Leopards Especially Are Most Destructive, Often
Killing Simply For Pleasure And Not For Food:
And
I have always harboured animosity towards them
since the night when one wantonly destroyed a
whole herd of mine.
I happened at the time
to have a flock of about thirty sheep and goats
which I kept for food and for milk, and which
were secured at sundown in a grass hut at one
corner of my boma. One particularly dark night
we were startled by a tremendous commotion
in this shed, but as this was before the man-eaters
were killed, no one dared stir out to investigate
the cause of the disturbance. I naturally thought
that the intruder was one of the "demons," but
all I could do was to fire several shots in the
direction of the hut, hoping to frighten him away.
In spite of these, however, it was some time before
the noise died down and everything became still
again. As soon as it was dawn I went to the
shed to see what had happened, and there, to
my intense anger, I found every one of my sheep
and goats lying stretched dead, on the ground
with its throat bitten through. A hole had been
made through the frail wall of the shed, and I
saw from this and from the tracks all round
that the author of the wholesale slaughter had
been a leopard. He had not eaten one of the
flock, but had killed them all out of pure love of
destruction.
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