The Leopard is Illusive...

...so illusive. They blend into their surroundings. Mother and cubs nestled at the bottom of a large rock formation. But for the twitch of her tail and leopard-cub-tumble rustling the grass, you couldn't tell they were there. I didn't really get a good picture of the mother and cubs, even though they weren't 20 meters away.

The leopard spotted a day later in the tree was much further, but you could clearly see the outline of it's spotted form...and she climbed down the tree for me. The next day, I say her in a different tree, just ten meters behind the tree from the day before. In a closer tree, the carcass of an impala was hanging. (Can you spot it?) Leopards are selfish. They don't finish eating their kill, but they pull it up in the tree so no one else can scavenge - not jackals, hyenas or vultures. (Vultures only eat on the ground. If they were intelligent, I would think that maybe they might learn to eat in the tree. Some things are just be beyond me, like vultures. Back to the leopard.)

While the lion and cheetah give chase to their pray, the leopard pounces. Like lions, leopards have territories. Cats don't cross territories. If they do and the weaker is found out, they are chased off the land by the stronger (Lion-leopard-cheetah pecking order). While lions may move their cubs around at a young age, bringing the cubs to the kill to feast, a leopard never moves her cubs before three months. Leopard cubs have a greater chance of surviving because lion cubs get lost in the grasses when traveling with mama to get lunch.

Around 1 and a half to 2 years a litter of cubs will separate. The brothers will together. Like me, the leopardess goes off on her own. Quite solitary. (Now the parallel ends.) A male may follow a female who catches his attention. Eventually, a fight for reproductive rights may take place. She then goes off to raise the cubs on her own. I videoed the leopard descending it's perch, but, as usual, I'm having upload issues. In the movie, I mistakenly called the leopard "cheetah". More on cheetahs later. I saw 8. Hunting. Eating. Wandering. Resting. Running. Staking. Too many good pictures to sort out...too many stories to tell.