A leopard in Paradise

In the late afternoon, after everyone has cleaned up a bit and maybe even taken a bucket shower, we drive up to the summit above Lake Paradise, maybe two hundred feet of sheer drop over our campground, and set up a little bar over a spot that looks out across the caldera and all the way out to the Kaisut Desert. It’s a spectacular view. We build a little bonfire and pull up canvas chairs right over the edge of the cliff so that you can almost dangle your feet in midair and the wind blows and it feels like you are in a hot air balloon riding the thermals.

In the fading light you can just make out the dusty gray shape of elephants moving out of the meadow and back into the forest and usually there are several birds of prey—bateleur eagles, goshawks, African fish eagles—soaring almost at eye-level.

Yesterday when we were up there, sipping our whisky, smoking cigars, the fire roaring behind us, we watched as two fish eagles mated, dropped precipitously through the pale blue sky as if they’d both been shot and then, at the last minute, disengaged, stretched their wings, and, screaming, glided back up into the thermals. What an incredible way to make love.

“My god,” said Calvin to no one in particular, “have you ever seen anything like that?”

I got up to take a leak and wandered down the trail atop the escarpment, headed for a dead Brown olive tree where a pygmy falcon, with white breast and gray back, sat perched on a dead limb. Just as I got to the edge of the cliff to do my thing, I heard the distinctive cough of a leopard nearby. Probably he was perched on one of the outcroppings just below where I stood, just stirring from a late afternoon nap and getting ready to go out on the town for supper.

The wind was behind my back and no doubt he smelled me. I assumed that the cough was his polite way of letting me know that he was there and would prefer it if I went away. But, you know, here you are standing on top of the world looking down on the Garden of Eden and what you really want to do is be like St. Francis and commune with the animals, as crazy as that may be. So I just stood there and after a minute or two, there was another cough, this one seeming a little closer, a little more insistent. And while I didn’t feel any fear being this close to a leopard, even one I couldn’t see, I kept thinking how annoyed Calvin would be if I was attacked and he had to come running over here with his .500 Rigby and make a mess of the poor leopard and then stitch me up. No doubt it would put an end to the cocktail hour and delay dinner considerably.

So I coughed back, just to let the leopard know that two could play this game, and then I slowly backed down the trail. Before I even got to where the others were sitting around the fire, one of the armed askaris appeared magically out of the forest. It is always a little disconcerting when one of these ghosts appears out of nowhere. He walked beside me, his gun held in front of him.

I nodded towards the cliff. “Chui,” I said.

He smiled. “Ndiyo. Chui kubwa.” A big leopard.

So he’d seen the whole thing. Watched me go to the edge of the escarpment to do my business, knowing full well, no doubt, that I was pissing over the home of an old leopard. He probably thought it was rather amusing—a mzungu peeing over the home of a leopard. I just wonder what he would have done had the leopard come after me. I’m sure he would have shot it. At least, I think he would have.