Driving Through Hwange National Park
Zimbabwe
She sat open-mouthed, her pink-barbed tongue lolling, panting at the effort of the feast. She was not so much looking at us through her glowering, heavy-lidded eyes as through us. Somewhere far, far away. Her pin-prink black pupils were glazed. Her body was heaving with the in and out breaths of an overly fed lion. She wasn’t going anywhere. Four others were soldiering through, taking lazy, slow bites off of the carcass that lay between them, masticating over each mouthful. One of the four moved ever so slightly, stretching her front paws from under her, making space for her round belly. I was reminded of contestants at an all-you-can-eat contest.
