The Way Wild Animals Attack. 97 



stand up on his hind legs and grip him with his jaws. 

 Naturally, if a man was kneeling, or flat on the ground, the 

 lion would not stand up, and in this case he would hold 

 with his claws and bite with his teeth. 



Another popular fallacy connected with wild animals is 

 that the buffalo charges with his horns lowered. This he 

 does not do, for he holds his nose straight out, quite 

 protecting his head from the brain-shot. When within 

 striking distance he lowers his horns, and either lifts his 

 enemy in the air and catches him again or he knocks the 

 hunter down and gores him, and also has been known to 

 trample the body with his front feet. An elephant and a 

 lion often leave their victim after mauling him slightly, but 

 a buffalo will likely spend some time mutilating the corpse, 

 and, although this may be termed vindictiveness, I do not 

 blame the buffalo for resenting his injuries on the person 

 who caused them, if he can get hold of him. He acts 

 according to his nature. 



Elephants usually pierce with their tusks or use their 

 forefeet to trample a man, but sometimes they seize the 

 body and tear it into fragments. 



Anyone who has watched an elephant playing with a 

 big tree, and has seen the way he can bend and break 

 it, will no longer wonder how puny an object a man is 

 when in the power of such a monster. 



A rhino gores with his front horn, and, as he is a very 

 powerful animal and his horns are sometimes very sharp, 

 the man who escapes after getting beneath a rhino's nose 

 may consider himself a lucky individual. 



The natives seem to be more afraid of rhinos than they 

 are of elephants, lions, or buffaloes ; why, I do not know, 

 except that they say he is always in a bad temper. He has 

 the habit of turning over his dung with his front feet and 

 horns, and the natives think this shows him to be a 

 hot-tempered customer. 



Rhinos are certainly very easy to kill with modern small 

 bores, and a great number have been shot with '303 and 

 7'9mm. rifles. 



H 



