Lucky Zebra vs Lioness

In a sighting of 3 sub adult cheetahs the rest of the coalition with mother and the other two sub adults we stalking nyalas. At this stage we only had visual of these three and suddenly heard nyalas alarm calling close by. We then drove out to see what the alarm call was for. This is when we stumbled across a lioness making her way to the watering hole. She was busy stalking antelope and eventually settled down in close proximity of the water resting and looking around. This time of the year is fairly dry on Phinda. With not much water around this was the ideal place to sit and wait for her to try and kill something to eat. We were sitting with her for about 30 minutes patiently waiting. On our eastern side we saw a couple of zebras making their way down to the water. At this stage the lioness had her eyes on a warthog. She moved towards the warthog and now it as getting very excited as we thought she has got a good chance. Then suddenly she went around the corner and there it was, a zebra running towards us with a lioness on top of it. The lioness and zebra wrestled for 10-15 minutes with the zebra showing immense strength and the lioness holding on by biting the zebra on the left ear for grip. The zebra ran with the lioness into a thicket lost her grip and the zebra escaped. After this the lioness looked exhausted and moved into the thickets to find a spot to rest.

Posted: Phinda by philip de bruyn, Date: 4 September 2008

 
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