The Royal Orchestra
It was a not a fully clouded dewy night of November at around past eleven; it was thick dark with a few heavy chomps in the water front, some sounding nearer, middle away and far in the horizon. I didn’t have a flash light, it was not really scary for me and I decided to let alone the landrover that always takes me to my room alone and walk the dark with only the help of ward light that was spearing through the think clouds on the eastern side of camp, headed off south through the pathway. I decided to occasionally walk a few steps and stop to give my ear a chance to work undisturbed, it was all fine until I was about five hundred meters from my chalet.
A crack of heavy rasping bellow ending with a deep earth terribly roar busted into thick wet air. It was close, very close non of us knew we were that close to each other, or maybe it was just me. It went on for good long seconds close to a minute, seemed like forever. My heart jumped out of position, my hearing was almost deafened, I stood still. The timing was not right, could had started moving right when I first heard the roar, but I was on a hasty retreat backward with my little light off, didn’t want to mark my presence. I turned and moved as if my feet were made of feather and got on the a guest room that was ten meters away and stood there, I was safe; holding the lock of the door and had already checked whether it was not locked, I stood there waiting for another call of the “King of the Beasts”.
Nearly five minutes later another one came from the office side moving towards the direction of my room and that’s the area whether I pumped into the first call, my heart nearly stopped upon realizing that I was walking between lions. The second roar joined the other and I simultaneously realized that I was safe and alive listening to this purely majestic strong rasping sound of the wild Africa, all the other sounds seemed like had died to absolute stop and listening to the better and admirable one.
At the end of the royal orchestra, the silence was balanced, a few seconds later the crickets shrilled with a lot of uncertainly and a high pitched funny and confused trumpet cracked in the horizon and made me giggle for a good while. I heard a sound of something falling on to ground in the dark ahead of where I was standing, I quickly remembered that every guest unit has a big twenty-five million candle LED flashlight and silently went for and shone were the noise, it lazily fell on its side and it had just rolled on its back and was looking at me with eyes greenish blue light reflection and shinny cat tradition, I was smiling again, it was so beautiful and very big.
As I stood there with my eye to eye smile, the other came prodding with a deep social growl and the brother stood on his feet and headed for him, first looked like it was the beginning of a battle but ended up with brotherly head rubs and facial licks which forced me to laugh out a bit louder but didn’t seem to interrupt this brotherly reunion ritual; oh I loved it they headed south along the way and as they didn’t the umbrelled the dewy night with a roars which sounded High Definition by far. After a while they were already roaring in a more comfortable distance as the thought of reaching my room involuntarily punched in my head. I had a flash and I was ready to walk down but not to my room but surely towards the 2000 model landrover Defender TDI300. Without hesitation I moved the roars went again and they were far away enough for me to breath normally. I got to my room and had a good long soaking in a hot shower, a gentle lay on my bed listening to the Coucal’s call. What a night that was. It was a good night.
