A Most Amazing Nature Show

The first scene shows a baby lion

down in his den by his mama’s side,

fumbling around in pale fur on her belly,

not very far from a stout, black nipple.

He finally finds it and gloms on.

We learn that Arthur, the adult male,

is away today, hunting buffalo:

The camera pans to show him briefly

up on the back of one big one,

trying to take a hearty bite,

before he’s summarily tossed off

and flipped about by the whole herd,

like a rag doll extremely disliked,

put on the ground and gored good,

left for dead amid buffalo turds.

Katawi Park is experiencing a drought,

and the river is shrinking to mud holes.

In one a crowd of good hippopotamuses

is doing its best to get by,

when a pair of menacing males approach

and challenge the alpha male.

Our big bull goes ashore to meet them,

opening wide to bite one bastard.

But he’s bitten himself!— right through the nose,

and hooked, while the other unseemly intruder

latches onto his vulnerable ass!

They wrestle and drag him down to the water

and drown him! They fucking drowned him!

The commentator thinks they knew what they were doing,

and I’ll say they did! Together they drowned him!

Unlike the story of JC and Humanity,

where Jesus allowed, they knew not what they did,

those goddamned hippopotamuses knew!

Well now he’s just a big fat cadaver,

and his family comes up to feel bad beside him:

They muzzle him softly and open wide,

making most sorrowful mourning sounds.

And if you’ve never seen hippopotamuses grieve,

I am telling you: this was some deep sorrow.

Never mind that they were funny-looking.

They hurt, and anyone alive could feel it.

Now, back to the story of the lion pride:

Two females each have four cubs,

and times are tough in this here drought.

So all the adults take off to go hunting,

except for one mother, Patch,

who is left alone with the cubs.

She is starving and at the end of her milk

when she notices vultures, about a mile away,

circling over something to eat.

She decides to take leave and investigate,

coming at last to the hippo carcass

close to shore and being tugged at by crocs.

She tip-toes out for a bite, herself,

risking life and limb to do so,

and frankly, it doesn’t look promising.

But then, here comes the rest of the pride,

which has also noticed the vultures.

They all crowd in and the crocs back off,

fearing, perhaps, a paw in the eye.

And so, our beloved mother lions

at last have a huge hippopotamus feast.

Meanwhile, a dreadful, rogue, male lion

has happened upon our defenseless cubs,

and his plan is to kill every single, last one.

That way, the mothers will come into heat,

which they will not do while nursing.

He sniffs the air and knows they are hiding,

finds one, gives it a bite and a shake,

looks around for another.

The camera shows one half up a tree,

hiding in leaves, as still as a mouse.

But the rogue male is sniffing the air,

and he smells it and finds it: Crunch, crunch.

Meanwhile, meanwhile, here come the mothers,

bellies sagging and swaying near ground.

Oh! You can tell they ate too much,

or perhaps just enough, but as much as they could.

And they feel like you do at Thanksgiving or Christmas,

covered in flies and wanting to lie down.

The rogue moves off as the mothers move in,

calling out for their dear little kids.

One by one, they come out of the weeds

like survivors of a Grimm’s fairy tale,

now making a grand total of six.

Pretty soon, several months go by,

and our lions have eaten a baby hippo,

plus a lot of less-appetizing pelicans,

their own bellies bloated with fish. Ugh.

At last, as if on a cue from God,

it starts to rain and the world is relieved,

now experiencing a biblical flood.

But at least things are on the way back to normal.

And here is the icing on the Cake of Life:

Arthur, it seems, was not dead!

The camera shows us a big buffalo,

covered in cats but still on its feet,

and here comes Arthur up at a gallop!

He leaps and joins the attacking females,

landing squarely on the buffalo’s back.

That sinks it and dinner is certainly served.

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Chat GPT says an adult male lion weighs,

on average, 330-500 pounds. Exceptional

specimens can be over 600 pounds. Amen.