Horses for LIFE Publications

January 2008 • VOLUME 29 • © HORSES For LIFE™ Magazine

This is the story of an adventurous and zealous horse endowed with a multitude of talents called Nickelby. He is a ten year old Thoroughbred gelding (out of a mare by a stallion given to the Jockey Club of Kenya by HRH Aga Khan) who won six races in Kenya before moving on to Eventing, Jumping and Dressage. He occasionally finds the time to provide a sturdy mount on safaris. All was going just swellingly until…

Nickelby had been solicited to partake in a safari outing in September of this year in Loldaiga, Kenya. All the horses arrived safely on the farm in the morning but it was in the middle of the night, at the darkest hour, that the beginning of what would be an unforgettable story began to unfold. Thirty odd zebra went galloping past the tents where some of the safari-goers were safely tucked in; a few moments later the horses started to move around in their boma just below camp.

The electric fence around them was on and there were three grooms in three tents on the corners. It all started to get very frantic as the grooms tried to calm the horses, but suddenly their poignant words echoed in the deep darkness “Bwana, Bwana, simba, simba”. Two of the safari-goers leapt out of their tents and into two vehicles, with a groom and a tracker.

It turned out that Nicklebly had jumped out of the boma as the lions had jumped in! The grooms instructed them which course he had taken, the spotlights went on and the search began. Tracks were found and lost, until they began to follow a large trail of blood. The lions had also picked up on the trail, but were chased off by the vehicles.

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