The man-eating leopard of Laikipia

Until only a few years ago, the constellations blazed across the sky above the farm at night and there was not a single electric light on any horizon. On many evenings I found myself with my rangers sleeping on the tracks of cattle rustlers heading into Kenya’s wild north with no fences between us and the Ethiopian frontier. Today the wildness is gone, the tarmac almost reaches our farmstead, the phone network reaches everywhere and the good old days of gunfire and adventures and great dances of warriors with their beads and flashing spears will survive only in memory. And so it is quite surprising when even today a man gets eaten by a leopard a stone’s throw away from home.

Our home county of Laikipia has its share of animal attack survivors: I know people who have been gored by buffalo, grabbed on the ankle by a crocodile, mauled by lion, and, the worst I ever saw, savaged by a hyena.