Thursday, January 16, 2025

Playing the long game

 16 Jan 2025 - Wednesday

The lions were pretty relentless all night.  Not that I’m complaining of course, but every time I woke up, or was woken up, I heard lions, mixed in with the occasional hyena or hippo belching in the river beneath my tent. I was awake in fits and spurts and never looked at the clock, but knew that as long as I didn’t hear any birds, it wasn’t close to time to get up.  I finally fell back asleep what felt like right before the alarm went off at 5:25.


Coffee and a banana were delivered at 5:45 and I met Ping to head out at 6:00.  He said the lions I heard overnight were the Paradise Plains pride on one side and Rekero pride on the other.  And we were headed out to lions, the Topi pride about a half hour away.  I guess for whatever reason, Ping thought that two birds (lions?) in the hand weren’t worth one in the bush, but I’ve come to never question him now.  So I went with it.


The sky turned pinkish gray and gently more light as we got closer and I finally saw a couple of vehicles parked precariously close to a hippo pool, then realized there was a big male lion and a couple lionesses there too.  One lioness was chomping on the remains of a hippo who didn’t make it back to the water a couple days ago.  This pride took it down and had feasted on it since then.  He was literally about 50 feet from the water.  Poor guy, bad luck.

 

As we pulled up, one full grown lioness attacked two younger ones and there was a skirmish of roars. The younger lions retreated and not shortly after that, I heard the chirps of lion cubs, my favorite sound in the world.  Ping said the lioness was warning the younger lionesses about being around her babies.  They are about 10 weeks old and had just been introduced to the pride.  The chirps grew louder and finally four little faces appeared and attempted to nurse off one and then another of the older lionesses.  My first lion sighting of the safari and I’ve been blessed with my favorite thing ever!  Heavenly.


The sun still hadn’t come up, and I was so enthralled that I never noticed when it did.  But soon the light was golden yellow and the male got up to move on.  He could not bear weight on his front paw which saddened me until we noticed that the more he tried the more it loosened up.  So maybe it’s just arthritis and he needs some Dasuquin.  He headed toward some tall bushes to rest and passed two other big males and a female who might have been in the midst of some mating activity, hard to tell for sure.  But then more vehicles started popping up and we’d had our fill and the lions were headed to sleep the day away so we moved on.  We passed three subadult females on the way out, two of which were chased off from the cubs earlier.  So about 15 lions to start the day.  Not bad at all.


Next on our list for today was to check on the cheetah from yesterday to see if she’d hunted.  On our way we passed the leopard’s tree and saw the kill was still there but the leopard was not.  Ping saw a herd of cows being shepherded past the tree at a bit of a distance and thought maybe they’d flushed her out in *that* (pointing) direction.  He figured she’d return later.  Like around noontime.


We stopped for breakfast (pancakes, hard boiled eggs, coffee, fruit salad and juice) and then moved on toward where Nora was yesterday.  We went back to the same area and found a cheetah but this one was Nagol (niece of Nashipae) and I’d seen on Instagram that she recently lost her cubs.  She seemed hungry and also a bit rambunctious.  Ping thought she may try to hunt but ultimately we just followed her from bush to bush at a respectful distance to wait it out (and also be in a better positions to move if she hunted).  As I returned from my bush bio break, Ping said he’d just seen in his binoculars that the leopard (yes the leopard!) was moving toward the tree!  He told me to hold on and make sure I had hold of my phone and cameras, and we did our very best Dukes of Hazard to get back to the leopard (if I had to guess about a mile, but who knows really).  It turns out he was right, she had headed from *that* direction he’d pointed to this morning and was returning at, get this, 12:15.  How had he known?


I swore my bio break meant we missed everything but turns out we missed nothing.  She was headed back toward the tree but got cut off first by hyena, then by buffalo and finally by the renegade driver-guides who were doing whatever they could to get their client a photo.  It was annoying and unfair to her.  Ping positioned us close to the tree but a direct line from where she was to where we were hoping she’d go and I hunkered down to wait.  I told him “I will grow old in this spot waiting for her.”  I’m a veteran at the waiting game. At some point I become superstitious (or maybe just a little stitious) about leaving. You invest so much time that you fear she’ll move as soon as you leave.  I just want to see Fig’s girl.


At one point there were about 19 vehicles here.  Some stayed near us, assuming patience would pay off and they had their prime spot if she headed toward us and the tree.  But the impatient guides would circle the bush she was in, park next to it, lean out and hover over her.  Four times a buffalo approached her bush and I swore it would smoke her out.  But it didn’t happen.  The buffalo came and went and in between the idiot guides would drive around her bush, confirming she was still there.  She was.  I told Ping I don’t want to be part of that.  If she wanted to get away from it all, she could, by going up the tree.  Her kill was still there.  It was stressful for me and quite obviously agitating the heck out of her.  Why was she not retreating?


Finally she went on the move again, except away from us.  The number of vehicles had dropped to about 6 because many left for lunch.  Ping said she’s moving and we can drive parallel to her on the road, still a good distance from her.  So at least I saw her, and managed to get one shot of her, but in it she was unfortunately surrounded by vehicles.  There was a family of warthogs with some small piglets that Ping said she’d want even though she already had that kill in the tree.  Cats are opportunistic hunters, if it’s there, they’ll take it.  But she couldn’t see what we saw, because she was boxed in by idiots.  She went back into yet another bush and flopped down.  And we went back to our perfect line of sight back by the tree to wait.   Ping unpacked sandwiches for us and I managed another bio break (damn coffee from this morning!) Three hours became four.  And four became almost five.  I wrote this blog up to this point, downloaded some photos from the cameras and hopped on social media.  Ping did some work for the camp and his bush school.  We were old pros at this, he knew I’d grow old here.  But I think as the day wore on, we were getting tired.  “The light will be better now,” he said.  And he was correct about that, but I was feeling discouraged. I wrote to a friend “it’s been five hours waiting for Faulu…”.


And just like that Ping said “SHE’S MOVING” and the 8 or 9 other vehicles there with us all started to move.  “What do we do?” I asked Ping, and thankfully he’d already thought ahead and we banged a three-point turn and headed back towards the tree, positioning ourselves with the sun lowering behind us (it was now 5:15 and sunset an hour away) and Faulu approaching from our left.  A vehicle cut off my sightline but I could tell watching those in less opportune spots but closer to her that she was heading our way, a phalanx of iPhones and 2 foot lenses moving with her as she approached.   I hopped over the seat to sit in the front with Ping, giving me more of a sightline to her and putting me slightly lower.  And then I saw her.  “Here she comes, Ping!”


What a gorgeous cat.


Time seemed to both stand still and speed up.  To say chaos was breaking out around me was an understatement.  Guides were yelling at each other to move, hell, a woman yelled at Ping to move, but we were there first (so NAAAAAH!) and I’d waited five very long hours for this.  I let Ping fight that battle and focused, Faulu was slowly half-slinking her way toward the tree that was directly in front of me.  Voices sounded like they were underwater but I kept hearing Ping laugh and make his adrenaline-charged “wah” which meant this was something special.  


I started with my long lens and rapid-fired like I was working the red carpet at an awards show.   Now I won’t lie and tell you she looks just like her mother, because I find it crazy that non-professionals like myself think they can actually tell one spotted cat from another, but she had her mother’s attitude and her swagger for the camera.  She put on a show, and I was transported back in time to February 2014 when her mother Fig did much the same thing.  Step step, pause, look over the shoulder, tail flick, step step.  This was the ultimate cat walk, and it could have been me watching my first leopard 11 years ago all over again.  The girl has her mother’s gift.  You never forget your first leopard, or, apparently, her daughter.


After a few dramatic pauses (paws-es?) she headed to the tree and went up right where Ping said she would.  She stopped to rest a bit and then went higher up to eat what she’d left hanging for a snack later.  And that was the first time I looked up and somehow our 8 or 9 vehicles had blossomed to over 40.  We were packed in and had to wait for a break in them to move on.  One of them got the idea to flash mob the poor cheetah nearby, so off many of them went.  Sorry Nagol.


The whole thing could not have lasted more than 2 minutes if I’m guessing (and the timestamp on the photos will confirm that), but it was a perfect example of how a day on safari can change on a dime.  We could have waited all day and not seen her.  I thought a lot about how disappointing many around me were.  The harassing, the arguing, the shouting, the danger to her in their reckless driving.  But I cannot control that.  What I can say is we kept our distance. We never circled her.  We never harassed her.  We didn’t argue or swear or yell at her or each other.  I treated the cat the way I’d want any cat treated.  Do I wish the others had played fairly and decently? Yes.  But that’s not for me (or Ping) to make happen.  I feel like the safari gods rewarded me for playing the long game well and respectfully.


Ping thought it best that we move back towards camp.  I told him I don’t think I could take much more excitement.  We stopped and watched some bull elephants approach a small herd of females, listening to them purr and scratch the grass out of the earth.  Ping scanned the horizon with binoculars, and way off towards the horizon, he said he spotted a cheetah on a termite mound.  It was nearing 6 pm now and light was running out.  I asked how far it was (I am an awful judge of distance) and he handed me the binos and told me to look.  It looked far and to my not-so-great eyes, I couldn’t even really confirm it was a cheetah.  But of course we went and it only took about 10 minutes.  There was only one other vehicle there, with one guide and a lone photographer.  We nodded to each other and settled in.


This is Oloti, a male leopard known to Ping. He was on the termite mound surveying the land.  Ping quickly picked out a handful of impala unwittingly making their way towards us and the cheetah.  So did the cheetah.  He switched positions and stood and over the course of a half hour we kept guessing whether he’d go for it or not.   I think we were both trying to talk ourselves into and out of it.   Into it because how else could we possibly end this day, and out of it because we were beat and ready for food and bed.  Ultimately we left this boy because of the latter and the quickly fading light.  Even if he chased and killed, how much of it would we see?  Camp was only 7 minutes away, so we made a plan to find him first thing.


Brian the camp manager met us coming in and hurried to muster our dinner sooner rather than later.  We had a nice curry fish over rice with steamed beans, carrots and peapods and a crème caramel.  I washed mine down with a G&T of course.


Tired, we headed to our tents and showered before hitting the hay.  I can sleep a bit later tomorrow, but am not sure how I’ll wind down after the day I just had.  One for the ages.

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