Durban - A lion on the loose in the Vryheid-Melmoth area has tasted human blood and may want more.
“He could be looking for an easy meal and it could be a child,” warned Captain Karl Erasmus from the police station at Gluckstadt, between Vryheid and Melmoth.
Two lions have been spotted in the area. According to reports, a local man escaped from the jaws of one them last Friday when he came across it while walking along a footpath at dusk.
Sabelo Mbense reportedly escaped by climbing a fence and throwing himself on to the other side as the lion pierced his skin.
He was treated at a clinic and later at Vryheid Hospital and discharged.
Erasmus told the Independent on Saturday that it was only worth acting on fresh information because when word reached police of the lions’ whereabouts, they could have moved from there quickly.
“Twenty-four hours is too late,” he said.
The lions have been on the loose for more than three months, taking farmers’ cattle on occasion, according to Erasmus. He recalled that a motorist “nearly had a heart attack” on seeing the two lions cross a road one morning before dawn.
“Tracks that were three to four hours old were followed but they disappeared up a dry, rocky riverbed.”
Erasmus said the area was alive with rumours about where the lions could have come from.
“There are a couple of game farms here, but none has lions. A couple of them used to, but they were relocated because of people cutting the wire fences.”
He said the closest confirmed lion sanctuary was the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Park, about 200km away.
Erasmus said locals had been warned not to walk around at night and never to be alone in the bush.
Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife spokesman Musa Mntambo confirmed that tracking teams had gone after the lions “at least two or three times” and were unable to find them because the tracks were too old.
He confirmed the lion that attacked Mbense was a male and that the provincial wildlife authority had no idea where the lions had come from.
The Gluckstadt incident follows a scare earlier this month of a lion being at large in the Bergville area.
Locals kept an eye out for it and it even attracted the attention of a helicopter involved in training in the nearby Drakensberg.
However, there were no further sightings and farmers suspected it may have been a caracal, the largest of the lesser cats in South Africa.