Serengeti: Lions in Love

After four weeks in Africa, I'm in love with this place.  I can't believe I ever had doubts about going to Africa, but I did.  This trip was number 1 on Susan's bucket list, but I wasn't sure how much I was going to like it.  It surprised me once we got started on safari just how interesting and exciting each day could be.  

And this day was no exception.  

We started the day off motoring north towards the Kenya border in search of the Wildebeest migration.  The terrain changed from dry savanna to a mixture of grasslands and woodlands once we crossed the Grumeti River.  We came to a fork in the road; one way leading deeper into the woods, the other followed the edge of the woods, presenting us with open grasslands on one side and woods on the other.  

We rounded a thicket of brush to discover a magnificent male lion doing his best impersonation of the MGM logo.  We came to a stop not more than 25 feet away from this bad boy.   

We admired him for a minute...

    

...when to our complete surprise...this female emerged from the bush and presented herself to the King. 

The King didn't waste anytime seducing his Queen...

Nor did he score any points for gentleness.

But as we learned, when the King has his Queen in estrus, he'll remain with her for 6 or 7 days, doing the deed every 5 to 15 minutes.  I guess after that demanding performance, you could expect a little drop-off in finesse.

Now I know how he earned the title "King" of the jungle.  

I think I mentioned surveying the trees becomes second nature.  While we were watching the King and Queen, our Guide Steven was glassing the nearby trees and spotted not one, but three cats.

We motored over to get a closer look.

As these lioness make obvious, lions can climb trees.  In this case, according to Steven, they climbed up the tree to escape the nasty bites of tsetse flies.   Susan could attest to why that was a good idea too, as she got bit by one through her shirt and had a nasty, dime-sized bruise for two weeks. 

 We thought maybe we had attracted the attention of this lion as she came down and started walking right towards us... 

My pulse went up 20 RPM as this lioness walked right in front of us.

 ...but no, she walked right past us, headed for the King!

The King looks to be a little less than delighted to have the attention of this second female, which as Susan commented is acting kittenish towards him.  (Hard to tell what he is really thinking, so may I suggest you make your own caption.)  My favorite so far is "...you're killing me, twice every 5 to 15 minutes for 6 days!"  Moments later, both lions disappear into the bush, presumably joining the other female for a threesome.  See some of the lioness' kittenish behavior on this YouTube video.  http://youtu.be/rsqO-2Nj2l8

And come back to my blog often for more on Africa.