Posted on 01/08/2002 9:58:23 AM PST by Sabertooth
War clouds loom on many horizons, and yet unlikely stories from far, untraveled paths are sometimes so powerful they turn our heads from the rumbles of tombs and rumors of bombs. So it is, in these past few days, that many eyes across the world have turned to Kenya, to witness the inconceivable friendship grown between a young lioness and an baby antelope.
In a time when man is killing man for thoughts, defense, and vengeance… where good and evil are contending on a vast scale, and though the outcome is certain, the struggle will be long and bloody… How is it that since about Christmastime, a fearsome predator, might hearken to an echo of mercy and take up with its prey?
Scientists will seek to explain it to us. They have much knowledge and may very well answer the question, "how?" There will surely be truth in what they tell.
And yet… and yet…
Why?
The Oryx and the Lioness
Young oryx and her lioness arose
And stretched. Our distant ken then dimly yawned:
Her orphan had no dam... Yet, love? God knows.
We smiled that cat and kid had purred and fawned.She hearkened to the antelope as hers,
A roar of Judah's past and future fleece.
Deep in the darkest countenance, what stirs?
What breath behooves ferocious hearts to peace?Their paths now crossed, her oryx at her side,
The lioness approached the pond to drink.
But nature's other hungers crouch and hide;
In underbrush, a fateful pride may slink..By other jaws, her oryx lamb was met…
Isaiah's oracle is not quite yet.
Here are the links to the other threads on this...
BTW, the Daily Nation seems to be changing the source codes for the pics frequently. I've saved the jpegs, so we may have to rehost them again later,
Besides, this Sabertooth writing the poem, nu?
I'm with you, Miss Pie, but I didn't script this ending...
Details of what happened:
Tuesday, January 8, 2002
Lioness and a baby oryx: Mystery remains
By MUGUMO MUNENE
The spectacular friendship between a lioness and a baby oryx that has had all Kenya talking remains a puzzle for game workers and wildlife experts.
In a radical departure from its instincts, the lioness protected the little calf, which it would ordinarily have killed for a meal, escorting it around the Samburu wildlife reserve. Truck loads of tourists kept following the pair as they strolled around the foot of Koitogor Hills, near the Serena Samburu lodge.
Alongside game workers the tourists watched daily in disbelief as the lioness and the frail brown calf wandered the range side by side and lay down to rest together, with all the intimacy of a mother and her cub.
Had the lioness adopted the oryx as her own? What powerful drive overrode all her instincts to kill?
No scientific explanation has been offered yet for the strange friendship which lasted for an amazing 15 days before the law of the jungle reigned supreme and sadly an older lion from another pride killed the calf.
Death came suddenly when the odd couple strayed into the territory of another lion, which spotted easy prey.
The predator pounced as the lioness turned her back to drink from the Uaso Nyiro river, late on Sunday evening.
It was an unusual lapse of care on the lioness's part. For the time they were together, she had successfully warded off all dangers to the frail little calf, including threats from a pride of cheetahs, by walking watchfully behind it as it would with its own cubs.
A Nation team which had earlier followed the pair for two days saw the lioness lie down to rest in the hot afternoon sun and the oryx curl up casually beside her. At one point, the lioness went hunting but quickly returned to keep watch on the grazing calf.
The lioness is said to have taken over the calf after frightening off its mother at birth. The two animals appeared to be starving in the early days of their friendship but soon settled to their separate feeding routines. Tourists interviewed by the Nation after witnessing the episode were lost for words while others saw it to another wonder of the world. The two animals have sharply contrasting habits.
Lions are voracious carnivores and commonly prey on browsers like antelopes, water bucks and zebras. The oryx is a gentle herbivore which survives on grass and leaves and spends much of its time dodging predators such as big cats, mainly by its speed, although the adults are also adept at defending themselves with their long sword-like horns.
The lioness sleeps for up to 16 hours a day and is active for only eight, while the oryx spends 65 per cent of its time browsing. Lions rely largely on their sight while oryx survive by their sharp sense of smell, which deepened the mystery of how the two had been communicating in the wild. Samburu rangers had ruled out separating them, preferring to let nature take its course, but like everyone else, they crossed their fingers in the hope that the mysterious relationship would last.
The spectacle had attracted a growing stream of nature lovers, tourists and Samburu villagers.
Wildlife experts say that lions - moving in twos or threes - will normally mark out a territory by fighting off the weaker males. They will then subdue the females within the territory by killing all the cubs from previous mates and siring their own as the natural way of ensuring their own perpetuation.
Samburu Serena nature expert Vincent Kapeen said there was a high possibility that the killer lion, which the Nation team had spotted about two kilometres from the couple on Sunday morning, could have killed the calf while mistaking it for a rival's cub, but then realised that it was actually a meal.
Thank YOU, Sweetie. I love it any time you stop by.
Oooo...
Thanks, I'll try and post more!
.
(If you want OFF - or ON - my "Hugh Hewitt PING list" - please let me know.)
Thank you, Sabertooth, for writing such a noble tribute to this sad end of captivating relationship!
She appears to be a young lioness with some of her cub spots still in her fur. I wonder if this caused this different behavior!
Nice poem, my FRiend...MUD
Life hangs by a silver thread which nature can cut at any time unless the Lord protects or intervenes.
The Lord created nature to serve His ends.
But we worship the Creator and not the created.
The Creator can and will by His own words change the hearts and minds and actions of the created when the Lion lays down with the lamb and Jesus Christ starts His millenial reign.
When death will no longer have a sting and will be swollowed up in victory, in eternal life, is when the Lord will come to dwell among us once again.
While death holds sway, those who follow the Lord and keep His commandments will go to Him. But He will return with them on the day that death will be no more and when the lion will lie down with the lamb.
Jesus Christ is at the door. Look up for you redemption draws nigh very soon.
It is better to trust in the Lord than in man. That will be the test of those who are snatched away when the Lord comes for His own to spare them from great Tribulation.
This will happen before He comes back in great glory and power to rule and reign in Jerusalem and before the lion lays down with the lamb.
Then the scepter will rise out of Judah and the government will be on His shoulders and every knee will bow to Him. And then death will be vanquished and the lion will lay down with the lamb.
The director of the Jerusalem zoo, concerned about falling revenues, came up with an idea to bolster attendence.
"THE LION LAYS DOWN WITH THE LAMB," blared the advertisements. "OPENS MONDAY."
Monday morning, crowds gathered outside a large fenced-off area covered by a black curtain. The director, Moshe, took the podium and announced, "Now, ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to present to you our new exhibit, the lion and the lamb."
The curtains parted, and lo and behold, there was a full grown lion laying down with a tiny lamb. It was an amazing sight.
At the end of the day a reporter came up to the director and asked, "Moshe, how did you do it? How did you get the lion to lay down with the lamb?"
"It was easy, Benjamin," said the director. "Every day we get a new lamb."
There is a parable in here about Israel and the PLO if you choose to look.
Maybe I'm not alone after all.
It seems to me that Israeli lambs are slaughtered by the PLO lions everyday and the media, and the UN and Western and European leaders rush to appease the lion and feed it new Israeli lambs every day.
The conflict in the ME is in the end not about land or even race, it is about good and evil, it is about a false religion Islam being controlled by Satan to destroy Jewdaism and Christianity.
Islam lives by the sword, and Islam will in the end die by the sword when Jesus Christ destroys Islam with the brightness of His appearing.
But until that happens Islam and the prince of the god of Forces, the Destroyer, who regards not the religion of his fathers, will set up a false peace and then slaughter millions if not a few billion and manage to destroy the power of the Holy people for a time, two times and a half of a time (the time of the Great Tribulation).
This will happen as Western leaders are deceived, stand for nothing and try to appease Islam and call it a religion of peace when it is a religion of conquest, of the sword and of death and destruction.
But Islam and the prince of darkness will come to their end at the hands of the Son, Jesus Christ.
Thanks again for the ping RonDog.
Not being Christian, I don't see anything religious in it, but it's certainly intriguing, if not unprecedented.
The old ones are... the old ones.
This line is my personal favorite. The whole poem moved me to tears. Thank you very much for this post, Sabertooth.
That the oryx was killed in the end by an enemy, though love stood nearby, does not surprise me:
In this present world the work of love is paid by sharp teeth and claws; thorns, nails, and heart-piercing spears.
And yet that breath within the ferocious hearts of men still moves. May it ever be so unto His Return. Amen.
Spill beans hawk...
When you posted, were you in coyote skins?
BTW, Frost just kicks Whitmans can into the river, doesn't he?
It wasn't poetry...
It was prose of a marginal disregard.
Though many will 'love' some will yet hate,
Tomorrow's 'Light' guarantees a better fate.
Thank you, Sabertooth.
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