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AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 
leopard had begun a career of woman-killing. It killed 
one woman by a bite in the throat, and ate the body. It 
sprang on and badly wounded another, but was driven off 
in time to save her life. This was probably the leopard 
Heller trapped and shot, in the very locality where it had 
committed its ravages; it was an old male, but very thin, 
with worn teeth. In these cases the reason for the beast’s 
action was plain: in each instance a big, savage male 
had found his powers failing, and had been driven to prey 
on the females and young of the most helpless of animals, 
man. But another attack, of which Piggott told us, was 
apparently due to the queer individual freakishness always 
to be taken into account in dealing with wild beasts. A 
Masai chief, with two or three followers, was sitting eating 
under a bush, when, absolutely without warning, a leopard 
sprang on him, clawed him on the head and hand, without 
biting him, and as instantly disappeared. Piggott attended 
to the wounded man. 
In riding in the neighborhood, through the tall dry 
grass, which would often rattle in the wind, I was amused 
to find that if I suddenly heard the sound I was apt to stand 
alertly on guard, quite unconsciously and instinctively, 
because it suggested the presence of a rattlesnake. During 
the years I lived on a ranch in the West I was always hear¬ 
ing and killing rattlesnakes, and although I knew well that 
no African snake carries a rattle, my subconscious senses 
always threw me to attention if there was a sound resembling 
that made by a rattler. Tarlton, by the way, told me an 
interesting anecdote of a white-tailed mongoose and a 
snake. The mongoose was an inmate of the house where 
he dwelt with his brother and was quite tame. One day 
