Do you recall the story of the 11-year-old lioness from the Mara called Siena? A Cape buffalo gored her in April? That time, the team from the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) and the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust (DSWT), saved her. The live broadcast of the one-and-a-half-hour wilderness surgery became a sensation. Both local and international mainstream media picked it up. V travel blogs highlighted it.

On the 4th of April 2014, while on a hunting expedition, a cape buffalo badly gored her. The attack severed her hind leg completely. At the time of the accident, she had three suckling cubs of her own. Saving her life would give the cubs a surviving chance of growing up into adults themselves.

Within a short time after the spectacular surgery, rangers spotted Siena moving around with her young ones as if nothing had happened. Apparently, large cats have a remarkable ability to heal very fast and this worked to Siena’s advantage.

But on the early morning of the 23rd of August, a Governor’s Camp guide spotted Siena with her wound reponed. The guide suspected she sustained the wound during a fight with another lioness.

Vets from the SkyVets Initiative of the DSWT, in collaboration with the team at KWS led by Dr Limo, responded to the emergency and averted a possible disaster. Siena seems to be following in the footsteps of her smaller, domesticated cousins who seem to possess the proverbial nine lives.

A member of the Mara Marsh Pride, most suspect she may have had an altercation with her former group which led to the fatal attack. Once again, due to the swift response from the Mara Vet Unit, Siena’s prognosis looks good and doctors say she will recover from this injury quickly.