Wow! What a Tuesday we had here at the Lodge…

It started already early in the morning, the resident monkeys were making their “predator on the ground” alarm call. We have heard it often enough that we know that this means there is a large cat out there somewhere. It could be a leopard, but around the lodge it is more often a lion. I decided not to go out to look as it is now winter here and at 6.30 am it is between 10-15C, a warm shower was more to my liking… but under the shower I heard the lion roaring, so then it was quickly getting dressed and off to have a look.

Unfortunately we didn’t find him on our plot, so after driving all the roads twice we headed back for hot coffee.

In the afternoon I went outside to see how Michel was doing with his work and I found a beautiful snake. A Spotted Bush Snake to be exact, luckily these are harmless so after some quick snaps with the phone I could take my time to get some nice shots with the camera. We don’t get many snakes at the Lodge so I was really pleased with this sighting. He/she took their time to make sure the coast was clear and then went back into the garden to hide in a tree.

At about 5.30 or so the monkeys came back as usual, and straight away headed into the trees to start the alarm calls again! So the lion must still be out there… off we went for another look. And still no luck! We both felt very stupid that we were not able to find the lion, although he must be there somewhere!

So of course, just as I was in the middle of cooking dinner we heard it again; roaring, only this time it wasn’t just one lion, it was quite a few!

The cooker was turned off, sweaters and socks were put on.. hopefully it would be 3rd time lucky….and it was! We got to the boundary road of our property and there they were: two lionesses… and cubs! It was the pride that has been seen for some months now on Grietjie, and they were here in our back garden; a total of 4 lionesses, 9 cubs and 2 males!!!!

They all crossed the road and headed into our property, we thought they might be heading towards our dam so we went that direction and sure enough we soon caught up with the males that were the rear guard. They slowly walked down the path with a cub popping up every now and then. We finally got to the dam and they were indeed drinking there, it was wonderful to sit and watch them.

After drinking they left the dam on the other side and went around the side of the lodge, and there they decided to take a rest for a bit, while we just sat and marvelled that we had 15 lions in our garden within 50m of the Lodge. And then the cherry on the cake was when they started roaring again. 6 lions roaring loudly within 10m of you, Tuesdays don’t get any better than that!!!

p.s. I only have audio of the roaring, and will post that on our Facebook page.

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A terrific Tuesday