'The Lioness' by David Amstutz

Why is it important to write thoughts, stories and ideas down?

The answer is so that when you are gone those who are left behind will still have a part of you.

My father died when I was 10 years old. I have missed him, but especially I have missed his wisdom, the guidance he could have given me. The following I am about to share is an excerpt from a paper he wrote while attending RVA boarding school in Africa. It is a rare treasure to me, to have his own words written down and without it, I never would have heard of this story.

As a student in 1970, I remember many an occasion when we woke to find small herds of antelope, zebras, and giraffes crossing the campus outside of our dormitory windows. We old timers, who had grown up there, enjoyed trying to scare the kids fresh in from the States with stories about the area predators. Such as the time we returned from an outing and found the tracks of a three legged leopard that had gained access to our dorm looking for something to eat. The most memorable experience that I ever had, though, was during one of the school's mid-term breaks.

My friend and I decided to spend one of our days off hiking twenty miles up the valley to the lake at Navasha. Of course we did not hike the whole way, in those days it was safe to hitch a ride on the back a of truck that was going your way. You rode on whatever cargo they were hauling that day. They didn't go very fast as the road wasn't the best, but it was better than walking. We swam for a while and then decided to rent a little rowboat and row out to the island in the middle of the lake. One of our incentives was to see if we could find some wildlife there.

As we rowed out across the lake, my friend began to tell me about this book he has been reading on lions. It described their behavior and their habits, how they stalked through the brush in search for food and how they swished their tails just before they charged their prey. It made great entertainment as we rowed, but soon we arrived at the island, and it was forgotten in our trek across the terrain. We were walking on a scarcely used path that ran through the brush to a hill we wanted to climb. Suddenly my friend grabbed my arm and jerked me to a stop. He whispered, "Don't look now, but there is a lion looking at us from over the top of that bush!"

At first I thought that he was just going on about the book again and decided that I wasn't going to fall for it. So I looked. Sure enough, not twenty feet away, a lioness was looking at us over the top of a small bush.

"What do we do now?" I whispered. "Stay perfectly still and lets see if she will go away." said my friend.

I usually think of myself as being brave, but at that moment I felt like a chicken about to be served for lunch. So I said, "If she charges I am going to run like crazy for the water." "No! She will just chase you if you run," My friend replied, "fall down and play dead. That's the only way." I was trying to remember what he had said while we were rowing. What would she do if she were going to charge? I heard him whisper "She won't charge until she swishes her tail three times, and don't break eye contact." This was not much comfort as I could see that she was already swishing her tail. "Let's slowly back away," I said trying to talk like a ventriloquist, not moving my lips. "Maybe she has cubs and just feels threatened."

So we began the slow and torturous process of trying to inch back down the hill without breaking eye contact with her. Just as we began to move though, her tail stopped its swishing and her muscles bunched in preparation for a spring. We both whispered in near hysteria "This is it!"..."Here she comes!"..."Get ready!"  Just as we were about to hit the dirt and give our best performance of being dead, the door of the house that was behind the lion opened up and a woman came out. Funny, I hadn't even seen the house until that moment. Anyway, this woman came out and walked right up behind the lion and said, "Can I be of some assistance to you boys?"  I don't think that either of us said a thing for a moment as we were so dumbfounded. We finally squeaked out that we were headed to the other side of the island. The woman, I never learned her name, was an actress from the movies Born Free and Still Free and was getting away for a couple of days with one of the lions, named GIRL, from the film. She told us to just go on by, but it seemed as if our shoes were still glued to the ground. Slowly getting our voices back we asked her about the lions actions.

"Oh, she just wants to play, that's all." 

As we said our goodbyes and turned to go, the woman had to hold the lion back to keep her from following us. We went back the way we had come leaving the woman with the explanation that we had seen enough. We hadn't really seen anything but our hearts were just coming back down through the three hundred beats per minute range and we needed to sit down somewhere. Preferably somewhere we felt safe, like back at school.  Needless to say, we had many adventures during those years, but even us old timers felt that none of them were as close to heart stopping as this one had been.