Stories From the Wilds of Africa | Warden Ron Thomson | Part 4 скачать в хорошем качестве

Stories From the Wilds of Africa | Warden Ron Thomson | Part 4

In 1972, Shapi was a semi-permanent elephant and buffalo culling camp located right in the middle of Hwange National Park, in colonial Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). The small complement of game ranger staff at Shapi had constructed a comfortable but simple bush camp, under thatch, not too far from the Shapi game waterhole. Their “houses” were cool and waterproof shelters, a one-step-up improvement on canvas tents. They had bush-pole walls, packed tightly with once-wet, now-dry mud (dagga) in the usual African manner. There were doorways but few doors, and big open holes in the walls served as windows. Each officer had his own separate accommodation but they were all part of the same complex. There was a central “lawn area” in the middle of the camp. The native labourers and game scouts were housed in their own compound some distance away. Their huts, too, were constructed of pole-and-dagga with thatched roofs. They all, however, had rudimentary plank doors. The native staff was superstitious about prowling lions and hyenas in the night! In March of that year the culling operations had been put on hold. The rains had been good and the bush roads were impassable. Staff had been encouraged to take leave. Cadet Game Ranger, Richard Dendy, had disappeared on a 10-day holiday. Fifty-seven-year-old Game Warden, Len Harvey, a staunch bachelor all his life, went off and got himself married. Len was then the senior officer at Shapi. Senior Game Ranger, Willem de Beer, and his wife, Hazel, stayed on at Shapi to hold the fort. To them Shapi was home. They had been living there for the last five years. On the night of 29 March, the local resident pride of lions visited the camp and entertained Willem and Hazel with their roars from the central camp lawn. By dawn they had wandered off to the north. On the afternoon of 31 March, Len and his new bride, Jean, returned from their honeymoon. The next day Willem confronted Len with a report that a lone lion had taken to roaming the officers’ camp environs and the native compound at night. It had visited Richard Dendy’s vacant house and liberally sprayed the interior walls with urine; and it had raked the door posts with its claws. Within the confines of the house the smell of “lion” was overpowering. In the native compound the lion had pulled down several chicken coops and eaten all the chickens. It had tried to break into a number of staff sleeping huts by pushing on the doors and pulling off the thatch. And it had vomited the remains of a python on the officers’ camp lawn. Willem believed this to be the same lion which, when culling was in progress, had regularly scavenged from the Shapi ossuary – the site where all the culled elephant and buffalo bones were stacked and left to dry before being ground into bone meal. And since the culling operation had ceased, Willem opined, the lion had had nothing substantial to eat for some time. He believed it was starving. Willem suggested they dispose of this lion before somebody got hurt. Len quietly shook his head. Willem then requested permission to shoot a wilde-beest to feed it. He proposed dragging the carcass out of camp to entice the big cat away from Shapi. Again Len refused. He reminded Willem that they lived in a national park and that they didn’t go round feeding lions. The following night, the lion revisited the officers’ quarters and scraped out a place to lie down and sleep under the window opening to Len and Jean’s bedroom. In the morning, Len’s only reaction was to call Jean and show her where the lion had been resting whilst they had been asleep. Willem had a compelling desire to shoot the lion and to take it out of the equation. He had a sense of foreboding that if the lion were not killed, it would bring tragedy to Shapi. An extraordinary chain of events followed. This is a true story of survival beyond belief. A story that will leave you astounded at the strength of the human spirit against all odds.. If you enjoy our content please consider subscribing (it's free) You can support this channel here ...🙏 https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/johnvzyl Join us on Patreon -   / johnvanzyl   For those who wish to obtain Hannes Wessels' books please check out: https://exmontibusmedia.co.za/ Or check out his blog at: https://africaunauthorised.com/ Music by Epidemic Sound: https://www.epidemicsound.com/referra...