Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/590511
Ron Chapple StoCk/thinkStoCk.Com S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 1 1 3 The CroC ThaT Would noT die bush-dwelling nyala antelope. Now we were after leopard, kudu and reedbuck, which tend to grow especially big in northern Zimbabwe. Already I'd killed a better than good Cape buffalo, which had been quartered and hung for leopard bait. It sometimes takes a few days for meat to get ripe enough to appeal to leopards, so we were passing the days looking for the odd trophy or cruising Lake Kariba's shores, watching herds of elephant that came to drink and socialize. The horror story had begun a week earlier when we headed our 16-foot fiberglass inboard-outboard runabout into the mouth of the Senkwi River and quietly cruised upstream. The Senkwi has another name, a long African name that I can neither spell nor pronounce, but when translated it tells a story of a fearsome god that dwells in a land where there is no sun and whose slobber is filled with such deadly creatures that everything it touches is killed and devoured. The legend goes on to explain how the god's deadly drool gushes out of the earth and flows from a mountain, spreading death across the land, until it meets and is conquered by the benevolent god of the Zambezi. The river of death no longer flows into the mighty Zambezi, but into Lake Kariba, but the putrid waters that spill into the manmade sea are still filled with the devil's own creatures.