234 AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 



in which they are secured. It will also occasionally take to 

 man eating. Twice we came across instances of this in 

 East Africa. In each case the offender was a big male 

 leopard, so old that its teeth were worn down; evidently it 

 had begun to find it difficult to kill game, and so took for 

 its quarry the females and young of the most helpless of 

 animals, man. Both of them made their assaults by day. 

 One took to killing the small boys that minded the herds of 

 goats; sometimes he took a boy, sometimes a goat. He 

 was killed by two old men with spears, on the last occa- 

 sion when he thus sought to carry off a boy. The other, 

 shortly before our arrival at Meru, had begun a career of 

 woman killing. He strangled and ate one woman, and seized 

 and mauled another, but was driven off. We caught him 

 in a trap. Both of these leopards killed to eat. But on 

 another occasion a leopard attacked a man in a fit of 

 freakish ferocity. A Masai chief, with some followers, was 

 sitting under a tree at noon, when a leopard, without warn- 

 ing, sprang on him, clawed him severely, but did not bite 

 him, and then escaped. 



Like other cats, the leopard is sensitive to pain, and is 

 easily held by even a small trap. Nor does it, like a wolf or 

 hyena, tend to splinter its teeth by biting the iron. On 

 several occasions we caught leopards in steel traps such 

 as those used in America for coons and foxes. In two or 

 three cases the leopard was caught by only one toe, and 

 went off with the trap and drag — the drag being a fairly 

 large branch. As soon as it knew it was followed it charged 

 ferociously, although much hampered by the trap and drag, 

 and was shot while charging. It was in each case firmly 

 held by the single toe. 



