I often wonder how a city bound insurance agent would respond to a claim on predator damage to one's gear: eg
https://petapixel.com/2018/09/04/lioness-steals-photographers-canon-dslr-and-gives-it-to-her-cubs/
This can happen more easily than one might imagine in lion country. They are inquisitive and like to play with unfamiliar objects. Some of the fieldwork during for my MSc was carried out surveying bats in the Sebungwe Basin, NW Zimbabwe on Nat Parks estate. As was my custom then and now, I walked alone in the day but have had considerable experience with large mammals etc, including the main risk, lone buffalo and badly behaved cow elephant. I met up with one of the resident lion prides several times during these daylight walks, when searching baobab trees etc and scouting out study sites for night time netting etc. Judged from my other encounters with lions on foot, these were reasonably well behaved lions and retreated with some complaints - this is usual behaviour provided one stands one's ground, averts eye contact etc etc respects their space etc.
My tactics were to drive my old Land Rover carrying all the gear to a sampling site, poles etc and set up for the night work with the able assistance of research scouts. One night, this resident pride known to us surrounded myself and 2 research scouts. They appeared out of the darkness and our headlamps picked up their glowing eyes. As it happened this occurred when we were some distance away from the vehicle. And this just happened to be the night these guys had forgotten their G3 rifle and radio at the HQ! Lugging a weapon around is a proverbial pain and big responsibility, as the main reason was for the very slim chance of meeting up with armed rhino poachers (who strived to keep well away from us in any case).
So we couldn't fire warning shots nor radio for backup. We tried the usual tactics of shouting etc but like all cats, lions at night are very different animals: IME they get highly curious and distinctly mischievous. Our only option was to climb one of the mopane trees, which were not the tallest I've seen. Anyway there was no option as we decided not to try and force our way through to the LR about 100m away. There, we continue haranguing the lions from our arboreal perches. The 3 lionesses ignored our silly protests and strolled even closer, where they then went to sleep under our tree oblivious to our abuse. The pride only moved off in the early hours. It didn't take long for the half grown cubs to pounce on my small backpack with glee, and they then enjoyed playing with it in their rough and tumble.
Long story short, I had left the bag against the vehicle with the spare headlight batteries etc. It was fortunate we had our headlamps and we eked out the battery power - only using one at a time; as it was the darkest of nights under heavy cloudcover, after a very heavy rainstorm. Lions' roars close up in the clean air are always impressive! Having made sure the lions had wandered off downstream - as the volume of the roars receded - we finally returned to the vehicle and furled the nets. These had survived the felines somehow, although some of the poles had been pushed around by the boisterous cubs. It was now about 4am. I couldn't get the LR started as the battery was dead, and the sodden ground too muddy to pushstart the thing!. So we then had a 4km slog back to HQ, through the dripping dark bush. This also entailed crossing the flooded Sengwa River in the dark - holding on to each other in the swirling muddy water. Formative stuff but this tends to happen in fieldwork especially in Africa
The bag was tough synthetic but all the straps were chewed off, and they managed to mangle all the zips, but somehow none of the contents fell out in the shaking! As we had caught glimpses of them shaking the thing wildly amid tug of war games etc
But remarkably all my precious AA batteries survived the chewing and paw-work, which was a relief as NiCads were costly and very hard to replace at that time in the country. Fortunately I had left my Nikon FM2 and 55 Micro and other lenses at the Research station quarters as it was night work. My treasured 400 f5.6AIS EDIF would have been a huge loss. Over the years, this was not the only tight escape for me and my camera gear! And I still use the same 55 Micro-Nikkor on my modern Nikons 3 decades on
PS I resisted the temptation to return the mangled pack to the climbing shop for a refund. As they do, when I returned to Harare, the resident domestic cats sniffing over all my gear were electrified with shock - all their fur stood on end at the very strong lion aura!! Deeply instinctive response to the pheromones, I guess. And to this day I remain mystified as to how baboons manage to get any sleep whatsoever up a tree - well I guess they have no option!
