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Updated: June 6, 2025
Most of the inhabitants of the wild, including the lion, who are not born with a pluck considerably above proof, can discriminate the difference. The ratel either could not or would not. Then the knowledge was driven home. Driven home in the shape of a big, loose-limbed, deep-jowled brute of a dog, as unlike the ordinary native curs as it well could be.
The ratel died in about ten minutes, crushed, battered, smashed to death; but the chaos lasted longer than that, because, even after death, he was not done with the passing of life had locked his amazing jaws shut forever, and they were shut on the lion.
Even if the snake's fangs had got through, which was not in the least likely, that did not mean to say they would touch Mr. Ratel's person inside. This, by the way, may explain why being spitted on thorns, like a beetle on a pin, when the bull-gnu charged, did not seem to worry him much, either. The moon was up when the wounded mother ratel, on guard at the mouth of her burrow, looked up sharply.
He whose proud boast it was that he feared nothing that walked or crawled, or swam or flew, could not be frightened now. And he who came to terrify was perhaps all but ten feet long, and he whom he sought to terrify was barely three feet. It was a comparison to make you gasp. Now, that lion did not want the ratel at all, or his wife, or his family, or anything that was his.
And he did, returning, in fifty minutes, for his wife, who, now much recovered as only a ratel can recover from the very jaws of death followed him with her young to the hole he had torn in a rotten tree-trunk where the bees were nesting.
The surprise was in what followed. Perhaps the bull-gnu kicked our ratel badly as he lurched to his feet, jerked from half-sleep into violent collision with he knew not what. Perhaps the ratel had a memory. Perhaps the presence of his family weighed with him. Whatever the cause, the result was decided enough. He reared and hit deep, and fixed home a very living vise, where he bit.
Our fellow-creatures in the monkey-room held out their little black hands, and piteously asked us for Christmas alms. Those darling alligators on their rock winked at us in the most friendly way. The solemn eagles sat alone, and scowled at us from their peaks; whilst little Tom Ratel tumbled over head and heels for us in his usual diverting manner.
The Ratel covers the buffalo droppings with earth in order to secure the scavenger beetles which bury themselves therein, thus he prevents them from rolling a portion away as usual. We built our sheds on a hillside. Our course was west and 6-1/4 hours. 2nd November, 1867.
The end found the little ratel lying crumpled up and crimson on the trampled grass, and the lion running about like some great injured dog, squatting down every few seconds to lick furiously at his wound.
Then he stopped as instantly still as if he had been electrocuted. The ratel, who had himself to feed, and a wounded wife and two young whom he would lead to that honey-feast anon, looked calmly over his shoulder at the form of the antelope towering above him. There was no sign of fear in his straight stare at the shaggy, ferocious-looking horned head.
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