Dave has a man-crush on Fanwell, our guide from Kuyenda Camp, and our first Safari is an example of why. We arrived at Kuyenda in the early afternoon, which gave us the opportunity to do the afternoon / evening Safari. It was optional; we could have relaxed after travelling all day. We could have opted to stick a fork in our eye too, which was about as likely as saying “no” after the drive to the camp, where we’d already spotted a leopard, wildebeest , impala, puka, baboons, monkeys, hippos, zebras, crocodiles and warthogs on the non-safari-drive in. We were raring to go.
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So we drove along and saw a bunch of awesome scenery, birds, and animals. It was getting near “sundowner” time, when you stopped to have a Gin and Tonic while watching the sunset before shifting to the after-dark-nocturnal part of the drive. We were driving along a water filled gully with a broad field on the other side. Suddenly, Fanwell stopped the Land Rover. “Listen,” he said. “Baboons are alerting on the other side of the gully, and there are Zebras calling, which is very rare. Something is happening.”
He drove about a mile up the gully until we reached a dry section the Land Rover could cross (it was still a 45 degree angle into and out of the gully; no problem!), then we turned and headed back on the grass. “Look, a hyena,” said Fanwell. It was already getting dark, but the spotter lit up the hyena with a flood light. Dave was trying to get the camera around for a shot. Fanwell continued, “Don’t worry about the hyena, he’ll stick around. Something else is happening. The Zebras are in distress.”
So we drove further. By this time, it was deep dusk and you couldn’t see any significant distance. Fanwell slowed. “The baboons are off to the right in the trees and are still agitated. There’s a lone Zebra ahead; the others are calling to it.” He paused. “My god, it has to be a dead baby Zebra. It’s the only reason a zebra wouldn’t join the herd. A hyena couldn’t have done that. It has to be a leopard kill. The mother is guarding the corpse.” We finally got close enough to see the vague outline of the mother Zebra; Dave’s camera took a long exposure shot to capture it, but you couldn’t really see the dead baby zebra with the naked eye, and even the mother, maybe a hundred feet away, was a faint white blob. And they put the spotlight on it, and there was the mother nuzzling the baby zebra’s corpse, trying to nudge it awake, making little sounds of distress. The other zebras were farther up the grassland, calling for the mother, but she wouldn’t leave the dead baby.
Suddenly the mother brayed and charged toward the edge of the nearby forest. “That’s where the leopard is!” cried Fanwell, and the spotter turned the spotlight, and there was a leopard at the edge of the woods, waiting calmly. The leopard ignored the mother’s charge, nonchalantly cleaning himself, and she stopped and backed off once it was obvious she wasn’t scaring the cat away. Fanwell shook his head. “In the seventeen years I’ve been doing this, I’ve only seen a baby zebra kill three times. The mothers are watchful and very protective. The leopard must have snuck up the gully and killed the baby zebra almost instantly, then retreated.” He turned to Dave. “Take pictures. This is a national geographic moment.”
We waited, and eventually the mother Zebra realized that it was over, and finally, reluctantly, she left to join the rest of the herd. The spotter put the light on the leopard, and after a few minutes, it trotted over to the dead baby, which was the same size, grabbed it by the throat, and awkwardly dragged it into the woods.
Fanwell drove the Land Rover around to the other side of the woods, but after waiting a while, he said, “It must have treed the zebra.” We drove back, and Fanwell pointed to a spot in the woods that didn’t look any different from any other spot along the way. “In there, I think,” and he jammed the Land Rover between a couple of trees into a little pocket of grass inside the tree line. The guide flashed the spot light around… and there was the leopard, about fifteen feet up a tree, with the dead zebra hanging down, wedged between some branches. We watched for a while as the leopard began to eat, the sharp cracking as it chewed through bone making it a rather noisy affair.
We finally returned to camp around 8, never having had a chance to do the sundowner. The next day, we were supposed to do walking safari, but Fanwell suggested we drive by. “The leopard will stay with the kill. It is large enough to feed the leopard for several days.”
So we did, and the leapord was hanging out under the tree looking very content while the baby zebra's corpse was still jammed up in the branches.
We came back in the evening and the leopard was up in the tree again, munching noisily on the carcass, when an entire Zebra leg fell to the ground. "The leopard will come down now. He will not leave meat where scavengers will find it." And sure enough, the leopard dropped out of the tree and started gnawing on the leg. But that was just a warm up for the evening, as you'll find see in the next segment, three's company, or you can see some of the other photos from the first day's driving safari.
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