The taming of the plains lion

The taming of the plains lion

The lion was born without fur; her white skin glittered in the morning light, as naked as a human baby. The sun had not yet risen and the cold wind that travelled across the night still blew from down the valley making her shiver and her vocal cords opened up wide to allow for the passage of a shrill cry that rents the morning’s ambiance. It was a cry that conveyed distress enough to break many a heart, filled with longings and pleading for care, but it moved not the birth mother.
That great lioness was deaf to her child’s call. She only managed, once, to pad over and sniff at her like she had done before, right after the cub was born, before rejecting her all over again, choosing rather to pay heed to her other cubs who appear whole.

Rejected by her mother and seeming to know it, the little cub cried all the more, her tiny voice carrying across the valley only to be thrown back as faint echoes that appeared to mock her efforts.
Time past somewhat slowly, the cold morning gave way to a hazy, Cloudy afternoon. Still the cub's cry could be heard, though intermittently, across the valley. It was inevitable that her cries will attract other attentions, and it did. It reached the ears of a hungry hyena that crept surreptitiously closer, wary of the lioness who eyed him balefully from the corner of her eyes as she reclined on a nearby rocky outcrop. Though she was not concerned about the cub’s welfare, she was not inclined to allow the hyena easy picking. More so when her other cubs are sunning themselves on her belly. Her warning growl sent the hyena scampering back to hide behind a fallen tree trunk, from where he sneaks looks at his prey where she lay amongst the short grasses, still covered in birth fluids and blood –which already was attracting ants whose bite may also be adding to her distress.

The cry was also heard in the opposite slope where a young lame trapper from the hunter’s clan of UmuEze, a hamlet in the seven hills, was sitting squat beside a little brook, bemoaning his ill luck while taking sips of the cool mountain water. The trapper’s name is Uvana and he was on his way back from checking his traps. He had hoped for a big kill today, having placed traps across the well beaten track of a large antelope. For days he had read the antelope’s tracks and was very sure that it will pass through where he laid his trap on its way to drink from the same brook he is sipping from now. He had even boasted to his friend, the ill tempered hunter Anyari, that he will bring the biggest Antelope to the two markets today. Only for him to get to the trap and meet only gnawed bones and mangled tendons, amongst which a pack of hyenas and vultures were making merry.

Overcome by anger, he had scattered them, the hyenas looping away with their mocking laughs and the vultures fouling the air with their greasy wings and dirty ways as they took to the skies only to return when he moved a little way off. He had continued this aimless pursuit of the birds – the hyenas had chosen to watch his antic bemusedly from a safe distance, patient as ever, knowing he will go away sooner or later- until he grew tired and left them to their devices, sure that they were not the culprits in this blind robbery. No, they are only partakers of this great wrong that has been visited him.

He guessed that it is probably an old hill lion, too weak to catch his own game or a pregnant female, very near birth that stole his catch and that made him madder than ever, surely he heard a lioness growl sometime earlier. If it had being a leopard or tiger, he would have had the pleasure of tracking it down to exert his revenge, but the lions are taboo and he is forbidden to cause them pain.

So he was squatting by the brook fuming and gnashing his teeth and cussing intermittently, when the cry reached his ear. He instantly knew it to be the cry of a lion cub and wondered aloud ‘how come?’ a lioness will never leave her pup even in the face of danger to herself. Something about the cry told him that it is a new born cub and he wondered if the mother is the same one that stole his catch.

He was of the mind to go about his business, not that he had anymore today, thanks to the thieving lioness, but the cry came again this time punctuated by a hyena’s long drawn crackle. Wonders! He mouthed, a hyena close by where a lioness just birthed. Shaking his head slowly he straightened up and started the short walk down first, then up, towards where the sounds are coming from. Not that it was his wish to investigate things like this but because his oral tradition demands he help out whenever a lion of the hills is in trouble, as this one obviously is.