David Mascall’s 12 years in the lions’ den

The ear-splitting sound of bones cracking drew our attention. Lying on a wooden platform less than 10 metres away was a two-year-old lioness.

Her paws were stained red with blood. She was oblivious of our presence: her whole attention was focused on the chunk of meat in front of her.

We watched in reverential awe as nature’s largest carnivore slurped the fresh blood, gobbled down the tasty morsels of meat and licked up the fatty marrow. In five minutes, the show was over. Seated, she licked her paws clean and lay down for an afternoon snooze.

Caught their breaths

As we continued to stare, a small, toothbrush moustached, bespectacled man passed. He was dressed in khakis and sported a faded baseball cap.

Men caught their breath, women gasped, children shouted and pointed as this sun-bronzed, outdoors man approached the catnapping lioness. We blinked hard, rubbing our eyes in awe.

A hush fell over the gathered group as the man drew from his pocket a small 300 ml aerosol spray-can. He began to spray the coat of the lethargic lioness with tick-repellent. The fearsome feline purred with pleasure.

It was a gloriously hot Sunday afternoon when we visited Nairobi’s animal orphanage. Here, for over 12 years, a motley crew of waifs and strays have grown tame under the watchful eye of David Mascall, “the lion man”.

Most of his charges arrive as orphaned cubs, their mothers having lost their lives to poachers, disease or injuries sustained on a hunt. Some are rogue lions whose penchant for cow, sheep or goat-meat has brought them to the attention of trigger-happy herdsmen who have no desire to share their life savings with marauding lions.

“What do you do if a lion attacks?” Mr Mascall asked me rhetorically as we sat sipping soda in a safari lodge overlooking Nairobi National Park. He answered his own question, “You need to have a plan.”

His only brush with death occurred at the claws of a lioness called Girlie who had arrived at the orphanage as a 17-month-old cub.

One evening, as he was sitting with his back to Girlie chatting with a visiting school tour, Girlie forced a paw through the wire meshing, embedding her claws into his shoulder.

She then lunged at Mr Mascall’s thumb, double-snapped her powerful jaws and grabbed his arm in her mouth. Raking the arm with her shard-sharp teeth she attempted to drag him into her enclosure. The terrified screams of the watching schoolgirls drew a co-worker, Noah Bii, to the enclosure.

Badly mauled

Mr Bii ran towards his stricken colleague kicking the metal meshing on the way. The sudden twang of the vibrating metal startled Girlie. She let Mr Mascall’s arm fall from her mouth. He fell to the ground and out of harm’s way, but his troubles weren’t over yet.

His arm was so badly mauled it looked like “shreds of meat”. The hand was crushed; its tendons hanging off. One finger was dislocated, another broken, a third functionless. Miraculously, no artery was severed.

Although Mr Mascall didn’t lose consciousness, he did lose his glasses in the attack and couldn’t see clearly. A Kenya Wildlife Service warden guided him into a waiting car. He was taken to Nairobi hospital and three operations, 583 stitches and Sh1 million later, Mr Mascall was back at work among the lions he loved.

For many people, an attack like this would be enough to turn them off lions for life, but not Mr Mascall. If anything, he is grateful it happened to him.

Firstly, had a child been attacked, the consequences would surely have been catastrophic. Secondly, the Animal Orphanage now knew it needed to build a modern, more secure enclosure, which they did.

And in his 12 years of entering the lions’ den the only time Mr Mascall was attacked was when he was chatting with females. Was Girlie jealous or just playing catty?

Then the urgency in Mr Mascall’s voice. The number of wild lions in Kenya has plummeted from 15,000 in the 1980s to less than 2,000 today. Kenya’s most densely populated wildlife area, the Maasai Mara, has lost 70 per cent of its wildlife in the last 10 years.

“This is a frightening loss, a massive bite out of our heritage. Unless the trend is reversed, there will be nothing left in 50 years,” he warned.

As he passes his sixth decade, Mr Mascall is embarking on his toughest task to date – convincing his countrymen that lions are a microcosm for Kenya: allow the prides to die and Kenya’s pride as the safari destination of the world dies with them.