Most people are used to the scenes of marauding lions, leopards or cheetahs hunting ungulates in the National Park and the wild theatres usually ending up with a dramatic kill, then feasting sessions.
However, tourists who were game driving in the vast Nyerere National Park witnessed a rare incident, this time involving a large African Rock Python hunting down and actually killing an Impala.
It was during evening hours and it seems the visitors were either on their way back to their hotel, or plane but the scenario proved to be one befitting climax of a tour in East Africa’s largest National Park.
They even took pictures; but hastily apologized with a “Sorry, no snake in these two pictures as it quickly withdrew to a nearby palm stand upon being spotted,” they said.
Apparently, snakes, whether large or small seem to be shy creatures, when the tour van arrived at the scene of its kill, the serpent quickly slithered away into the nearby palm bushes to hide.
But the sequence shows the immediate aftermath of a rock python’s killing of an impala within the Nyerere National Park in southern Tanzania.
The Tourists explained that the killer python was seen shortly after it attacked the ungulate but could not be photographed because they were in motion, riding in their tour vehicle by the time that the snake withdrew to conceal itself.
Tracks indicated that the snake had positioned itself alongside a fallen palm log and seized the impala by a rear leg as it wandered close in search of new grass.
“We waited for a while hoping the python would re-emerge to claim its prize but darkness closed in and we had to go,” they said.
Apparently, the few available photos show the dead impala surrounded by other ungulates with the snake missing from frames.
“The snake was seen soon after, just after sunset. In the morning only a faint track remained,” added Amyas Naegele, one of the tourists from New York in the United State, who was game driving at Nyerere Park.
Measuring more than 30,000 square kilometers and perched on the Southern Highlands of Tanzania, Nyerere is essentially the largest, albeit the largest, National Park in the country.