Man-Eaters of Tsavo
 In
the summer of 2001, I had the pleasure of spending
two weeks in Chicago, one of the most dynamic and
beautiful cities I have ever visited. The jewels in
this city's crown are its amazing museums, and the
Field Museum of Natural History is one of the
brightest. The Field Museum's most well-known
exhibit is that of the Man-Eating
Lions of Tsavo. Here, the two
lions—reconstructed by taxidermists with the
original skins—crouch, poised, ready to
attack, over 100 years after they terrorized a
railroad construction camp in east Africa. I
purchased a 41-page pamphlet about the incident at
the museum, written by the lions' hunter Colonel
John H. Patterson, but only just got around to
reading it last night.
What a gripping story. Those of you who have
seen the equally thrilling 1996 movie "The Ghost
and the Darkness" (starring Val Kilmer and Michael
Douglas) may be somewhat familiar with what
happened back in 1898. During the construction of a
railway bridge in Tsavo, Kenya, a pair of lions
developed a taste for human flesh. On a nearly
nightly basis, one or both of them crept into the
camps of the railroad workers and attacked the
sleeping men, often killing and devouring one of
them. Though the workers built huge barricades,
throwing up mounds of thorn bushes and fences, the
lions still managed to find a way in. Patterson,
the supervisor of the construction project, spent
many a sleepless night lying in wait with rifle in
hand, but each time the lions struck elsewhere.
Instead of hearing gunshots, the workers heard the
roar of lions, followed by the screams of a dying
man.
It didn't take long for this terror to drive the
workers away. Faced with a general strike,
Patterson had no choice but to hunt down the lions
full-time. He finally brought down one, then three
weeks later, the other. But the toll had been high.
All told, the lions had killed and eaten nearly 140
of the railroad workers during their nine-month
reign of terror.
Reading Patterson's pamphlet
(which is an excerpt of his book on the same
subject), it struck me that he had more skill with
the pen than the rifle. Though he had a number of
close encounters with the lions, it took him many
attempts to finally bring down the man-eaters. But
his narrative was dead-on. Despite the late hour
when I climbed into bed last night, Patterson's
tale grabbed me by the throat and didn't let go
till I had finished it.
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soon-to-be-obsolete browser, I'll just add the
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©2003 Michael
Strickland ALL RIGHTS
RESERVED
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