Page 40 - Dark Matter Issue5 Part II
P. 40
As if to emphasize the message of fertility, everyone was mating. So it wasn’t a great
surprise when we came upon an alpha lion we had seen the day before, sleeping under
a tree while ten feet away, a young lioness, stirred restlessly. Unable to control her inner
agitation, she approached the lion, circled him, prodded him until he stopped resisting
her. What struck us was his kindness.
Our guide indicated that she was immature, had never had cubs, was overwhelmed with
estrus. While the lion entered her, almost as if bidden, he did so gently, lowering his
mouth to her shoulder to ease her before his thrust.
This sequence repeated again and again.
The last hour of the last day at Mashatu, we found a perch at the summit of a small hill
that allowed us to look back toward the plain where we had been present as a great bull
Elephant had been courting an Elephant matriarch before the entire herd. Then a
startling shriek from a little one who resented the bull’s attention interrupted them and
the bull strode away.
