Wild life | 24 September 2015

Laikipia

A lion has just mauled and partially eaten a warrior who tried to throw a spear in my guts while trespassing on my farm a few months ago. This man was from the same gang that in April attacked me with rocks and smashed up my left hand so badly the doctors were hours away from amputating two or three of my fingers. Apparently, the spear thrower was up to no good again, on private land some distance from here some nights ago, when a lion slunk out of the darkness and jumped on his back. It then moved to his buttocks, on which it began feasting. It was all up for the lad and you might as well have said, ‘Yon lion’s ’et Albert — and ’im in his Sunday clothes, too…’ But before he could be gobbled up entirely, the lucky chap’s friends, who were nearby, came to his rescue and scared the predator off. This news only underlines my ardent belief that in the end bullies will get their comeuppance. I’m not happy about the man’s suffering; it is quite the opposite. I tremble at the inevitability of retribution, with the passing of time. There was a moment, once, when I nearly broke under the strain of cattle raiding and invasion, my car riddled with rustlers’ bullets, bleeding from the beating they delivered me — and I discovered an extraordinary document called ‘The Great Monition of Cursing’. In 1525 this historic curse, composed by the Archbishop of Glasgow Gavin Dunbar, was delivered from every pulpit in the Scottish Borders against the border reivers, the cattle raiders who brought chaos between the Esk and the Tweed from the reigns of Edward I to James I, who finally smashed it. George MacDonald Fraser’s The Steel Bonnets