#grimace lion

Photography David Lloyd

© Grimace in February 2015

This is Grimace. Here he's a bit more than ten years old, but looks older. He was the most recognisable and grizzled looking lion I ever met. Despite his battered appearance he was considered to be the toughest of the four Notch Boys, the boys of Notch, the legendary lion who ruled much of the Maasai Mara until 2013. In around mid July all four boys went to Tanzania but only three returned, all bearing evidence of a fight with other lions. At the same time the body of one with a broken leg was found at around the place where they'd just returned from. So it seems unlikely we'll see Grimace again. Given that we've not seen him for some ten weeks now, the wide consensus is that he is now gone, and that the story of Grimace has concluded. That's the way it is though, by design. Ten glorious years of dignity, followed by a short and not-so-dignified end.