The incident was sighted by Sylvie Failletaz while he went for an early morning drive game drive near Nyamepi campground, Mana Pools, Zimbabwe.
Recalling the morning Sylvie shared that it was a pretty hot day about 25 °C for an early morning. They came across two lions that had eaten an impala the night before. Now they were just chilling and being lazy like lions do.
He further said after taking a few shots and watching them for a while they hoped the lions would move to some shade. Because it was really hot outside and the lions were not doing much out in the some. They hoped to see something else other than just sleeping lions.
Then to their disbelief, a lost innocent baby impala came into the sight and started to run straight toward the sleeping lion.
“ I was thinking no, no, no, go away, the wrong move! We could not believe that the innocent baby impala walks up to a male lion. I thought the baby impala would turn around as soon as it realized there was danger, but it didn’t. ” said Sylvie.
The baby impala was so lost and innocent, that it did not know what the lion was and it kept moving. The baby Impala came so close to the sleeping lion that it nearly even touched it.
Sylvie shared “I was hoping it would run away when it realized it wasn’t mummy. We were hoping the lion wouldn’t be interested in such a little snack considering he had eaten the day before.”
But this could not be the case. The lion slowly lifted his head and look at the baby impala and swiftly sat up. “There was an extremely funny look on its face, like hang on, what did I see? Am I dreaming? Food has come to me? I love the face, the ‘cartoon eyes’”.
Then the lion started to move, although it was slow at first but with a little more effort he went and grabbed the baby impala. The baby did not have much hope to run away it was already there too deep.
Sylvie felt disappointed as he could not get the shot of the chase, as he could not get the right angle and the car was facing the wrong way. It all happened so fast he did not get the chance to get the right lenses as well but he still captured the story of what happened.
He also shared that he felt very lucky to have sighted such an interesting event and could capture it.
“However, I felt sorry for the super cute baby impala. I would have loved a happy ending for it, but unfortunately, it wasn’t his day.”
