Even when living in the bush, there are days, where most hours of the day are spent in the office. 17th of June was one of those days. After spending a few hours in front of the computer, the guests arrived back from their safari. As usual, I was very keen to listen to what they’d experienced on that morning, so I jumped off my seat to welcome them back to the lodge.
Apart from seeing lots of giraffes, elephants, impalas, pukus and zebras, they told me that they had seen a female leopard right across the pontoon with a kill in a tree. As soon as I heard that this was only half an hour ago, and after being convinced by the guests photos that it would be worth trying to find it (amazing pictures!), I quickly grabbed Luke and Jenny (Luke’s teacher) and we rushed to the pontoon. Knowing that there was the possibility of a leopard waiting for us on the other side, the river crossing felt like it took hours.
But once on the other side, it only took 2 minutes to reach the acacia tree where things happened 30 minutes ago. At first I couldn’t see anything, but then we spotted the leopard underneath the tree. And her kill was still up on a branch.As we drove closer, she seemed to sneak away from us and for a short time I was concerned that we might not see her again. But we did. She came back, jumped up the tree and even started feeding on her kill.
For about an hour we were delighted by her presence, listening to her cracking some bones and we could even hear her breathing since she was only 15 meters away from us. Unfortunately we had to leave her after that wonderful hour since we had to go back to camp. I will never forget that lunch break!
