A Long Death
 I had some guests that were staying for 5 nights, so I needed to show them plenty of new and interesting stuff each time. It was the third morning drive and out of the 12 guests I only had 2 going with that morning. It started off as a terribly quiet morning. I took Dithabaneng to try and find the Eastern Pride Lion males, but to my disappointment there were some zebra and that was pretty much it.
I must have talked about every type of tree on the road, stopped at every bug and bird, and so decided to start heading back home and try again in the afternoon.
As I got to Nkankane and Nkwe loop I heard there was a lion sighting somewhere, but I didn’t hear the location. So I assumed it was far, and carried on going. As I took the other road, I heard the update again and to my delight it was not even 4km away.
I looked at my guests smiled and told them that we were taking a detour. On the way they asked what it was, so I told them about the lions to get them excited, but also warned them that the update wasn’t clear and that I didn’t know how far of they were, or how good the visual was.
As I got to the sighting I saw the lions, very close-about 40metres off- with quite a nice visual of them from the right angle. The best part though that threw me into shock was the fact that they were ON A KILL!!!!
They had managed to get a young Hippo. I sadly got there few seconds after they pounced so I missed that but got there in time to see them kill the hippo.
It was the two Central Pride Male Lions- Ketumetsi and Lebala Bontle. They managed to stalk an unaware young hippo about a kilometre from the dam and now the one was lying on top of him with a firm grip with his powerful teeth on the throat of the hippo and the other brother was going at the hippos groin area and pits.
Even though it was abit sad and disturbing to see them killing the poor hippo, it was still very interesting. What can I say it’s the circle of life!
We sat with this sighting for about half an hour whilst the two brothers struggled to subdue and kill this hippo. Firstly the hippo was crying out for help and than just gave up giving a few kicks and attempting a run for it every now and again.
With the two lions they were almost like playing a tag game, were the one brother would tend to the neck and the other to the soft part of the body and then they would swop around when one got tired. It was quite a mission for them as hippos have extremely tough skin and even though the lions have massive shearing teeth it was tough for them to get through.
At one stage Lebala Bontle got so tired he went to the side and lay down panting like there was no tomorrow.
I really stretched, as much time as possible to stay there, but sadly we had to get going back to the lodge for breakfast. As I was about to leave another station pulled in. We had one more look and the hippo still trying to put up a fight occasionally, even after about 30-40 minutes.
We got back to the lodge had breakfast and were really excited about our luck. Later I spoke to the station that pulled up after me and he let me know that he stayed for about 15minutes and when he was leaving the poor hippo was still going at it.
Guide: Monika Bydlinski
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