The Bally Vaughan Animal Sanctuary News Sept 2011
06.10.11
Dear All
“The Day the Lions Came Home”
It is 3am at the Bally Vaughan Animal Sanctuary in Zimbabwe and I am listening to the ominous bass rumble of an angry lion, a spine-chilling sound that reverberates around the vast dome of the night above us. The moon is a startling orange segment tilted amidst the sharp, silent sparkle of the stars and in between the snarls of the lion I hear the usual rustle and squeal of small nocturnal predators and their hapless prey; the staccato bark of a jackal, the sudden shrill scream of a bush baby, the feathery rush and war-cry screech of a barn owl, but mostly there is that particular breathless middle-of-nowhere silence that shrouds the blackest hours of the night.
I am on lion duty, monitoring our two newest arrivals at the Sanctuary, Wire and Kimberly the lions; treading silently on their vast paws round the home so painstakingly built for them. Kimberly has pneumonia, the result of a long-term infection, and six months ago her jaw was broken in a fight with another lion at her old home meaning she could not hold her own in the competition for food amongst the several lions in her enclosure. Her breath bubbles and wheezes from beneath the sharp bars of her ribs and right eye droops sadly. She has trouble focusing and loses her footing frequently, banging into trees and tangling her wobbly, wasted hindquarters. This is the result of a severe Vitamin A deficiency. Wire has an angry gnarled scar right around his huge head where the deadly twist of a wire snare bit savagely into his neck many years ago. The large hole left from where the knot of the snare pierced his throat goes through his oesophagus and trachea and when he eats food and saliva bubble through and leave a noisome dark slick down his thickly furred chest. When he roars the sound is like the diesel rumble of a massive engine as the roar comes through his mouth and through the hole in his neck. From the side he looks as if his head has been taken off and put back on again. Wire has many issues, and his fear makes him frighteningly aggressive.
Source: SW Radio Africa
