LION A MILD FELLOW

Shannon News, 20 April 1926, Page 3

LION A MILD FELLOW

Mr. Stlllman W. Eels. United States Consul in Leeds, entertained members of the Leeds Municipal Officers Luncheon Club recently with stories of his'big game hunting experiences in East Africa. It was absurd, he 'said, to regard 1 he lion as the "terror of the wild." The lion, unless he had tasted human blood or was very hungry, would not attack. His bite was not the wor.it part of him; bloodpoisoning from 1 lie claw of the animal was the chief danger to man wounded in an encoi nter with the "king of the forest." The real "star turn," so far as danger was concerned, was the buffalo, and a scrap with him had inevitably only one ending—death. A man had no chance against the buffalo if the animal reached him. One evening when going home with his wife in a rickt-Miaw, Mr. Eels said, thev encountered a lioness in the pathway. They thought it was Hie postmaster's mastiff, and did not learn their mistake until the following day. On another occasion they escaped the charge of a herd of eighty buffalo by 2 oyds. Another carious fact mentioned by the speaker was the nervousness of the zebra. This animal, he said, was held to have the smallest heart of any quadruped of its size, which accounted for its never having been utilised to any extent for draught or similar purposes. One day, while sitting on the verandah of an hotel near Nairobi, he saw a herd of eight zebras stampeding directly towards him. They turned off towards the town, and two of them collided with a motorcar and were killed. All the remaining six fell dead in different parts of the town from sheer fright. The hyena, while a wicked customer, was mostly a scavenger, and little more to be feared than a dog.