Chances are if you were to poke your hand into hot, blazing fire- you’d get burned, quicker than you could imagine. Similarly, if one were to put his hand out at a sterling rainfall, with the tiny droplets falling down like a cats-and-dogs, the hand would get wet, faster than one could dry it out, ever.
So what might happen when you’d impishly, rather completely foolishly waved out at a lion and bothered to trouble it- albeit, totally needlessly- by sticking your hand out of a safari jeep? Surely, the lion would not trim down the distance between you two to ask for your Twitter handle. Nor would the lion seem any interested in fetching you a candy, isn’t it?
Nearly about a century ago, there were close to 200,000 lions in Africa. A little over a decade ago, their official count was supposed to be a 20,000. Of these, despite being extinct in 26 African countries, one could imagine the surviving few in Tanzania, arguably aggrieved at their falling numbers wouldn’t desire being irritated.
But, one wonders, who had the wisdom to tell a young white man who had the audacity and later, the fatality of waving one of his hand clearly outside the truck, against instructions, here at Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park. In what was believed to have been an attempt to stroke a lion closely standing to the tourist truck, the man, who had his hand chopped off, bitten by the lion was attempting to stroke the beast’s mane.
Whilst, the clearly uninformed man would be busy in striking the mane of the lion, his friend, seated next to him, inside the bus would be seen grinning, taking pictures on the cell phone. Little did the two know as to what was going to happen.
Perhaps, just as sad as one feels for the man who had his arm chipped away, one cannot escape seeing the rather painful albeit dreaded footage of the Tanzania carnage on Youtube video channel- Wildlife sightings. In the immediate instant of trickling the lion, completely unbeknownst to what might happen, the injured man doesn’t know that, by now, he has clearly sent the lion irate.
The huge beast, at being contacted initially just turns a blind glare on the pair, the destruction would follow soon after. Then, suddenly, baring his giant fangs and mighty paws, the lion, now interested at “interacting” with the unsuspecting tourist changes his mind and attacks the man. Shared on the famous YouTube channel under the series- dumbest videos ever- and in fact, carries the following description.
“Lions in the open plains of the Mara and Serengeti occasionally use a vehicles shade as cover when there are no trees in sight, this doesn’t mean that they trust humans but only the vehicles.” As expected, the tourist would have been informed on this by his respective tourist guide, isn’t it? Under the bellowing sun and against a painful merciless shadow of humidity, whilst the lions would habitually rest by the side of the tourist bus, it doesn’t go on to confirm that they are, in any way, trusting the tourists.
In fact, aghast by what transpired at Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park, one onlooker even submitted, “To try to touch is incredibly stupid and ignorant of the tourist that filmed the sighting.”
The forest ranger, present during the time of the accident, also maintained that only those who are actually working in the wild can sufficiently know the speed of the lion. Their reflexes are, for all intents and purposes, menacingly fast and too aggressive to be overturned by the pure reaction of the human limb- in any instant or second.
So what we do learn is that what happened at the Tanzania-based Serengeti National Park was sad and dull, making exciting faces charmed at seeing the wildlife, completely soured by what they evidenced. But, yet, at the same time, it tells us that such a sad occurrence could’ve been avoided had common sense prevailed. In fact- in this age of cell phone obsession where technology defines the current in such an implicit way, why can’t we simply astray from our gadgets, if only for a while?
In all fairness to the injured white man, had he only maintained the normal ethical conduct upheld by most other tourists- to enjoy the stroll in the national park, whilst keeping himself away from a danger of a kind- he’d surely gone back happy on his feet, with all limbs secure, not being mauled by a gigantic beast such as the disparaged African lion.
Isn’t it? How difficult was that really?