На тему гигантских кошек опять вспомнил из книжки про ужасы Африки:"As an exercise in how not to hunt lion, this one was about perfect. Everything that could break down did, and it was in fact only luck that Warden Tony Conway was airborne in that very area at the time and that the distress signal was received. But for that, the redoubtable Gomez would almost certainly have perished.
His wounds were extensive and required massive skin grafting. In a fitting tribute to the thickness of his head, one of the cat’s incisors broke off and was left imbedded in his skull. Not considered a pretty sight before this incident, he was left looking decidedly worse afterward. He recalls that when the lion bit into his head, “It made a sound like eating sadza (grits) with sand in it.”
Little sympathy was forthcoming. There was a possibility that his right leg would be amputated (though ultimately it was not), so he was relieved of all his right shoes. Siapegwa brought him a bunch of blackjacks to put in a vase next to his bed. The only book delivered to his bedside was "When the Lion Feeds" by Wilbur Smith. We are told that when Pam (back in Tucson) heard the news, she expressed delight".