage the 4-wheel drive? A sensible person driving in the African bush would have done that prior to going off-road, which is normally what I did. This morning, however, in my haste to beat the sunrise, I had failed to do so and was subsequently faced with a dilemma.
The lioness was not going to leave her kill any time soon. That meant I was going to have to get out of the truck to lock the front wheel hubs. In the meantime, the lioness was on high alert, pacing nervously in front of the giraffe carcass. Very slowly, I slipped out of the driver’s side window and clinging to the body of the truck, I inched forward and locked the front right hub. Then I got back in and crawled over my father-in-law and out his window to do the same on the left passenger side.
We had many laughs that night safely back at the lodge, but not before having a very similar and even stupider get-out-of-the-vehicle incident with a charging bull elephant.
Of these two mammals, by the way, a charging elephant is much the greater danger, as are hippos and Cape buffaloes.
Lions are basically big pussies. Most of those we encountered in Zimbabwe looked like this…
or like this…
Yes, they are doing what you think they’re doing.
An elephant, on the other hand, if he decides to kill you will just go ahead and do it, whether you are in a vehicle or on foot, running away or walking slowly backwards. The lone males are big and angry and much more frightening to encounter in the wild than any pride of lions.
(Note: all photos were taken by my wife Tina or me).
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