Woman In Botswana Mauled By Leopard Inside Her Tent

[imagesource:here]

The Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park is one of southern Africa’s most popular parks, a favourite of those who can’t stand the crowds and cars that blight the Kruger experience.

Seriously, make the mistake of going to the park during the school holidays and you’ll feel just a little sick to your stomach.

The three Kgalagadi camps within South Africa’s borders are pretty well organised, stocked with all the essentials and a pool for a midday cool-off, but when you head to the smaller camps on the Botswana side things are a little different.

It’s the Matopi 1 camp that features in this story, which took place on January 4 and appeared on Safarious. We’ll set the scene:

…my wife, myself and another two friends set up camp at Matopi 1 on the way to the South African side of the park. We were in two vehicles, ourselves in a ground tent the other vehicle a rooftop tent.

…I went for a leak a little way from my vehicle and spotted a leopard lying in the road about 50m from camp. I called the others to come and have a look and we stood at my vehicle observing him. He paid us no attention and got up and started moving to our camp…

He moved around the camp lying down next to each vehicle, sniffing our chairs, completely relaxed and paying us no mind…

At about 11pm we wanted to go to bed and I got in my vehicle and started it in the hope that he would take the hint and depart, but he was completely unfazed and we guessed that he was habituated to humans which was saddening.

Unfazed isn’t even the half of it, because things quickly took a turn for the worse:

At just after 12 midnight, I woke up to my wife screaming in terror with the leopard tearing into her leg trying to drag her out of the tent. I dived to the bottom of the tent and tried to find his eyes to get my fingers into him. At this point he let go and ran off.

I located my torch to assess the damage to her leg, which was horrific. My wife started screaming that the leopard was back and I turned to find him stalking towards us about 10m away. I rushed out of the tent, grabbed a spade and charged him screaming as loudly as I could, and he ran off with me in pursuit for about 100m.

By this stage my wife had managed to get herself to the vehicle which was about 5m from our tent.

They quickly packed up camp, during which time the “leopard was moving around and never backing away”, and the two cars sped towards Nossob, where they hoped to get medical attention.

That didn’t really work out:

My wife was in agony and bled through three pillows and duvet as I changed them every hour to try and assess blood loss. We arrived at Nossob to a locked gate and no medical facilities whatsoever, and another 165km drive on sand and gravel to Twee Rivieren where we were finally met by an ambulance, and another two-and-a-half hour drive to Upington, where thankfully there was an orthopaedic surgeon in theatre on another case when we arrived.

Miraculously, though both tendons on either side of the artery were severely damaged, the artery was unharmed. My wife is currently in hospital with a crushed heel requiring screws and severe wounding requiring plastic surgery.

Her leg has been saved and there is no infection, and the husband has a few words of advice for SANParks:

I believe that no ground tents should be allowed in the unfenced portion of any of the parks and that tyre pressures should be checked upon entrance. Had there been arterial bleeding, the state of the road would have proved the death of my wife. Quite honestly I would push for the banning of all-wheel-drive SUV vehicles [vehicles without low-range gears] as well, as I believe these also are not up to the task of dealing with these roads and keeping them in a decent state.

The park is still worth every minute of the 11 or so hour drive from Cape Town, but perhaps that campsite in particular needs a little rethink.

We’ll stick with the caracals on Lion’s Head for now.

[source:safarious]

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