Orgs and Survival Instincts LO12014

Mnr AM de Lange (AMDELANGE@gold.up.ac.za)
Fri, 17 Jan 1997 10:39:32 GMT+2

Ben Compton wrote in LO11977

> I told my wife to quickly get the kids in the truck. I pulled my knife
> from it's sheath, and began to scan the darkness for any movement. "What
> if the cougar attacks? How many stabs do I get before I'm dead? Will it
> kill one of my children before I can kill it? Am I fast enough to respond
> to an attack from the side?"
>
> Every survival instinct I had was fully activiated. My family got in the
> truck, and I followed. I started the engine and drove around the place
> where the baby cougar had been. After a few moments I felt it was safe to
> get out of the truck. Instead of sleeping in the tent, we decided to make
> the truck our abode.

Dear organlearners,

Ben, thank you very much for telling us about your wonderful experiences
in the wild, being the hunted. You have raised so many handles that at
least a 100 responses could follow from it.

One which I wish to respond to, is that you need not had to make the truck
your abode. No wild animal here will ever dare to go into a fully closed
tent. Not even an elephant will step on a tent. Although they can feel,
smell and hear what is going on inside, they cannot see. It is for this
very reason, when one of their senses are failing, they do not trust
themselves. Obviously, the dangerous predator is the one who had made some
previous contact with a human by seeing one through a small slit in the
tent. They will then go for thier prey. Once they have had this
experience, their memory sometimes tell them to go for even the closed
tent. When they do that, then you have the maneater on hands. They are
extremely difficult to hunt because they become very clever. Your ordinary
hunter usually becomes their prey, even with their powerful rifles and
handguns.

Another one which I wish to respond to, is that we have the idea when the
king or the queen of the animal kingdom attacks, every other animal except
the other big three (elephant, rhinoceros and hippotamus) flee. When no
other method of survival is possible, counter attack is the best weapon to
fend of an attack. I have seen a leopard attack a wild pig - leopards are
very fond of pig and baboon meat. This pig launched its own attack, and
the leopard had to flee. I have seen on TV a male lion attack a wildebeest
(an antelope almost as big as cattle). The wildebeest launched its own
attack and the king had to flee. I could almost sense the king's shame.

Just a final note. Hunters of maneaters are extermely scarce. I once met
such a man, Klaas (Wildebees) Prinsloo of Hectorspruit, on one of my
succulent expiditions. We became close friends up to his death. He never
took money for hunting a maneater - like Ben said, money does not pay for
everything. The worst case he had to deal with was a male lion which took
him 4 months to kill. Although many other hunters had a go at this
maneater, none ever even saw him! And four of them had to pay with their
lives, as well as tens of ordinary people. During the last weeks of that 4
months, when Wildebees finally began to understand the mind of this
cunning old devil, he often had to keep awake 48 hours or more not to
loose the devil's tracks. He kept the skin of that maneater as a prize.
When I laid my two hands in the even bigger paw of the dead lion, shivers
ran down my back.

Best wishes
- --

At de Lange
Gold Fields Computer Centre for Education
University of Pretoria
Pretoria, South Africa
email: amdelange@gold.up.ac.za

-- 

"Mnr AM de Lange" <AMDELANGE@gold.up.ac.za>

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