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Survival Of The Fittest

Growing Up
July 30, 2012
Guides Report 22-Aug-2012
August 22, 2012

Survival Of The Fittest

07 August 2012

Posted by: Guides

Good day fellow readers

As we are going into the busy season at the game lodge the days all seem to blend into one and the week has just flown by. Lucky for us the animals are still strutting their stuff and the game viewing has been excellent.

Generally when I’m out on a game drive there isn’t enough room for my array of camera equipment as well as my game lodge guests, so most of the time I leave it behind and kick myself when I see the shot run pass me, so when a guest sent me a message to say they had seen the cheetah on their way out, I jumped at the chance to grab some pictures and got more than what I was expecting.

It took chef Ashton and myself a while to find them but once found, both of us sat for ages admiring these beautiful cats lazing in the shade. As we were getting ready to leave I noticed the cheetahs staring at something in the distance. A small group of impalas where heading straight for them. Armed with my camera, and firing away, we sat with our mouths touching the floor in amazement as the mother cheetah and her two cubs chased after a young male impala. After the mother had caught the impala she allowed her cubs to “play” with the still alive impala. The cubs were still very inexperienced and didn’t quite know what to do with the fawn. As the impala would run, the cheetah cubs would chase it but when the impala stopped so did the cubs. After about half an hour of watching the fawn fight for its life, the cubs figured it out and put a swift end to the young impalas life. It was sad to have watched the impala struggle to survive but on the other hand we had just witnessed the cubs first kill and ultimately the survival of the next generation of the cheetahs. For me the best part was that I had managed to capture this rare and incredible event on my camera!

From the rest for the team we all had some amazing sighting from the buffalo’s laying down and sleeping meters from the game viewer, to seeing porcupines in daylight feeding on the fruit of the sausage tree, and even having a leopard kill a warthog right in front of the game lodge. These are just some of the fantastic sightings we have been having this week, and we can’t wait to see what next week’s brings us.

Stay tuned in for next week’s updates.
Andrew and the rest of the ranger team