I don’t, as a rule, contemplate death often – it’s a bit depressing and I’m too busy living life, etc, etc. However, recently I’ve been doing just that and after extensive consideration I’ve decided that if I do have to go early, I want to be mauled by a large, dangerous animal – a lion maybe, or elephant, which by all accounts can make a real mess of a man when feeling peeved.
A more curious statement you might not read today so I shall elaborate. Ever watched one of those Youtube videos of the bull getting the better of the Matador? Goring him, stomping on him, tossing him around like a gaily dressed rag doll. Brilliant aren’t they?
I don’t mean because the man is somehow getting his comeuppance – I’m no bull fighting fan but I reckon you have to be pretty brave to face one. I was once charged by a big old boy while trying to retrieve a ball from a field and I can assure you, I didn’t stand there taunting him with my jacket. I ran and cleared a fence I’d previously had difficulty even climbing in a single bound.
No, it’s more the novelty of the situation that attracts me. I mean, we hear of people dying in car accidents or of disease everyday – I’m not making light of these by the way, they are awfully sad – but how many people in this day an age are killed by dangerous game? Relatively few I would’ve thought.
Think of your friends, also. Imagine the anecdotes they could tell in the pub or at dinner parties if you’d been served your last rites by some furious predator. “Remember Glaves,” they would say, over a stiff G&T.
“Got knobbled by that angry lion in Kenya. All rather bloody if I recall – bit clean through his skull you know, poor old bugger. Dead in seconds. Still, if you’ve been on the sauce and wander into the bush for a pee what can you expect?
“Shame they never recovered his legs, always did like those boots he wore. Suppose they’d have been ruined in the scuffle though, so no great loss.”
The fact is tales of men being scuttled by dangerous game are funny – not to the person it happened to of course, nor to their friends or family – but to the reader, certainly.
Maybe it’s the astonishing feats of bravery that make them so, or maybe they’re just funny because tackling any sort of dangerous game on its own territory, even with a gun, is so ludicrously stupid the only feasible response is to laugh.
Either way, although I have no intention of shuffling off this mortal coil anytime soon, when my time does come a thorough besting by a brutal man-eater seems a fitting demise. It might be painful but it would be a refreshing change to the “passed away peacefully” epitaphs in the church yard where I intend to be buried.
I can see it now …
Nick Glaves (1976 – 20XX)
Slain in the prime of life by a vexed lion
He died as he had lived: sardonically, with an understated sense of style and not fond of cats
RIP
