The Maasai warriors claimed not to see the lions. Instead they saw dark shadows of pure evil. The Ghost and the Darkness owned the night – and the day, too. In 1898 they killed dozens of railroad workers before they met their own fate, by the hand of John Henry Patterson. Tsavo lions are huge and fearless. What unspeakable terror it must have been to come to strange, hot, foreign Africa to work on a railroad – and to be dragged out of one’s tent at night, just to satisfy a man-eating lion’s thirst for blood.

Graceful, beautiful killers.

(Tsavo East National Park, Kenya; September 2013)