"No, Marcel, I don’t think it’s a good idea to get off the hood now and step into this lion pride." I could tell my wife was a bit concerned. She had a point. It was darker and quieter than a postal office after closing time, and our fragile Land Rover was perched on the edge of a valley so ominous it might as well have come with its own horror soundtrack—something with unsettling violins and distant screams. For all we knew, a colony of prehistoric carnivores was lurking in the underbrush, just waiting for us to stumble down there like an all-you-can-eat special. If a family of T-Rexes was holding a reunion in that valley, we wouldn’t know until we were on the guest list—as the main course.
None of this would have mattered much if we had been sitting inside the car, like sensible human beings with a vague interest in survival. But no. Instead, we were lounging ON the hood, basking in the moonlight—of which there wasn’t any—like the world’s dumbest appetisers, marinating in our own bad decisions while the night teemed with hungry, sharp-toothed possibilities.
At that moment, we weren’t people anymore. We were a limited-time offer on the savanna’s all-you-can-eat menu, served à la carte with a side of sheer stupidity. We had elevated ourselves from mere tourists to high-risk, slow-moving protein bars, conveniently unwrapped and presented on a metal platter. Any self-respecting predator wouldn’t have even needed to hunt—just stroll over and take a bite, like a lion-sized drunk grabbing street food after a long night out.
Of course, the debris field of doom unfolding before us wasn’t our only dilemma.
There were more problems. You see, to the left, things weren’t much better—just a treacherous minefield of boulders the size of telephone booths and holes so deep they echoed like they had something living at the bottom. Something hungry. That left only the right side of the vehicle, which, unfortunately, came with its own complication: a lioness crouching ten feet away, locked onto me with the kind of focus usually kept for tax auditors and divorce lawyers.
In summary, my options were as follows:
A) Hurl myself into a black abyss full of theoretical dinosaurs.
B) Break both legs in a crater before being eaten by whatever nightmare lived in it.
C) Stay exactly where I was and risk my wife saying, "I told you so" on my tombstone.
D) Make an ill-advised move and become airborne lion chow.
And then, of course, there was the ever-thrilling Option E—climbing awkwardly over the roof and hauling myself in through the sunroof. This plan had its own bonus round: a one-on-two cage match with the two massive lion males parked right behind the vehicle, watching me with the level of anticipation normally reserved for halftime snacks. The upside? While they turned me into a human meatball—without the sauce—Nicole might have been able to silently slip off the hood and into the safety of the vehicle. A noble sacrifice. For her, at least.
I took a deep breath, weighing my choices.
"Well," I declared, as if I had an actual strategy, "we can’t stay on this hood forever and wait it out, can we? I mean, apart from red wine, cheese, and some stale bread, we didn’t bring much to survive on." I gave Nicole a hopeful glance. "But at least we'd go down in style…"
Her look said she was not in the mood to be devoured ironically.
Crunch time. Again.
Flashback. How did we even get into this mess? As usual, it was someone else’s fault.
This time, the blame fell squarely on a tourist couple—a pair of obnoxiously spoiled, hopelessly oblivious travellers from a distant land, far removed from reality. Both the people and the place. A land where the closest thing to a real wildlife encounter involves a chihuahua in a designer handbag, and the most dangerous predator is an over-caffeinated barista with anxiety attacks.
They had, of course, prepared extensively for their grand African adventure by watching National Geographic documentaries—hours upon hours of gripping footage from the safety of their air-conditioned lofty apartment, probably while sipping oat milk lattes and congratulating themselves on their deep, spiritual connection with the untamed wilderness.
By the time they arrived, they considered themselves seasoned safari veterans.
They knew things.
Like how lions only hunt at night, how elephants are just big, wrinkly vegans, and how the most effective way to deal with a charging hippo is to simply "remain calm" and "assert dominance."
They also knew that any real safari guide—unless he was a total moron—would be able to provide them with:
✔ A cheetah hunt
✔ A lion pride taking down a zebra
✔ An elephant bull fight
✔ A wildebeest crossing the Mara River
✔ A leopard hurling its prey into a tree
✔ And, if the guide was truly gifted, perhaps a catastrophic wildfire in the savannah, conveniently synchronised with a volcanic eruption.
All of this within 60 minutes, tops—so they could be back in time for a late breakfast, after which they’d haul their bulk onto a poolside lounge chair, order a cocktail, and bask in the glow of their self-imposed enlightenment.
I think you know the type.
New Yorkers.
And so, through an absurdly complex chain reaction of arrogance, incompetence, and good old-fashioned dumb luck, the universe—like an obsessive-compulsive chef rearranging an already-overstuffed plate—decided it was our turn to have an entirely preventable but unavoidably disastrous moment.
That’s how we ended up on the hood of a Land Rover, frozen in place like an unfortunate appetiser at a fancy dinner party for apex predators, each one deciding whether they wanted their meal extra rare or well done. A lioness, crouched low, staring at me with a look that can only be described as "predator meets tax auditor", debated whether to devour me slowly for drama or take me out quickly for efficiency. I wasn’t sure which one I preferred, but I was leaning toward "drunkenly stumbling into a ditch" as a more dignified end.
Somewhere in the distance, a hyena cackled—possibly at my expense.
It was going to be one of those nights.
Twelve hours earlier…
"Marcel!"
James—my friend, camp manager, master of calmness, and, at this particular moment, a relentless pain in my ass—addressed me for the third time.
I knew exactly what he wanted. I also knew that ignoring him indefinitely wasn’t an option, but that didn’t stop me from trying. Instead, I stared into the bottom of my muesli bowl, studying the soggy remains with the kind of deep contemplation normally reserved for ancient philosophers and disillusioned priests. Maybe—just maybe—if I concentrated hard enough, I could divine a prophecy from the milk-drenched oats and avoid whatever stupid request was about to come.
"Marcel!"
Here we go.
"Marcel, when you and Nicole go out today on your patrol flight, can’t you check if you can locate the semi-resident lion pride from the air?”
There it was. The second dumbest question I had ever heard.
The number one spot, of course, belonged to the immortal classic:
"Do you think politicians intentionally lie?"
Which, by all accounts, remains the Cardinal Moronic Question of the World.
James’ request, however, was a strong contender.
The lion pride in question—a shifty bunch of three males and four females—had, in an act of deep personal betrayal, decided to make themselves inconveniently scarce. Somehow, they had developed a taste for invisibility and disappeared into the ether, much to the growing frustration of the safari guides. Normally, they roamed the plains near camp, terrifying unsuspecting tourists and posing majestically for thousands of identical Instagram photos. But now? Now, they were gone.
This, in turn, had triggered a small but rapidly escalating war between Peter, the safari guide, and the despicable couple from New York—the same self-proclaimed wildlife experts who, had long since concluded that a safari was essentially an episode of Discovery Channel. They had made it clear that they expected Peter to summon lions like they were part of a fast-food menu.
Their entire worldview had since collapsed under the weight of a harsh, unforgiving reality—a reality in which Peter, despite his best efforts, had been unable to produce their personally assigned lion pride on demand.
The New Yorkers, of course, found this completely unacceptable and began questioning if their guide was, in fact, a moron.
Peter, on the other hand, was experiencing the five stages of grief in rapid succession—mostly toggling between anger and denial.
To be fair, I almost felt pity for him.
Almost.
But then I remembered that Peter was greedier than a tax collector on a Monday morning and stingier than a Pakistani carpet merchant during Ramadan.
So, I let that sympathy go quicker than a cheetah on lunch break.
You see, Lions are, by design, ghosts wrapped in muscle and murder. You could practically trip over one without ever figuring out what—or who—just sentenced you to death. They’ve been perfecting the art of hunting upright-walking apes for millennia, and if it weren’t for the invention of fire, fast food, and the great intellectual lobotomy that is social media, we’d likely still be a staple on their dinner menu.
Luckily for us, human beings have since developed the dietary habits of a feral raccoon with a head injury. As a consequence, we now taste like a delicate blend of wet cardboard, cow dung, and a pair of gym socks that have spent the last decade marinating in a stagnant hippo pool. A steady diet of industrial preservatives, artificial sweeteners, and sheer existential dread has given our flesh the fine bouquet of coffee breath, decaying compost, and the armpit of Satan himself. The result? We are utterly inedible to all self-respecting predators. Even hyenas—nature’s own trash compactors—turn their noses up at us. Come to think of it, apart from a creature that doesn’t exist, no animal in its right mind would willingly indulge in the culinary atrocity of human flesh.
The point of all this? If a lion doesn’t want to be found, it won’t be. And no amount of squinting at the ground from an airborne search party is going to change that—unless, of course, you plan to fly low enough to personally introduce yourself to the local flora. Not that I was completely opposed to this strategy, but in the interest of maintaining what little sanity my wife had left—not to mention avoiding an unfortunate midair collision with an unsuspecting tourist enjoying their sundowner—I decided against it.
James and I both knew that attempting to explain this basic fact of nature to the tourists would be about as productive as explaining tax fraud to a tangerine. But, being a good friend, I promised to do my utmost to locate the rogue colony of cats. After all, the lions had been MIA for over a week now, and unless they’d packed their bags and migrated somewhere more peaceful—like a North Korean labor camp or the bottom of the Atlantic—they were still out there.
Unfortunately, going on safari and not seeing a lion is the wildlife equivalent of visiting Somalia and not getting shot at. It’s an unthinkable disaster. It’s the kind of catastrophe that ruins careers. The mood among the safari guides had already deteriorated faster than a mule wandering into a Mogadishu minefield, and the tension between the guests and camp staff was reaching levels usually reserved for hostage situations.
See, the camp staff’s income relied almost entirely on tips—because their actual salaries were so negligible they might as well have been theoretical. So when tourists don’t get their lion-themed bloodbath, those tips dry up faster than the last scream of a backpacker who thought ‘playing dead’ worked on lions. And no matter how gourmet the food or how well-stocked the bar, at some point, even the most well-fed visitor expects either a high-stakes wildlife encounter or a deep-tissue Thai massage. When neither is delivered, the staff take the financial hit. In plain English: they starve.
And so, thanks to the cruel whims of a few invisible lions and the deranged entitlement of two particularly insufferable New Yorkers, I was now being volunteered for a doomed reconnaissance mission. A manhunt for creatures perfectly designed to never be found.
I had a feeling this wouldn’t end well.
However, even though lions weren’t our main concern—our raison d’être was saving elephants from the delightful pastimes of local poachers—Nicole and I were airborne 30 minutes later, skimming the earth so low that any unsuspecting prairie dogs or spitting cobras had approximately three seconds to contemplate their life choices before getting an impromptu haircut.
In reality, we weren’t wasting our time on some tourist’s entitlement crisis over missing lions. We were tracking a particular elephant, a massive old bull with an equally massive wound, courtesy of some entrepreneurial poachers who had decided that his head was carrying just a little too much weight. How thoughtful. Perhaps they were concerned about his spinal health, worried he might develop a herniated disc from lugging around all that ivory. Or, more likely, they were eager to turn his thousand-pound tusks into decorative nonsense for the kind of people who believe true luxury is best expressed by carving toilet seats out of the corpses of endangered species.
Yes, the ever-refined Chinese elite had long since decided that the pinnacle of interior design was to manufacture absolutely everything out of elephant ivory. Trinkets, tableware, doorknobs, chopsticks—hell, if they could find a way to turn tusks into WiFi routers, they’d do it. And so, somewhere in Beijing, a wealthy businessman was likely admiring his new solid ivory tissue box, unaware—or more likely, completely indifferent—to the fact that halfway across the world, the original owner of that decorative masterpiece was now bleeding out under an acacia tree, his carcass being quietly dismantled by hyenas and vultures.
Nicole and I had seen it too many times before, and we knew the script by heart. Poachers kill. Middlemen profit. The wealthy sip their tea from cups made of slaughter and call it culture.
And yet, here we were, flying low, hoping that maybe—for once—the ending would be different.
But, I digress.
The great migration was already in full swing, a primeval symphony of dust, hooves, and survival. From our lofty vantage point, we soared across the African sky, witnessing the raw, unfiltered pulse of life itself—beauty and brutality woven into one seamless masterpiece. For a fleeting moment, we saw through God’s eyes, gliding above the chaos, watching the eternal battle between predator and prey unfold like a high-stakes reality show where losing meant being violently evicted from existence.
Elephants uprooted trees like drunken demolition crews, while hippos—nature’s landmines with teeth—turned the riverbanks into bloodied crime scenes. And then, of course, there were the crocodiles, orchestrating the grand tragedy of the Mara River crossing. Thousands of wildebeests, programmed by millennia of bad genetic decisions, flung themselves into the swirling waters, where rows of reptilian deathtraps waited with the patience of executioners. Normally, nature ran this event with the cold, ruthless efficiency of a guillotine, but today, the scene had been sabotaged by human stupidity.
Countless safari vehicles clogged the riverbanks, strategically—or more accurately, catastrophically—positioned in the exact spots where the wildebeests instinctively tried to cross. The guides knew better. They all knew better. But when a walking trust fund waves a handful of Benjamins, demanding front-row seats at the Crocodile Bloodbath Dinner Theatre, well, ethics tend to quickly evaporate like a Martini in a Bond Movie.
What followed was a masterclass in tragic comedy. The wildebeests, armed with the combined intelligence of a teapot and a particularly deficient doorbell, panicked at the human roadblock. Instead of pushing forward—smashing straight through the vehicles full of overweight onlookers and sending a few entitled souls cartwheeling into the hungry abyss of prehistory—they did what they did best: hesitate, hyperventilate, and hurl themselves straight back into the jaws of hell.
It was Darwinism in its purest form—the strong eating the dumb while the wealthy filmed it on their phones and overpriced cameras, their only concern being whether the lighting was good enough for an Instagram post.
Weaving through a plague of remote-controlled photo drones that flitted around like mechanised mosquitos—each piloted by someone who probably couldn’t navigate a roundabout but now fancied themselves the Spielberg of safari cinematography—we left this vivid scene.
We circled back to camp, where we were met by a washed out ensemble of terrified guests, guides, and co-workers who had fled the dining room in a collective panic—leaving behind a lunch table with all the warmth and excitement of an abandoned Soviet bunker. The notorious New Yorkers still hadn’t laid eyes on a single big cat. No leopard, no lion—not even a hungry house cat with a hangover. Their frustration had thickened to the point that it could be sliced and plated as a side dish. Meanwhile, Peter, our beleaguered guide, was teetering on the razor-thin edge of professional sanity, looking one missed sighting away from throwing himself into oncoming traffic—if only the wilderness had been kind enough to provide some. Apparently, every other living being in camp—including my friend James, the manager—had foreseen this inevitable ordeal with the insufferable tourists and had therefore arranged to have lunch anywhere but the dining area. The bush, their tents, the mechanic shop, an old shipping container that doubled as the manager’s office—anywhere that offered even the slimmest chance of escape. Had a last-minute option been available to dine on one of Saturn’s outer rings, the moon, or even at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, Nicole and I would have gladly taken it.
Instead, we found ourselves under aerial bombardment—an unrelenting carpet of furious questions and demands for a detailed breakdown of the day’s wildlife layout. Essentially, the city dwellers were expecting a Disney World–style location map or an advisory board for predator sightings. I shot Peter a look normally reserved for federal employees and personal injury attorneys, then reassured him—yet again—that we would radio in the moment we spotted anything feline.
Citing an acute and utterly debilitating combination of a severe headache, a herniated disk, and haemorrhoids—all, miraculously, striking at once—we staged a hasty retreat. As we passed the kitchen, we stumbled upon an unexpected congregation: every other guest in camp, clearly executing the same emergency protocol—an improvised sundowner-slash-dinner, strategically distanced from the human thunderclouds of the Big Apple.
It appeared that no one, under any circumstance, wished to endure another meal steeped in the festering misery of the lion-deprived. Naturally, we shared this sentiment. Our plan? Secure a bottle of red wine, some cheese, olive oil, and bread, then vanish into the bush for a proper fireside dinner. The perfect venue? The hood of our decrepit Land Rover, stationed at a blissfully under-trafficked spot among elephants, antelopes, and zebras. The occasional leopard included—for ambiance.
So hell-bent were we on putting an entire zip code—hell, an entire time zone—between us and the soul-draining vortex of the dining room that we overlooked one small logistical hiccup: we might end up as dinner instead. Given the sheer, almost supernatural absence of the local lion pride, we assumed they had vanished into oblivion. For all we knew, they’d abandoned the Maasai Mara, relocated to another continent, or perhaps even ascended to a higher plane of existence where they now tormented extraterrestrial gazelles in some intergalactic savanna.
Blissfully unaware that something out there in the bush might be lurking, prowling, and hungrily debating whether we were best served with or without a side of panic, we strolled off with our lunch bag and cooler, waving a cheerful goodbye—like doomed tourists in the opening act of a wildlife horror film, completely oblivious to the fact that the plot was about to take a sharp and toothy turn.
For our tranquil, soul-restoring sundowner—followed by a cozy dinner by the fire—we chose a spot normally reserved for the grand spectacle of ‘once-a-week-bush-dinners-for-tourists,’ an event of elaborate cultural ceremony and mild theatrical absurdity.
This weekly ritual transformed an unassuming clearing into a stage where select safari-goers could sip wine under the stars while being treated to an evening of Maasai warriors bouncing skyward like human pogo sticks, draped in their brilliant red shúkàs, chanting ancestral songs with the kind of synchronised precision that suggested they’d rather be doing almost anything else.
Tales were exchanged—some grand, some dull, most wildly exaggerated accounts of bush life, delivered by people who had, in reality, spent the entirety of their safari reclining in a Land Cruiser with a gin and tonic.
One particular demographic, however, was never extended an invitation: the actual wildlife. No harmless grass-munchers, no skittish herbivores, no ominous shadowy figures at the tree line, and certainly no predators that might rudely interrupt the festivities by making a meal of someone’s Uncle Bob.
Naturally, a contingent of Maasai warriors, clutching spears and the solemn knowledge that they were mostly there for decorative deterrence, stood by in case of an attack—though, let’s be honest, apart from the occasional mosquito that had tragically missed the security briefing, no self-respecting animal ever showed up. At most, to keep the tourists convinced they were in the thick of untamed Africa, we’d hear the distant roar of a lion, the deranged laughter of a hyena, or the indignant grumble of an elephant—atmospheric sound effects that added just the right amount of authentic danger.
Unless, of course, those sounds were blaring from a hidden speaker—much like that time in Botswana’s Kalahari, in a charmingly named place called Deception Valley, where the local desert lions had ghosted their own event, leaving the desperate hosts no choice but to fill the void with a carefully curated playlist of pre-recorded roars. That little deception might have fooled the first-time safari-goers, but we’d been around long enough to know the difference between an apex predator and a well-placed Bluetooth speaker.
However, none of this was on our already overburdened minds as we eased our Land Rover down a steep hill toward the little, cozy bush dinner spot. We parked strategically along the edge of a valley, overlooking the vast plains of the conservancy, where scattered elephants and peacefully grazing animals dotted the horizon.
The scene—bathed in the mesmerising golden light of those fleeting moments before dusk—had its usual hypnotic effect, offering a brief illusion of peace and solace. These were the sacred twenty minutes before darkness fell—literally—because here at the equator, twilight didn’t linger; it simply collapsed. One moment, the world was bathed in warm, honeyed light, and the next, you were fumbling in the kind of pitch-black void that made you question whether you still had a bodily form. It was a magic found only in Africa—beautiful, fleeting, and slightly menacing.
We left the car, and while I focused on making a fire, Nicole took charge of all things coziness, warmth, and aesthetic value—because, let’s face it, when it comes to decoration, I have the artistic instincts of sunscreen made out of cooking oil—useless at best, actively harmful at worst, and guaranteed to leave you regretting the attempt.
Yet, in mere minutes, she had miraculously transformed the battered hood of our debilitated Land Rover into something resembling a high-end safari picnic—complete with a makeshift dinner table and absurdly comfortable, lounge-chair-like headrests against the windshield. It was borderline sorcery, really—turning a dented, oil-streaked hunk of scrap metal into a setting that could almost trick you into forgetting that we were, in fact, sitting atop an aging deathtrap in the middle of predator country.
The evening progressed, the last traces of sunlight surrendered, and we were left in a darkness so complete that even the inside of a sarcophagus would have felt like a bright afternoon at a Florida retirement home. We quite literally couldn’t see our own hands, and if I hadn’t known better, my wife could have been replaced by a chain-smoking orangutang in a sunhat, and I’d have been none the wiser.
The receding fire, just ten feet away, flickered weakly—offering just enough light to remind us how much we couldn’t see beyond its reach. Still, all was well. Until, of course, it wasn’t.
It started with a warning call from what we assumed was a gazelle. Now, neither of us were fluent in anxious herbivore, so we couldn’t decipher whether it was a full-scale predator alert or just some minor marital dispute between an antelope honeymoon couple. Either way, something out there was stressing.
I reassured my wife that it was probably nothing more than a lonely leopard looking for either company or an entrée. Because, in my hubris, I considered myself a seasoned expert on all things wild and toothy, I remained utterly calm—an unshakable pillar of misplaced confidence.
Then came the second warning call—sharper, more frantic.
A very particular kind of intuition slithered its way up my spine, the kind that suggests you may have just become part of something else's dinner plans. In a smooth yet casual manoeuvre, I suggested we pull our feet back—because just in case—dangling them over the edge suddenly felt like submitting an RSVP to an unseen predator’s tasting menu.
That’s when it hit me.
That creeping, unmistakable sensation of being watched. Or, more accurately, evaluated. It wasn’t just the typical predator gaze you read about in textbooks—no, this felt more like an academic review of whether we’d make a decent main course or if we were better suited as a sadistic appetiser. The kind of scrutiny that suggested whatever was out there had an entire spreadsheet of options in front of it, weighing the pros and cons of consuming us whole, or savouring the slow, agonising experience of bite-sized pieces.
Maybe the elephants in the dark were right to graze in peace a hundred yards away—at least they weren’t being contemplated as a possible canapé
Now, whatever I could be accused of, being woefully unprepared would not be on the list—at least not in any traditional, useful sense. Because here’s the thing: I always—appropriate or not—carry my Bowie knife, a blade so ludicrously oversized that it makes a medieval battle axe look like a disposable plastic spoon. In theory, it was a formidable weapon. In practice, however, I had the battle instincts of a vegetarian pacifist at a middle age siege. The harsh reality? I couldn’t so much as watch someone bait a fishing hook without an existential crisis about the worm’s feelings. I’d sooner rush it to an insect ICU than allow such cruelty on my watch. Of course, apart from my wife, no one knew about this tragic flaw in my supposed ruggedness.
Still, despite its utter uselessness, the hulking mass of my Bowie knife—currently occupying more space than a small satellite—gave me a misplaced sense of comfort. Not unlike a toddler clutching a security blanket, except mine was a weapon I’d never actually use.
The other item I always carried, of course, was a flashlight—a far more practical tool, though rapidly shifting from “optional convenience” to “absolute necessity,” because we were now sitting in a darkness so thick and impenetrable that for all we knew, we were already halfway swallowed by something large and patient.
“Darling,” I chirped ever so quietly, “would you hand me my flashlight, please..?”
Now, if there’s one thing that could send my wife’s internal threat assessment skyrocketing, it was me using an unnervingly polite tone in a situation that most certainly did not warrant it. To her credit, she said nothing—just slid the flashlight over with the kind of silent efficiency one might use when passing a surgeon his scalpel mid-operation.
Now, the original purpose of this particular illumination device had been to compensate for the tragic excuse of high beams on our Land Rover, which struggled so pitifully that they barely lit up a distance of ten feet—useful if one’s goal was merely to illuminate a slow-moving tortoise but otherwise an insult to vehicular lighting. More importantly, I also used this flashlight as a makeshift landing light for my plane, for those inconveniently frequent occasions when my poor planning led to sudden, unexpected nightfall, forcing me to land on a bush airstrip with the grand illumination strategy of “hope and prayer.”
As a result, my flashlight was not just bright—it was a goddamn weapon. The sheer intensity of its beam could probably be classified as a form of intergalactic warfare. If I flipped it on at full power, there was a nonzero chance it would vaporise whatever it touched on the spot, reducing any unfortunate creature in its path to a fine, carbonised mist. Frankly, it was the kind of device that, if wielded irresponsibly, could disrupt the Earth’s rotational axis.
And so, gripping my personal artificial sun, I took a deep breath, braced myself, and clicked it on—ready to finally see what, if anything, was currently deciding whether we’d make a better meal as a two-course dinner or a buffet.
Fumbling in the dark, I powered up my personal nuclear device—otherwise known as my flashlight—praying that, by some miracle, I had managed to throttle its brightness down to something less aggressive than a solar flare. To my immense relief, I had indeed succeeded, and for a brief, glorious moment, this seemed like a victory. Unfortunately, it was also the last good news of the evening.
First, I aimed the beam straight ahead—an utterly pointless manoeuvre unless we were expecting a fully grown Tyrannosaurus Rex to be peering back at us. And while I’m no wildlife expert (despite my wildly misplaced confidence), I was fairly certain T-Rex sightings were, at best, infrequent in this part of Africa. As expected, the front of the hood revealed nothing.
Next, I swept the light to my left, where my wife sat. Apart from a few geological features roughly the size of Mount Kenya and craters so vast they could serve as emergency backups for the Yellowstone Caldera, there wasn’t much to note. So far, so good.
Then, with the slow, creeping dread of someone realising they’re in a horror movie, I turned the light to my right—my side of the makeshift dinner table. And that, dear reader, is when things took a rather unfortunate turn.
Crouched by what little remained of our cozy fire, now nothing more than a reluctant glow, was a lioness—eyes locked on me with a stare so intense, it could’ve been lifted straight from a Mike Tyson stare down in a prison shower. All her muscles were coiled like the tension of a toddler having their first tantrum in a toy store. And me? Somehow, I wasn’t surprised. In fact, I’d half expected this moment, like it was the grand finale of a truly terrible, yet somehow inevitable, circus act.
But that didn’t make the reality any easier to swallow. There she was, an apex predator, sizing me up with the kind of look you give the 400-pound guy at an all-you-can-eat Vegas buffet—the one who’s already made three trips and is clearly eyeing your last plate of ribs. She wasn’t just looking at me; she was calculating—wondering if it was worth the effort to drag my sorry carcass away or if she’d simply gnaw on me here and now, right where I sat, just to cut out the middleman.
To be fair to myself, I have to admit that while I might be utterly useless when it comes to things like filling out tax forms, navigating the digital labyrinth of computer software, or surviving a supermarket trip without buying a cartful of items that could be considered “food” only if you’re very liberal with the definition—when chaos and mayhem break loose, I become a veritable force of nature. Bring on the biblical-level natural disasters, a blizzard so intense it could make the last ice age look like a family holiday at a tropical resort, a midair plane struggle, or a road rebellion—I remain as cool and composed as a cucumber in a freezer.
It’s the trivial stuff that really breaks me. Those mundane tasks—the ones that everyone else seems to handle while multitasking, sipping coffee, and texting their friends about dinner plans—that’s what gets under my skin. It's like I'm an Aztec sacrifice, bound to the altar, heart pounding with the same existential terror as a ripe melon, watching in dread as the enthusiastic priest sharpens his ceremonial blade with a gleam in his eye, mentally calculating how best to ruin my day.
So, I did what I do best: ignored the furry, oversized kitten preparing to give us the full "night of the living dead" treatment and shifted my attention to Nicole. In that moment, I was absolutely certain that, despite having zero clue how to save us from a lion, I was the one who’d somehow pull it off. I mean, the concept of panic? Not really in my wheelhouse. But I had to make sure my wife didn’t lose her mind and turn me into lion chow by default. Because let’s be honest—there’s no point in being stone cold when your companion freaks out and drags you down the same panic-infested rabbit hole.
I know panic. I’ve seen it in full, technicolor glory on the face of a former safari companion in Tanzania when we got charged by a herd of elephants so angry they’d probably sent their complaints to customer service. The only way to snap them out of it was a quick slap to the face to kickstart their brain back into "survival mode."
When I looked at Nicole, I felt oddly proud. Despite the obvious discomfort—because let’s face it, most people would have spontaneously combusted from the stress—she was calm. Calm like a cow in a Hindu temple. Just staring at me with that look that says,
"Well, I know you’ll figure this out, but what the hell are we going to do next?”
The good news—if you could stretch the definition of "good" beyond recognition—was that we had unwittingly become the human version of a lion GPS tracker, pinpointing the rogue lion pride that everyone else had been hyperventilating over. The bad news? This lone lioness, our friendly neighbourhood apex predator, was clearly just the decoy.
The actual "hit squad," consisting of six more lions probably sitting back like some sick mafia syndicate, were still lurking in the darkness, brainstorming a new, more efficient strategy for killing us. Clearly, their first plan—a lone lioness, lone-wolf style—hadn't quite hit the mark. So now we were the main course, and the others were just deciding whether to serve us as an appetiser or the main event.
Without disturbing the crouching lady—the lion—too much, I carefully started scanning for the rest of their motley, fang-bearing wrecking crew. And, lucky me, I spotted them right away—no need to crank my flashlight up to “incinerate on contact” mode.
Two absolute monster males lurked behind the car, their hulking forms radiating the kind of casual menace usually reserved for crime bosses in dimly lit Italian restaurants. Two more lionesses slinked to the right, making a laughable attempt at hiding behind bushes that provided about as much cover as a cocktail napkin in a hurricane. That left one male and one lioness still missing. For all I knew, they had taken off on an extended honeymoon package, enjoying a romantic getaway far from their murderous responsibilities. Or, more likely, they were right there, motionless, just outside my field of vision, waiting for their big entrance like horror movie villains with a flair for the theatrical.
But for now, we were dealing with only five lions. Which, by my standards, was still preferable to a tax audit conducted by a Nosferatu lookalike or an all-out war with a Microsoft Excel table hellbent on my destruction.
I made my move. Slowly—so agonisingly slow that I had to fight off the creeping numbness in my limbs—I slid off the hood, abandoning my utterly useless knife. Even if I had the reflexes of a cobra on cocaine, I wouldn’t have known where to stick the damn thing if the lioness suddenly decided she was in the mood for a late-night snack.
My microscopic motion, however, did not go unnoticed. Her pointy ears flicked backward in alarm, pulling off a grotesque Mr. Spock imitation, while her eyes narrowed into ominous slits. "Oh dear," I thought, "this isn’t a good sign."
Then she stood up.
"Oh dear," I thought again, "this is significantly worse."
For one fleeting moment, I found myself wishing that it had been a T-Rex in front of our car. At least with a T-Rex, I could count on its comically useless arms. I had no such luck with this particular flesh-powered murder machine.
Most people are fortunate enough to go their entire lives without accidentally running into a fully grown lion on foot. This sort of thing simply doesn’t happen—not unless you go very wrong somewhere in your life choices. I, however, was apparently the exception. I’d seen hundreds of lions before, up close, next to the comforting steel walls of a safari vehicle. But never—never—had I found myself standing in front of one with nothing but my squishy, unimpressive human body between us.
They are massive.
Her paws alone were the size of a family-sized pizza from Domino’s, except considerably less doughy and significantly more capable of disemboweling me. Her golden eyes had that thousand-yard stare of a battle-hardened Navy SEAL—only worse, because she didn’t need a rifle. Her muscles rippled beneath her fur like coiled steel cables, primed to launch her eight yards through the air without warning.
And yet, despite being a living, breathing catastrophe waiting to happen, she exuded an undeniable cat-ness. If you squinted hard enough—and ignored the fact that she could kill you in less time than it takes to sneeze—she was just a giant house cat. A house cat with biceps. And a kill count.
Still locked onto me with the intensity of a laser-guided missile, she took two slow steps backward and crouched again, as if resetting for round two.
That’s when it hit me.
These silent, perfectly engineered assassins hadn’t come here specifically to murder us. No, they had been drawn in by our scent. After all, we garbage-consuming omnivores reek of decomposing carcass, simply because that’s exactly what we eat. Had humans dined exclusively on delicate flower petals and morning dew, we might have smelled more pleasant. Maybe even appetising.
But we don’t.
And so, here we were—two unfortunate meat sacks, exuding Eau de Rotting Flesh, standing in the middle of a lion pride’s turf, being sniffed at like a questionable meal special.
Admittedly, this realisation provided far less comfort than I would have liked. Because even if these lions weren’t planning to eat us, they could still kill us for sport.
And frankly, not being eaten afterward wouldn’t have made much of a difference.
What actually did make a difference was that my wife—bless her uncanny survival instincts—had seized the moment and silently slid off the hood. Without causing so much as a rustle, she eased into the car. How she managed to pry open that ancient, rust-riddled door—its hinges usually wailing like a curry seller locked in a price war at a Bombay spice market—without making a sound was beyond me. But at least now, one of us was out of immediate pouncing range.
Which meant that I now had the luxury of preparing my mental obituary and going down in a blaze of questionable heroics. I could already picture it: me, facing off against the lioness and her cohorts, providing a valiant (read: futile) last stand so my wife could drive off into the sunset.
In reality, though, I was still rooted to the ground, moving nothing but my thumb as I adjusted the beam of my flashlight—aiming it directly into the lioness’s eyes.
Now, if there’s one thing nocturnal predators and vampires have in common, it’s their absolute loathing of blinding light. Predictably, the mighty cat got up—which, I must say, gave me yet another unpleasant jolt of Oh wow, she’s even bigger than I thought—and squinted in irritation.
That was my moment.
As she shifted uncomfortably, I took my cue, moving with the speed of a man who just realised he’s been standing inside a fireworks factory with a lit match. In one fluid motion, I slid toward the car and flung myself into the (relative) safety of our metallic tin can.
Before shutting the door, I stole one last glance toward the back of the vehicle.
The massive males were gone.
Not far, of course. No doubt, they were still lurking in the bushes, watching. Waiting. Contemplating whether we were worth the trouble or if they should hold out for something less bony and more tender.
I wasn’t about to wait for their verdict.
Instead, we counted our blessings—once again, we had miraculously escaped without so much as a scratch, seen lions up closer than any sane person would ever hope for, and, most importantly, were still around to tell the tale.
Of course, now came the true test of endurance: gleefully confronting Peter and his insufferable New Yorkers. We had, after all, located the infamous rogue pride everyone had been panicking about, and for a reasonable share of the tip, we might have even been persuaded to disclose their exact whereabouts.
Alas, our plans for monetising near-death experiences were foiled. The New Yorkers had already departed, not so much as a dime left behind. Their absence, however, was a blessing in disguise. The remaining guests—now relieved of their incessant whining—could finally look forward to a proper game drive in the morning, unburdened by city folk who believed nature should come with a concierge service. And maybe, just maybe, they’d even get to see our lion pride—from inside a vehicle, like rational humans.
Marcel Romdane, another life scratched off—no idea how many are left, but I’m starting to think cats got shortchanged at nine.
Apex Predator Decrepit Land Rover with even worse tires... Makeshift dinner table for two
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