Word: lions
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...Moses kneels and looks at a patch of sandy earth for a moment. He spits a mist upon his palm, pssht-psssht-psssht, and then he pats the ground. He shows what sticks to the moisture: some dirt, but also a minute bristling of golden tiny hairs. A shedding. "Lion," says Moses. "Last night...
Moses stays downwind of the cattle. He says that the lion, if it is there, will know to keep downwind, and not give the cows its scent. So Moses and his spear will stay between the lions and his cows. Most students of the lion say the lion pays no attention to wind, but one does not argue with a man who has killed six of them...
Then, after we have resumed our herding, the notebook again: "Cows (11:54 a.m.) smell lion and start bawling loudly. They smell fresh lion urine. Moses sees it, pts to spot with spear. Still wet. Lions must be downwind from us now. Cow horns all went up exactly at once when they smelled. Hot noon sun. Moses laughing. Cows still afraid, horns up, smelling. WE CHASE THREE LIONS through forest. One growls. They get away thru bush and olive trees. We chase for 150 yds. and they have slipped away. This is somewhat dangerous business...
Moses seemed to become, all at once, everything that he ought to be -- which was what the lions were as well: exactly lions. Moses vibrated with a current that contained no thought or premeditation. There was nothing in him of the third eye or the conscience or the sense of sin, but only an animal impulse to kill the lion. Moses went springing after the lion as the lion springs after the wildebeest...
Life and death coexist with a unique ecological compactness. Nothing is wasted. First the lion dines, and then the hyena, and then the vulture, then the lesser specialists, insects and the like, until the carcass is picked utterly clean, and what is left, bones and horns, subside into the grass. It has been an African custom to take the dead out into the open and leave them unceremoniously for the hyenas...