The hunter’s lot can be a varied one. There are many times when being the rough and ready, steely-eyed killer does not fit the bill at all. A hunting safari, by its very nature, requires that the participants coexist up close and often under pressure. There is invariably a clash of cultures and values because the African PH emerges from a very different background and because there is initially almost always a large expanse of social “dead ground” between him and his guests. He has to learn fast to bridge that ground and get on to a level where the client, who is paying his salary, is comfortable. This situation brings out both the best and the worst in people. But by the end of the day, whichever way it goes, hunters and clients get to know one another rather well—sometimes too well.
Early in my career I was involved in a safari that demanded a number of skills they never tested for in the hunting exams. Adversity, though, forces one to adapt and to improvise—in other words, to formulate solutions. But hunting, as all who engage in it know, is governed by uncertainty. Events can generate a momentum of their own and spin out of control.
This saga began when Anthony Wilson, my cohunter, and I arrived to collect our clients, a husband and wife, for what was scheduled to be a sixteen-day classical safari in southern Tanzania. It was a no-cost-spared sort of affair, and we were briefed to leave no stone unturned in ensuring that they had a go at everything we could throw at them. We carried licenses for every species ever recorded in the area, and on the face of it, it looked as if we were in for quite an outing.
With vehicles packed and trackers aboard, we met our visitors at their downtown hotel. The initial meeting was a little disappointing because both looked terribly miserable, and it occurred to me that all was not well on the domestic front. Anthony and I tried to inject some joy into their lives by being as hale and hearty as we could, but to no avail. We loaded them into the vehicles for the six-hour drive with as much exuberance as we could muster. They acted as if we were en route to a funeral.
I placed the lady in my vehicle, while her husband went with Anthony. It seemed like something of an oxymoron, but her name was Joy. Unlike most Americans, who are easy to talk to, she offered no conversation and maintained a morose silence. I did my best to extract some information from her in the hope that she would relax and settle down, but her responses were short and sharp. She was a shapely woman in her thirties, with long, dark hair and a pretty face sporting too much makeup, which I feared would add to her discomfort in the heat that awaited us.
Joy and her husband, Ken, were from a small town in the Midwest, the name of which escapes me. It had become immediately clear to me that this was unlikely to be a fun-filled excursion, but I was far from dispirited, for it was still early, and I was confident that Joy would soon loosen up. Concerned that the questioning might be irritating her, I resolved to keep my mouth shut for a while and hope that the scenery in the approaching countryside would interest her and lighten her mood. It didn’t.
About thirty miles out, just where the views become pleasing to the eye, I noticed her straighten her posture and take a deep breath, preparatory to finally saying something. I waited in anxious anticipation for what I hoped would be some sort of statement or question that would give me something to work with. Then she spat it out and with venom, “Listen here, whatever-your-name-is, you need to understand something. I don’t want to be on this rotten safari any more than I want to be facedown in a toilet!” There was a pause. “Do you understand that?”
It occurred to me that the last time I had been addressed in that tone was on the drill square in the army. Flabbergasted, I was at a complete loss for words, and such was my surprise at this outburst that I found myself trying to catch my breath. There was a silence while I searched for something to say.
“Well, what do you want me to do?” I asked, greatly puzzled.
“A drink would help. Have you got any booze in this damn truck?”
Supplying liquor at this time of the morning was not what I had planned on, but I was happy to inform her that there was an ample supply of bottles in the rear.
“Have you got any vodka?”
“Yes, in fact there’s a case of Smirnoff.”
“Good. I’ll have a bottle.”
I stopped the vehicle and produced a bottle, expecting her to ask for a mixer. But the straight stuff seemed to please her, and she resumed her position in the front of the truck. Not wanting to offer anything I did not have, such as ice, I said nothing more. I returned to the wheel, and away we went. Off came the cap, and she proceeded to swallow large gulps from the bottle. That seemed to relax her, for which I was very grateful.
“Do you want some?” she asked as she thrust the bottle in my face.
“No thanks. I think I’ll wait a while.”
“Aw, come on, boy. Have a drink,” she insisted.
Sensing that it might please her and lighten her mood, I accepted. It worked, and soon she had her feet up on the dashboard of the car and was slumped in the seat, fully relaxed. I relaxed too, and could not help but note that she was not only pretty but also suddenly rather appealing. A little further down the road, however, I started to get a better idea of the complexities that awaited us.
“You see, I’m sorry but my husband and I don’t always get along too well, and he’s a very, very difficult man. I didn’t want to come to Africa. I hate this place, but he made me. That’s why I’m here.”
“Well,” I said, choosing my words carefully, “you’re here now, so you might as well make the most of it.” I did give a little thought as to how I could try to help her make the most of it, but then I ordered my errant mind to concentrate on the job at hand.
“Yes,” she said thoughtfully. “I guess you’re right.” Then, “Say, there aren’t bugs here, are there? Little suckers that hurt when they bite and stuff like that?” She looked at me intently, and the forlorn look on her face triggered a desire within me to commiserate and console.
The truth was that she was headed for bug city, but not wanting to put a damper on the upbeat mood, I decided to be less than honest.
“Not really, no. Not bugs, as such.”
“Thank God for that. I hate damn bugs more than anything in the world.” Happy with my lie, she sat back and relaxed again. Enjoying the temperate mood that was now upon her and also feeling the effects of the vodka, I was just starting to enjoy myself when a scream shattered the silence, shocking me back into perplexing reality.
“Jeesus!” she yelled.
My eyes snapped over to the left, fully expecting to see a puff adder attached to her jugular, but I quickly realized that the reason for the hysteria was a tsetse fly that had bitten her on the lip and was orbiting her face, determined to strike again.
“Get it away! Get it AWAY!” she shouted. Knowing that this was merely one of billions waiting in ambush ahead, my spirits drooped.
“It’s just a tsetse fly,” I explained.
“I thought you said there are no bugs!” she screamed. She was as mad as a snake, and her face, flushed with anger and fear, was scarlet.
“Well it’s rather more of a fly than a bug,” I replied lamely.
“I don’t give a damn what it is, it hurts. Are there any more?”
The simple, honest answer was, “Yes, billions,” but I limited my response to a mumbled, “Yes.”
“Damn it, I’m riding into hell.” She took another swig from the bottle as I closed the windows to keep out flying intruders, but that served only to push up the temperature, which caused her mascara to run freely down her cheeks. Regrettably, there were enough flies already in position to carry out a sustained series of assaults, and they unleashed a rein of terror within the cab. Unable to protect herself, the victim eventually reacted to each new attack by bringing the vodka bottle swiftly to her lips and swallowing more.
By the time we finally arrived at camp, her speech was unintelligible and she was unable to walk. With her face blackened by smudged mascara, her recently coiffured hair in disarray, and little splashes of blood dotted about her person where engorged tsetse abdomens had been squashed, she looked like she had been in a cat fight.
Her husband was waiting impatiently when we arrived, and the visage that met his beady stare was not to his liking.
“What the hell happened to her?” he asked.
Small, mean eyes bored in on mine, and again I was somewhat lost for words. He was extremely angry and not a little suspicious.
“Nothing, really,” was my rather pathetic response.
“Nothing! What the hell you talking about?”
Saliva splashed, and he seemed apoplectic. With his finger shaking vigorously in my face, it suddenly dawned on me that he was indeed considering the possibility that I had acquired carnal knowledge of his wife on the road. I had to concede inwardly that I had briefly given it some thought, but only in a short flight of fancy. Reality had quickly overwhelmed me.
“We had a lot of tsetses in the car, it was hot, and Joy had a few drinks.”
I looked at her to see how she was doing. She had a smirk on her blotchy face and was clearly enjoying my discomfort, which I found irritating. Following a prolonged stare at me, with assembled camp staff looking on awkwardly, he moved toward his wounded spouse.
“Come on, honey.” He put a tender arm around her in a way that suggested they had a common enemy in me. He led her away. The hunt had not even begun, and I already felt I needed a break.
We met two hours later, in the mess tent, for lunch. Joy had spruced herself up and was looking very presentable again, but Ken had done nothing to improve his disheveled appearance. Lunch was a fairly silent affair and went off without incident, but I did on occasion have a meeting of the eyes with Joy and was a little disturbed by the signals I was receiving. It was unclear to me what exactly the message was, but I had no desire, under the circumstances, to get involved and so I tried to dismiss it from my mind.
After lunch, Ken asked to speak to me alone. He was of slender build, with rounded shoulders—an unimposing figure of a man who clearly wasted no time on his appearance. But under bushy eyebrows there were small, hard eyes that unsettled me. In his address, more than conversation, he explained that he had booked an expensive safari and expected the best for his wife, in terms of both quantity and quality of animals. He was emphatic that she must not return without a buffalo, a leopard, a lion, and of particular importance, a sable of the finest quality. It had to be right up there in the record book. Assuring him of my very best efforts, we parted company.
Before going out, I discussed plans for the afternoon with Anthony. Obvious concern showed on his face.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“He’s completely mad,” Anthony said. “He’s loaded with Dad’s cash, and I think he’s off his nut. We’re in for a tough time.”
It was good to load up the hunting car and leave camp. The cool afternoon air cleared my senses, and being back in the field made me feel good for a moment. But it was not long before my peace of mind was again disturbed.
“What did Ken say?” Joy asked from behind the bug net that now shrouded her face to keep the tsetses at bay. She reminded me of an Arab woman just out the harem.
“That he wants you to have a good time and get some good trophies.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes.”
“OK, well look. You must understand before we go any further that he is unstable and very, very competitive. If I shoot anything bigger or better he’ll go mad, and he can be dangerous. God forbid I shoot something he doesn’t get. Then there will be hell to pay!”
I considered how an international diplomat might handle such a situation. Talk about damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Here we had a husband with mad eyes, who I was certain didn’t like me one bit. If I did his bidding, I was destined for trouble. If I didn’t do his bidding. . . . I explained my dilemma to Joy, but she didn’t appear very sympathetic. I wondered if someone was playing a game here and started to consider my escape options.
In an effort to buy some time, I decided to seek out and shoot a zebra, in the knowledge that it was nearly impossible to attribute any trophy value to zebra, and they were in the area in abundance. This we succeeded in doing, and on our return to camp Ken appeared to be well satisfied with his wife’s acquisition. That brought some relief.
Dinner that evening was uneventful, but I did note that large quantities of wine were consumed. With the ingestion of alcohol it seemed that both husband and wife directed their stares in my direction with greater and greater frequency. His eyes hardened, and hers did the opposite. It was as if she were giving me the come-on while he was daring me to accept the invitation. I was extremely unnerved by this pas de trois, knowing full well in the recesses of my mind there were indeed husbands in this world that had every right to glare at me, but he was not one of them.
Deep in thought and somewhat under the influence of the wine, I was giving this state of affairs some serious consideration when I felt pressure against my crotch from her foot. It came as a shock, and being ever alert to the danger latent in the beady orbs across the table I reacted sharply, jerking away almost as if an electric current had been run through me. Realizing my situation, I struggled in vain to regain my composure and act normally. I was aware that my life was on the line.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” he asked with a sneer. “Something bite you?”
“Nothing . . . I just felt something on my leg. It must have been an insect,” I blathered.
One glance at him and his look convinced me more than ever that this particular man had come to Africa to kill me. Joy seemed quite amused. I left the table at the first opportunity and went to bed to ponder this ridiculous but possibly life-threatening situation. I had been guilty of a few small indiscretions in the past, but it would be a shame to cop a bullet when innocent. Some, of course, might think it justice delayed.
In the morning Joy and I had no trouble leaving on time, but my partner was unable to rouse Ken and we left him in camp. Immediately we were on our way, and I asked her to explain her actions at the dinner table.
“I just think we should have some fun,” she suggested.
“My idea of fun starts with staying alive, and your husband looks as if he would like to deprive me of that option.”
She chuckled. “Yeah, Ken is a bit off the wall sometimes, and he can be a little violent. No doubt he sees you as a threat. He’s shot at a few guys before.”
I felt the blood drain from my face and my hands go clammy.
“He’s definitely a bit psycho—always playing with guns and talking about killing people. Killing fascinates him.”
I suddenly felt nauseated and took a deep breath. Being only a fair-weather God-Botherer, I looked up now toward the heavens. I promised the Almighty that henceforth He could be assured of my devotion and everlasting commitment to the cause in return for His divine protection during this time of desperate danger.
In the back of the truck lay some zebra meat, and Joy asked me what it was for. On hearing that it was to be used for baiting leopard, she expressed alarm.
“Do we have to hunt a leopard?” she asked fearfully.
“Well, yes, we do. That’s one of the animals you must get. Ken insists.” Seeing that she was uncomfortable with the idea, I tried to calm her down.
“Don’t worry, we’ll make it real easy for you. You’ll be safely hidden in a blind during our wait for a leopard to appear, and you’ll have an easy shot from a dead rest.”
If she heard my soothing speech, there was no indication of a reaction. She simply stared into the distance. Then she said. “You know, I was a waitress before I got married, and right now I think I’d be a lot happier if I were back waiting on tables.”
Madness I thought. What a terrible waste—not of money, but of an animal of extraordinary grace and beauty that may soon be destroyed by a reluctant huntress at the whim of a wealthy husband. The realization increased my discomfort and made me ponder my role as a hunter. The fact is there is a troubling quandary that so often tests the professional hunter’s sensibilities, which is killing purely for money. I am prostituting myself, I thought. And then I thought about Joy. Her husband seemed pretty set on killing me in any event, so maybe a last bite of the cherry was in order after all. Mixed emotions beset me. Fear of dying gave way to excited anticipation as I considered the possibilities that were there for the taking, if I dared.
Very much at sea with my thoughts, I brought my mind back to the task at hand. I decided to visit a couple of sites where I had baited for leopard previously, to see if there had been any movement.
I visited three old baits and found no sign of anything. Then I remembered that while in town a friend had given me a predator caller. He had used it to call yellow-backed duiker and suggested that I give it a try. Happening to have it in my shirt pocket, I set off to the next bait. With my mind in neutral, I stopped the vehicle some distance away. The bait had been set a short distance from the road but through a rather dense thorn thicket. Feeling pretty sure there was no immediate danger, I left my rifle behind.
On arrival at the spot my search revealed no sign of leopard activity. More out of boredom than anything else, I put the caller to my mouth and blew. The loudness and pitch surprised me, and I gave it another blow, a bit more softly. I was bored. With my senses totally dulled, my eyes signaled that the long grass directly ahead was parting, but a brain attending to a bite of the cherry failed to register the significance. With utter horror I suddenly realized that the gap in the grass ahead was filling with dark spots on a golden background. It became distressingly clear that a large leopard was hurtling directly toward me.
Reacting quickly to curb an involuntary bowel movement, I launched myself through the thorn thicket that stood between me and the vehicle. In sheer terror and with the strength and speed that come so easily to those in mortal danger, I hurtled forward. But the thorns had their say, and it was a sorry and shaken sight that reappeared at the vehicle. I was scourged the length of my body, and blood bubbled through lacerated skin to colour my shredded clothes. The lady client whom it had recently been my intention to impress was now confronted by a breathless, bumbling idiot in rags who had narrowly escaped mauling by a leopard for reasons entirely of his own making. My extreme embarrassment gave way to huge irritation when Ken collapsed into convulsions of uncontrolled laughter upon our arrival back in camp. On looking at myself in a mirror, though, I had to acknowledge that any pretensions I might have had to being a polished exponent of the art of big-game hunting, were, for the time being at least, over.
Murphy’s Law then intervened: Just when one hopes the quarry will prove elusive it presents itself. It was not long before we had another leopard feeding. Joy became very unsettled about shooting the animal, and I decided to speak to Ken and explain her unhappiness. But my effort drew an obnoxious outburst from him, and the suggestions that my own fear, following my recent unscheduled encounter, was the problem. I had to concede he had good reason to think so. I glumly concluded that the process had to go on, but that I would do what I could to keep the leopard away. A poor blind, highly visible, was thrown together quickly, and on arrival at the scene our party did nothing to hold down the noise. But Murphy was in firm control.
We were sitting in the blind on camp chairs when no sooner had the sun gone down than a rustle of dry leaves reached my ears. What would normally cause eager excitement in this case brought me anxiety and reluctance. With uncharacteristic haste a large tom leaped into the tree and in an instant was silhouetted before us in all its splendour. What for most people is the thrill of a lifetime did not move Joy, who was dreaming, I supposed, of the good old days when she waited on tables.
“Jeezus!” she cried and recoiled in horror, heaving backward and falling headfirst out of her chair and thumping her head solidly on the ground. She lay motionless, with a look of abject terror in her eyes. Despite the commotion caused by her collapse, the leopard seemed to be looking on in vague amusement. It continued to stand there. I cursed the big cat’s stupidity and willed it to flee, but it just stood and stared.
I levered Joy off the ground and back to her feet, whispering that the leopard was still there and that she could still shoot if she wished. But such was her lack of composure that she remained upright in her seat only long enough to tumble out of it forward. This time she disappeared headfirst through the front of the blind, where she lay trapped in a highly unflattering position, head protruding forward and body to the rear. Her plight reminded me of that of petty criminals in medieval England, who had their heads and hands locked in wooden stocks and then were left in a public place to be humiliated and abused.
Unable to readily extricate herself, she did the next best thing. She screamed. That finally unsettled our potential victim, and with an almost contemptuous gait, it left the bait and disappeared into the dark. It occurred to me that the cat was probably wondering what on earth the fools below thought they were doing.
Having pulled her out of the grass, I took the poor woman by the hand and found that she was shaking uncontrollably. Genuine compassion quickly gave way to a more basic desire. Warmth, soft flesh, and feminine vulnerability saw all my attempts at caution summarily vanish. With alacrity I seized the opportunity to commit adultery and worked feverishly to have myself condemned by the same God I had recently appealed to for help, but the Devil would not have his way. The vehicle with driver and trackers arrived to collect us all too quickly, and my soul was saved. Without further ado, we jumped aboard and headed back to the camp. At my side sat a lusty lady of nervous disposition of whom, as a result of our recent intimacy, I now felt more than a little protective.
It was in no way surprising, then, that more action awaited us upon arrival. On my explaining the evening’s events to Ken, he released a torrent of abuse that called into question my competence, commitment, and ability to face dangerous animals. His mood had deteriorated as a result of the tsetse flies. They had obviously decided to use his face for target practice and had assaulted him mercilessly. It did nothing to enhance his appearance. To compound the problem, an allergic reaction had left his face covered in a multitude of angry red lumps.
He went on to make reference to his wife’s untidy appearance, and it was very clear that an understandably suspicious mind was racing to all sorts of dangerous conclusions. Personal safety notwithstanding, I decided that I had had enough of his abuse, and I asked firmly that he deport himself in a manner more in keeping with a member of a civilized race, hailing from a civilized country. I left the scene not a little heart sore. Recent events, bizarre as they had been, had brought me emotionally closer to my tempting client, and, as is a man’s wont, I felt a strong urge to protect her from a clearly unstable spouse.
The next day I faced the dawn bereft of ideas as to how to continue with this farce without getting myself killed. There was no doubt that Ken’s hatred of me had reached new heights, and now there was more bad news. A talk with Anthony revealed that he had deduced the man was almost certainly taking drugs of some sort, and it seemed that snakes played a leading role in his inner torment. He had, it appeared, an obsessive fear of the creatures. Anthony’s repeated attempts to convince him that they were rarely encountered fell on deaf ears.
I decided to raise the subject with Joy, and she confirmed that both she and her husband did make use of recreational drugs, although he was the more committed user. I asked if this particular form of recreation was likely to make him more violent, and she did not hesitate to answer yes. As an afterthought she added that things would get really bad if he ran low on supplies. I didn’t want to know more of the gruesome details and I made no further inquiries. The threats to my continued survival seemed to be mounting.
Joy was obviously a very unhappy woman who found herself in a situation from which there was no easy exit. My instinctive desire to consummate our relationship was subdued by a genuine desire to lend ear to her domestic plight. I therefore continued to make an effort to keep our relationship platonic as we wandered aimlessly around the bush looking for something to shoot that would neither give her a heart attack nor further derange her husband. It was, of course, an impossible task, and with the pressure getting to me I resolved to speak once again to Ken.
I found him in a conciliatory mood, and I took the opportunity to explain his wife’s unhappiness and to ask him to stop pressuring her to bag something—in the interests of both her state of mind and her safety. Being so frightened, I explained, made hunting dangerous game doubly hazardous. He listened to me, but the reply was not what I hoped to hear.
“Look, I don’t care if she gets nothing else, but I want her to get a lion.”
My heart dropped. If there was one animal I had absolutely no desire to engage under the present circumstances, it was a lion. I shook my head and implored him to see reason, but he was adamant. I left him considering my predicament. Feeling very low I spoke to Joy, but she seemed resigned to her fate. So too, I suppose, was I.
But then I cheered up. I reminded myself that we had seen very little sign of lion in the last few days, and it would be incumbent upon me to make every conscientious effort to focus all of our activities in areas where there was absolutely no lion activity. To keep the peace, though, I would go through the motions with seeming diligence. To the immediate north of us was a region thin on game, with little water, and heavily wooded. It was perfect. I decided to focus all my attentions there.
We strung up half a hippo as the lure, and just as insurance against unwanted visitors the trackers were instructed to urinate all around the immediate vicinity. In the highly unlikely event that a lion found the bait, the pungent smell of man would almost certainly drive it away. The stratagem seemed to work, and two days later there was no sign of any predators at all. I was pleased to note that not even the hyena showed any interest. Everything was working out perfectly.
Although there was nothing going on, it only seemed right to build a blind. That fruitless endeavour would give credence to my earnest intentions, and also afford me some time to read and relax. A very halfhearted sort of blind was consequently constructed, with a grass wall covering only the front and the one side. The rest we left open. On the third day, with nothing better to do, it seemed a good idea to spend the late afternoon in the tattered blind. I brought along an excellent book, and the prospect was positively enticing.
Being back in a blind, however, immediately unsettled Joy. Memories of the leopard encounter remained fresh in her mind, and her anxiety was plain to see. Her rifle, its butt on the chair between her legs and barrel protruding out the little shooting hole, shook in her hands. I did my best to settle her. It was just after 4:00 P.M. when I sat back to relax and enjoy a quiet afternoon with my book. My own rifle I rested against the grass wall, next to Joy. It was a little far from hand, perhaps, but I wouldn’t need it.
With the passage of time and the total quiet, Joy too seemed to relax a little. The peace and serenity were soothing. Sensual thoughts visited me from time to time, but Joy’s exposure to the dangers of the wild was clearly suppressing her more amorous instincts, and further temptation was denied me.
About 5:30 a glance at my watch revealed that it was not long before dark. For no reason that I can recall other than vague interest, I turned to have a look behind me, and the sight that greeted me almost caused me to fill my pants. Murphy was back! A mere ten metres to my rear were two large male lions. They had been there long enough for one of them to have fallen asleep, but the other was on its haunches, very alert and very interested in my companion and me. Big yellow eyes bored into mine, sucking the breath from my lungs. My heart surged, and there was such pounding in my rib cage that it seemed cardiac arrest was imminent.
It was abundantly clear to me, even in my present state, that Joy should be denied witness to this potentially lethal spectacle. Sight of those brutes would surely induce a scream leading to an attack, or perhaps she would simply have a massive heart attack and die. At any noise whatsoever, the beast glaring at me would be upon us long before I could respond in any meaningful way. My rifle was safely out of reach, and any attempt, no matter how surreptitious, to recover it would almost certainly get Joy to wondering. Worse still, it might provoke the lion. So I resolved to do as little as possible—no easy task. To act as if there were nothing untoward required me to return to my original position, with my back to the lions and my head in my book. I felt extremely vulnerable.
What mean-spirited irony it was. How many times had I traversed the wilds looking in vain for a lion to bring joy to a client? Now here, after doing everything possible to avoid finding one, two were breathing down my very exposed, very slender, very accessible neck. While straining my eye-sockets to keep an aching eye on the beast behind me and pretending to read, I prayed to whoever had decided to torment me in such a manner to stop the game and send them back into the forest. My prayers were to no avail.
For approximately thirty minutes I maintained my nervous vigil until the sun started to set. Then the sleeping one awoke and the other got to its feet, preparatory to moving. They headed for the bait, approaching it from Joy’s side. I seized the moment to launch myself across the blind and grab my weapon, at the same time telling the poor girl that the lions were here. I didn’t go into unnecessary detail about their proximity, but it made no difference. One of the lions let out a thunderous growl that triggered another bowel contraction in me, and I saw Joy, showing commendable athleticism, leap skyward and deliver a shrill scream.
In an act more of self-preservation than chivalry, I caught her on her way back to earth and embraced her from behind, pulling her on top of me. That sent us both sprawling to the ground, with her facing outward on top. The fact that she would be the first eaten was not entirely lost on me. Fearful that the pair of us fleeing would excite the beasts, I maintained that ridiculous position while waiting for them to proceed to the bait. I then dragged her to her feet, and we charged off into the dark without a backward glance. Back at the vehicle the trackers found it all very amusing, which did nothing for my mood. Joy slumped into the front seat and sobbed.
We rode slowly back to camp, and I had to chuckle at the stupidity of it all. There was I with lacerated face and body, my client on the verge of a nervous collapse, her marriage hanging by a thread, and during the entire hunt we had barely fired a shot. Africa in its funny way was winning again.
Ken sprang back onto the offensive when he heard of our latest misadventure, but this time he was armed and spitting mad. When he had finished scolding me he started to brandish his weapon, loudly assuring all in attendance that it was “payback time” and that the safari had been an expensive failure. Anthony reassured me that the reason they had shot so little was that he could not get Ken out of bed in the morning, and when he had got him into the field it was for a brief outing only. Ken had needed to return immediately to camp, almost certainly to obtain relief from the usage of his recreational chemicals.
That night, Anthony and I discussed the day’s events and chuckled. The lion incident was one of those baffling events that make hunting the challenge it is. With Joy effectively “retired injured,” Anthony decided to offer Ken a crack at the lions the following day. Maybe a lion “in the salt” would cheer him. Some sort of lucky or divine intervention was needed; we were both running out of ideas to keep this safari going. Little did we know that the providence we sought would be a serpentine one.
With Ken positioned in the now improved blind, the two sat back to wait and see. As Murphy would have it, nothing happened, and the sky was darkening when Anthony heard a faint rustle of grass and then felt a light touch his shoulder. Moving his eyes slowly to the side, he saw a small vine snake, a venomous but rarely dangerous reptile. He swatted it airborne, then heard it plop. To his horror the intruder had landed atop Ken’s cap and seemed to find comfort there. Ken turned slowly to the hunter and whispered words to the effect that “there is something on my cap” in commendably calm and measured tones. But before Anthony could answer the snake had slithered anew and popped its head over the peak, placing his head a couple of inches from Ken’s eyes. All blood drained from his face, he sighed, and then expired in a faint. It was not clear if he retained a place in the living world.
Anthony quickly laid him out and went to work administering mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. As he was doing so, and while fully covering his patient, Ken sprang back to life and began violently lashing out at his perceived assailant, while yelling unintelligibly and uncontrollably. Anthony grabbed the two weapons and fled to a safe distance, from which to observe the flailings of a man convinced he had been violated by a member of the same sex and visited by snake demons at one and the same time.
At last, exhausted, Ken eventually collapsed and was helped to the car. A fit of involuntary twitching then seemed to overwhelm him, and froth poured from his mouth. He was soon laid to rest on his bed in camp, and Anthony and I sent out a radio call advising that our client had gone into shock. An aircraft arrived in the morning to bring the sorry affair to a merciful end.
