Magyar News, 2003. szeptember-2004. augusztus (14. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
2004-01-01 / 5. szám
.»»ON Vf-ur. IN WILDERNESS The Hungarian big game hunter, Kálmán Kittenberger, in the wilderness with one of the lions he shot for a museum collection. Roy performing on stage with his seven year old white tiger Just recently we experienced a dramatic tragedy when Roy, member of the Siegfried & Roy performance group, was dragged by a confused white tiger of the stage. We don’t know yet the size of the damage, but whatever it is, it will stay with Roy for a life time. We wish all the best one could imagine. This tragedy brought back memories. At the time I was working with a popular scientific magazine, the Elet és Tudomány. Scanning through the the African wild life collection at the National Museum in Budapest, I met with the big game hunter who donated a large part of the exhibit. His name is Kálmán Kittenberger. He was a retired gentleman living in Nagymaros along the Danube river. Despite the age difference we became good friends and I stopped quite frequently at his house. He was the nicest host one could imagine. The first thing was to have a drink. In a convenient spot there was an elephant paw that was altered to hold a few bottles and have a lid on it too. The drink wasn’t something one picks up in the store. It was genuine moonshine that would take the paint off the wall. It was “green walnut brandy” ( Dió pálinka) that he made himself. If not for anything else, this was worth the trip. Besides the good food that went with the drink, there were the fantastic stories of a very unusual life. Before I go into talking about Kálmán Kittenberger’s life, I want to connect to what happened to Roy. Kittenberger, at an occasion, had to face an attacking wild lion Page 4 with his bare hands. It took a few years of friendship till he told me the story. This happened a long time ago, since then I forgot the unusual African names of place and people. But the story will stay with me till I live. Kittenberger was exploring an area for big games, probably for elephants. He had his accommodations in a very small settlement. From there he scanned the surroundings. He carried a gun for reasonable protection, and a hired local person carried an other gun for him, in this case an elephant hunting type. They walked quite a distance from the settlement when the surprise happened. Suddenly Kittenberger was face to face with an angry lion. There was no time other than to shoot. Unfortunately his gun misfired, he dropped it and reached back for the one that his native weapon bearer was carrying. Well, the man scared from the lion, took off back to the village, and with him went the gun too. The leaping lion was flying towards Kittenberger, there was no way out of it. The sequence of what followed was very blurry. Naturally Kittenberger was on the ground struggling under the heavy lion. This is when the miracle happened. He grabbed the tongue of the lion with one hand. This made it impossible for the lion to bite. Kittenberger was lucky, because with his other hand, he grabbed his dagger and stabbed the lion. Who knows how many times and where but he won the battle. His weapon bearer returned with men from the village carrying weapons, to find Kittenberger crushed under the lion. Both were considered dead, and blood was all around. They were able to free him out and with some kind of a help got him medical care and finally land him in a “hospital”. He stayed there for several months and he survived. Kálmán Kittenberger Quite a hair raising story. Kálmán Kittenberger told me that he doesn’t like to talk about it because it is so unbelievable, but if I will have an other drink of Green Walnut Brandy with him then he will show
