The Lion Who Stole My Arm (5 page)

I
nside the hut, Renaldo connected the collar to another computer. He explained to Pedru that it carried a record of everywhere the lion had been.
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While they waited for the collar to download its story onto the laptop, Beth showed Pedru some photographs of lions on another computer screen. Each lion had a name beside its picture and a little drawing of its face.

“This is how we identify lions,” Beth explained. “From photos and these drawings. We tell one lion from another by their whisker spots, their ears and scars, and the size and color of their manes.”

“And the color of their noses,” John added, “tells us how old they are. The pinker the nose, the younger the lion; the blacker the nose, the older!”

“We give all the lions we study names,” Beth said, and then she added in a pretend whisper, “because it’s easier than numbers for John’s old brain to remember!”

“Thanks, Beth!” John grinned. He pointed to one particular photo up on the screen. “That’s Puna — the lioness this collar belonged to.”

John brought up a photograph of Puna lazing in the shade of an acacia with four tiny cubs. Pedru had only ever seen lions slinking like evil spirits through the grass or snarling and spitting when a hunter had cornered them. Or dead. He had never seen a lioness with cubs; he hadn’t realized that lion cubs could be so tiny and so helpless, all eyes and fluffy yellow fur. Pedru had feared and hated lions all his life, but he was disconcerted to find that Puna and her cubs reminded him of his mother and his little sisters.

“The cubs were Cheli and Seti — two girls — and two boys, Samir and Anjani,” Beth said, pointing to each cub on the screen. “Here’s the last photo we have of them, about a year ago, when the cubs were almost grown.”

Beth clicked on a photo of Puna and her cubs, now more than half their mom’s size.

“Not long after that, we found Puna’s two sisters speared by hunters, and Puna just disappeared,” John explained.

“We guessed that something bad had happened to her and her cubs,” Beth said sadly.

Not as bad as what happened to Mr. Pelembe,
Pedru thought.

At last, the collar was ready to tell its story. A map with colored dots appeared on Renaldo’s screen, and they all gathered around.

“There’s your village, right?” John said, pointing to a black dot on the map with the name of Pedru’s village written beside it. “The orange dots show where Puna went, and the numbers beside them are the dates, OK? Can you see on this map where the attacks happened, Pedru?”

It took a moment to figure out what the map showed, and then Pedru had it! There was his village, with the trail to the river and the fields to the north, and there was the little marsh at the bend in the path. Pedru put his finger on the screen. “There is where Mr. Pelembe was killed, five days ago, and there is where the lion attacked me, before the rains.”

There were orange dots all around the village.

“Hmm,” said John, peering at the screen, “looks like Puna could have killed Mr. Pelembe.” He pointed to a dot right next to the village. “See the date? Six days ago, right before the attack.”

“She must have followed a bush pig into the marashamba,” said Beth, “and when Mr. Pelembe chased the pig, he ran into her.” Beth shook her head. “We’ve seen that happen so many times.”

“But look at the dates on these dots,” Renaldo said, pointing to a string of dots at the top of the screen. “This is where she was at the start of the rains: ten miles north. She didn’t move south until ten days ago.”

“So Puna couldn’t have taken my arm,” Pedru said.

“No,” said Beth, “but that means the lion that did is still out there and could be a threat to your village.”

John turned from the screen and looked at Pedru. “Don’t suppose you got a good look at your lion, did you?” he asked.

The drawing! Why hadn’t he thought of it the moment he’d seen the lion ID pictures?

“Yes!” Pedru exclaimed. “Yes, I did!”

He pulled his exercise book from his bag and opened it to the page where he had pasted the drawing of his lion. “I drew it,” he said, “but it’s not very good.”

John snatched the picture from Pedru’s hands. “What do you mean, it’s not very good?” he said. “It’s a perfect ID sketch!”

Excitedly, Beth rushed to the other computer. “Pedru, you’re a genius!” she said. “Take a look at this, guys.”

Beth had clicked a photo of a young lion onto the screen, and John held Pedru’s sketch beside it.

“Well, I’ll be . . . !” said John.

“It’s definitely the same animal,” Renaldo added. “The whisker spots match — and the notch in the ear!”

“Absolutely!” said Beth.

John grew serious. “OK, Pedru,” he said. “This is the lion that attacked you.”

Pedru stared at the screen. The lion looked exactly how he remembered it. He shivered as he thought of its teeth grinding on his bone, and, in his head, he told it again,
I am coming to get you, lion!

But now it wasn’t just “lion.” It had a name. It was one of Puna’s cubs: Anjani.

T
he researchers decided to go talk to the elders of Pedru’s village about the lion attacks. They put Pedru’s bike on the roof of the Land Rover, and some food and camping gear in the back, and set off.

The journey was slow. The road from Madune was close to the edge of the swollen river, and the flood had washed huge holes and ruts into it. The Land Rover kept getting stuck. Pedru helped John and Renaldo push it out of the mud while Beth drove. Pedru enjoyed feeling like part of their team, and after an hour or so of struggling together with the Land Rover, he felt comfortable enough to ask them questions.

“Why do you and Beth and John study lions?” he asked Renaldo as the Land Rover’s wheels spun in yet another muddy pothole.

Renaldo put his back to the Land Rover’s bumper and shoved. “There are lots of reasons,” he said, “but the biggest one is that knowing what lions do helps to keep people safe from them.”

Pedru dug his heels into the mud and heaved. “But why not just hunt them all and kill them? And then people would always be safe.”

“Because,” said John, “without lions to kill them, you’d have way more bush pigs after your crops.”

“And,” said Renaldo, screwing up his eyes to push even harder, “one day soon, lions will bring tourists, and tourists will bring money. Lions could give our country so much.”

“Anyway,” said John, looking sideways into Pedru’s face, “I don’t think you really want to kill lions, do you, Pedru?”

Just then, the Land Rover shot forward, dropping them all into the mud. Pedru was glad, because it meant that he didn’t have to answer John’s question. He wasn’t sure what to say.

The shadows were growing long by the time they reached the village, and everyone came out to see who the visitors were. No one could remember the last time a car had come to their village.

Pedru felt very important as he stepped out of the Land Rover and introduced the lion researchers to Mr. Massingue and to Issa and Adalia. Beth asked him to watch over the Land Rover, while she, John, and Renaldo talked to the village elders.

Pedru was a bit put out that he was not going to be included, but being allowed to sit in the driver’s seat, scolding any child who tried to climb onto the vehicle, soon made him feel better. He leaned out the window to explain to Enzi and Samuel, Adalia and his little sisters, all about ID pictures, whisker spots, radio collars, and how his drawing had identified the lion who stole his arm.

It grew dark. Still the grown-ups talked. Pedru fell asleep leaning on the steering wheel, and he woke up to the sound of his father’s voice. “Pedru, wake up,” Issa said. “Get ready. We’re going on a lion hunt.”

Pedru grabbed his bedroll and his spear from the hut. When he came out again, Issa, John, Renaldo, and Beth were leaning over a map spread on the hood of the Land Rover.

“So,” John said, turning to Issa, “after it attacked Pedru, the lion headed west?”

“For six miles. I tracked it and it didn’t stop,” Issa told them.

“You must taste very bad,” Renaldo said to Pedru.

“Pedru hit this lion hard on the head,” Issa told them proudly.

“You stood up to the lion that was chewing on your arm?” said Beth.

John shook his head. “You are something else, Pedru,” he said.

“Where did you find the last tracks, Issa?” Beth asked.

“Here,” Issa said. “But that was before the rains. He could have gone a long, long way since then.”

“Well,” said Beth thoughtfully, “Anjani won’t go east to his mother’s old territory.”

“And the land to the south is flooded from the rains,” Issa added, “and the north is rocky, with not much to eat.”

“So, west is where we start to look,” said John. “OK, let’s get going. Operation Find Pedru’s Lion!”

The Land Rover bumped slowly through the grassland and sparse trees, heading west to where Issa had last found any sign of Anjani. Every so often, they stopped to look for tracks or to climb a rock or hilltop to scan for lions sleeping in the shade of trees on the horizon.

Issa told Pedru that the plan the villagers and researchers had agreed on was to put a radio collar on Anjani, not to kill him.

“Renaldo will use the collar to check where the lion goes, and if it comes toward the village, he will warn us,” Issa said.

“It’s a big opportunity for us,” Renaldo explained, “to study a lion we know has been a problem in the past.”

“Yeah,” John said. “We want to see if they can be reformed. But I think you already reformed Anjani when you hit his head, Pedru.”

Pedru didn’t smile.

In return for the risk of leaving the lion alive, the researchers were going to help the village to keep safe from lion attacks in the future.

“We will help build shelters and fences that can keep people and animals safe from lions,” Beth said.

Pedru listened in silence.
What do I get in return for my arm,
he thought,
if the lion who stole it goes without punishment?

Beth leaned around as she drew the Land Rover to a stop. “Are you OK, Pedru?”

Pedru nodded, but inside, he told his lion,
I’m getting closer. And my spear is here, under my seat, lion!