The past few days has seen some horrendous nighttime leopard attacks. In the village within site of the mission, a leopard jumped the thorn bush fence at 11:00 PM and grabbed a small goat of about a month old. A small boy, startled into wakefulness by the bleating of the goatherd, ran out of a house and was bowled over by the leopard on its’ flight to exit the with the baby goat. Aside from being seriously frightened, he was unhurt. The leopard leaped over the thorn bush fence and made off into the bush. A couple warriors startled into wakefulness caught only a fleeting glimpse of the fleeing leopard. Realizing that no effective tracking could be done till the morning, they went back to bed and returned to sleep.

An hour later, amazingly, the leopard was back or was in a different animal, this time to take a sheep. The warriors gathered and although it was a moonless night, they began trying to track the leopard. It was impossible. The moonless night made tracking a hopeless task even for the most adept of the warrior trackers. It was amazing to everyone that the leopard would dare to return the same night after the noise and confusion of the first attack that succeeded. People were thinking that the second attack must have been a different animal.

The next morning, Lesion, led the band of warriors in the hunt for the offend leopard. He was a veteran of many successful skirmishes with the Sukuma warriors who travel to the Ngorongoro and Loliondo areas from the Western side of the Serengeti to raid Maasai herds. The leopard had dragged the second kill deep into the hills above Olbalbal and at midday when the band of warriors caught up with him, the remains of the sheep was hanging over a branch in a tree and the leopard, invisible in his nearby hiding place. On flushing the leopard from his lair in the thing bush, the animal ran off and was not to be seen again.