CLEVER MAN-EATER

Elsewhere in a hot African savannah located along the Luangwa River valley near the village of Mfuwe in eastern Zambia, the climate is a tropical climate with a long summer rainy season leading to tall grasses and lots of animals dashing across the high plateau. The cool, dry winters stressed the plants and animals enough that migrations of nearly every kind of animal are a yearly event and part of the cycle of nutrients and energy.

 In the early summer of 1991 two boys were playing far too late after sunset. They were having fun playing and had lost track of time and were walking through the darkness, returning home. As they walked, they were being followed by a very interested and dangerous party from the tall grass. As the boys neared a point that the cover and road they were travelling on converged, a giant lion sprang from the grass and knocked one the boys to his back and bit the boy in the neck and subdued him in mere seconds. Upon seeing his friend taken down and killed, the other boy ran to get help. After running through the dark, the boy found some game rangers from the authorities were called. The game rangers showed up and closed in on the attack scene with their firearms at the ready. As they searched the attack scene, all that remained of the young man were a few tattered bits of his clothing, only parts of his chewed skull and a few bone fragments.

 Almost 30 days later, a woman was walking around the edge of her village under gathering some necessities as she arrived at her home and put her provision away and began her typical tasks as she readied for evening time. The giant lion stealthily crept up to her front door and knocked it down. It entered her hut, and bit and clawed the woman severely. It was not long before the woman was too injured to continue the fight for her life and she died. Upon discovering the attacks scene, the authorities searched the scrub brush near the woman's hut and eventually found her remains. The lion had consumed all of her body with the exception of her head and her arms. The remains were buried, and the terror continued.

 The next night, a young man had made an agreement with one of his friends to sneak out and meet up. They were just planning on messing around and having fun together. On his way to the meeting point, the young man was ambushed by the giant lion right in front of the Game Ranger's office. The lion knocked the boy to the ground and began biting and clawing him around the head and neck, just as he has done to his prior victims. A game ranger was nearby and overheard the attack. He stood up and fired his rifle to the air. The lion was startled and ceased the attack on the young man. The lion ran for the grass, leaving the young man with severe neck lacerations. The young man was taken to the hospital for immediate care, but the injuries he sustained during the attack would be too devastating and he lost his life in a short time later.

Over the next few weeks, three more fatal lion attacks occurred, one of which involved a village woman on her porch in the middle of broad daylight and just outside her door, the hunter lurked in the tall grass. As the local group of game Rangers approached her hut, the giant lion appeared to savage the woman right before their eyes. They fired a warning shot, and the beast disappeared into the grass unscathed. The Game Rangers arrived, but only a few moments too late to help the woman as the lion had inflicted lethal wounds to her body. The villagers and authorities were at a loss for finding the predatory cat and decided to take the local lion pride down in the individuals. They set out on a short hunting trip and seemingly randomly chose a lioness to blame and shot her but that did not stop the attacks.

Near the village of Negozo, a woman named Justyne was on edge ever since hearing the attacks. She just bagged her laundry to take to the river next the day for cleaning and laid down in her bed. While she slept, the giant lion knocked down her door and snatched her from her bed. Justyne screamed in terror and pain as she was dragged off into the bush. The lion consumed her body but would be back. By the middle of the next day, villagers watched the giant lion stride confidently into Justyne's house and walked right in through the door. It was inside for a few moments before it emerged carrying her bag of dirty laundry. For some reason, the lion packed the bag of laundry off into the bush, perhaps it wanted a trophy to remind itself about its successful hunt. As the area residents peered out of their hut windows and banged on pots and pans to scare the lion away, it calmly carried the bag to the centre of the village and set it down, and then roared loudly as it stared around at the huts now sheltering, terrified residents. Then it picked Justyne's laundry bag back up and strode confidently back into the bush.

 The giant lion was seen all around the village playing with the laundry bag like a house cat with a toy. They would carry the bag and bat it around and bite it. The villagers were terrified at the sight of the lion and assigned it a magical power. They believe the lion was a demon and as it played with the bag, it was doing magic and casting evil spells. They said that the lion was actually a sorcerer performing magic that would change his form into a lion, so that he could terrorize the villagers. The predatory actions for such a shock to the area and that professional hunters visiting for hunting trips decided to see if they could dispatch the murderous giant. One such hunter was a Japanese bounty who specialised in finding specific individuals for removal. The bounty hunter set traps all over the area and pursued Lions for weeks, but they came up nothing. The second professional hunter named Adrian Carr, was brought in and tried some of the same tactics and some new ones. Adrian hung a carcass about 10 feet off the ground from a tree and then set up a blind a short distance away.

 One dark night while hiding in the blind Adrian heard the lion's foot falls as he approached the bait carcass. He could hear the cat chewing on the decided to let it eat for some few minutes before shooting it. After about 20 minutes, he flipped on the spotlight and could see the giant lion standing on its hind legs chewing on the suspended carcass. He aimed his rifle in its direction, but as soon as the light hit him the light flagged itself onto the ground and disappeared in the darkness before Adrian could fire a shot. Adrian unfortunately had the same result as the prior bounty hunter, the lion continually outsmarting the most experienced bounty hunters.

 Wayne Hosek was an American professional hunter who was visiting the area on a private hunting trip as well. His party had come across the Lions favourite toy Justyne's laundry bag. The hunters decided to set up a large blind to watch the bag and stash of hippo meat they set out as bait for the lion. The men observed the bait for three weeks and at many points thought they had the man-eater only to have it be a different species passing through in the night. They did manage to get the lion to come into the bait as its tracks were found circling in the bait at daylight, but the stealthy creature slipped in and out without alerting the hunters. The hunters moved the sight of the hunting blind a few times, but while moving it the lion would slip in and take their bait from right under their noses. At one point the lion even stole the laundry bag back without them seeing him take it.

 As the hunters were waiting for an opportunity in the blind, the lion would frequently creep around the blind and always managing to stay and cover so the men could not shoot him. He would roar and Chuff close to the hunters but remained concealed.

 At one point Wayne took his camera outside to photograph one of the lion's massive tracks in the sand and the camera would not work. The hunters began wondering if what the villagers were saying about the lion having magical powers was true. The hunters knew the giants was watching them seemingly constantly and that he would take advantage of whenever they moved their blinds. The devised a strategy that they would fool the cunning predator. They would build a blind and put out a hippo meat as bait and then they would leave the blind and take an observational position somewhere else. The hunter set up their decoy position overlooking the bait, and they are full blind when they could see movements through the bush ahead. Wayne could see this lion coming in and it was not slow walking with caution or fear, but nearly trotting in with his hackles raised in aggression. As soon as the lion emerged from the cover that previously cloaked it Wayne could see its immense proportions. It was clearly a male and very light coloured to a near-cream colour. Just as Wayne levelled the side of his rifle on the lion's rib cage it turned its head directly to the hunters and growled in disdain and acknowledgment. It knew they were there, but Wayne fired a clean kill shot and the giant man-eater collapsed. The hunters approached the sprawled lion from the rear and waited for 25 minutes before convincing themselves it was actually dead enough to touch. Charles who was Wayne's hunting partner pulled his camera out for a picture and his camera also mysteriously malfunctioned and would not work. Then magical mystique of this lion didn't stop with his heartbeat. After the hunters brought the lion carcass to the villagers to prove to them, they no longer needed to fear it they celebrated. The villagers hit the carcass with sticks and spit on it and contempt. The local shaman performed magical ceremonies to permanently banish the spirit and power of the lion from their area.