The Bally Vaughan lion who lost his roar
Courtesy of The Bally Vaughan Sanctuary News October 2009
It is eleven pm at the Bally Vaughan Sanctuary and twelve hours since I returned from my honeymoon. As our trucks come home from a day-long mission sourcing food for the animals, the throb of the diesel engines mask the ubiquitous night chorus of a thousand syncopating crickets and tree frogs. Three massive cow carcasses need to be processed immediately; dinner for two weeks for our many predators at the Sanctuary, and as I help load sacks of meat onto on of our elderly, rust-riddled wheel-barrows, I watch my French-manicured fingernails flick off one by one into the gore.
At 2am I fall into bed, only to be woken an hour later by the frantic ringing of the cowbell on my gate. A gigantic python has just seized a goat on the other side of the river. We race down to the water’s edge and see the python half out of the water, with a still-writhing goat clamped between its jaws. As we approach, it sinks beneath the surface, pulling the goat with it and we spend the next hour thrashing about in the freezing cold water trying, to no avail, to locate and rescue the goat. Read more
