THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
Boer family who were then living at Tati, in Western Matabeleland. The 
career of this animal, an old female, was cut short by means of a spring 
gun. It was also at this same place, Tati, that a leopard, early one evening 
about forty years ago, sprang suddenly through the open window of a 
house into a room in which a friend of mine was sitting with some members 
of a Boer family. It sprang at a cat which was sitting on the window-sill, 
but missed it and landed on the floor of the room, close to my friend and 
his companions. Then, becoming frightened, it rushed beneath a curtain 
into an adjoining room and took refuge under a bed on which two Boer 
children were sleeping. Here, after a light had been brought, it was shot 
as it lay crouched in the corner of the room beneath the bed. A somewhat 
similar incident occurred at Nairobi a few years ago. Should a leopard 
break into a goat or sheep kraal, it will often wantonly kill several of the 
flock. A case of this kind occurred quite recently on the Laikipia Plateau, 
in British East Africa. A leopard broke into a kraal surrounded by a 
thorn fence ten feet in height and killed fifty-six valuable merino sheep 
which had recently been imported from the Cape Colony at great expense 
to their owners. Sometimes leopards undoubtedly kill young zebras, as 
well as full-grown female waterbucks and koodoos, and in the horse- 
breeding districts of the Cape Colony these animals used to be most 
destructive amongst the foals. I have myself known two leopards to attack 
a young giraffe, which they would have killed with the greatest ease — as it 
was not more than a day or two old — had they not been beaten off by its 
mother. In this case the old giraffe, in striking at the leopards with its 
forefeet, unfortunately hit its own offspring in the back, paralysing its 
hind quarters, and I was obliged to kill it. It is a common practice with 
leopards, after they have killed an antelope and made their first meal off 
it on the ground, to then carry the carcass up a tree and place it in a fork 
at a height of from twelve to twenty feet from the ground. This is no doubt 
done to preserve the meat from the attacks of other carnivorous animals, 
such as hyenas and jackals, as well as from vultures, which cannot easily 
feed on a carcass hanging from the fork of a tree. The strength displayed 
by leopards in placing the carcasses of animals in trees at a considerable 
height from the ground is truly amazing. Like lions, leopards usually kill 
their prey by bites in the throat or at the back of the head behind the ears. 
After lapping up all the blood flowing from the wounds they have inflicted, 
they then disembowel the carcass, dragging the paunch and entrails a 
few yards away, and scratching up and throwing over them a certain 
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