The lioness thrashed, her claws tearing up the earth, but the python was a master of leverage. With every breath she exhaled, the coils tightened, squeezing the life out of her and the unborn litter.
The male lion was in a panic. He bit at the snake’s thick body, but the scales were like armor. He knew, on some primal level, that his brute strength couldn’t solve a problem of geometry. “We can’t just watch this,” I said, reaching for the door handle. It was against protocol. It was dangerous. It was insane. But the look in the lioness’s eyes was haunting.
Michael looked at me, then at the lions, then grabbed the long heavy stick we used for checking tire depth in mud. “If the male charges us,” he said grimly, “we are dead before we hit the ground.”
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