Now on the New

Early to head out with nothing but a cup of coffee.  But we have to go.  We’ll return or breakfast.  Let’s see what the Serengeti is like at the break of dawn.  Slowly, we drove past a dense kopjie outcropping.  “What are you looking for?” My younger one asked.  “Lions.” Was all our driver needed to say.  We all looked for animals out the Land Rover window, in every tree, on every rock and for the first hour though we saw animals that would have made us ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ yesterday they were now irrelevant.  All focus was now on the new.     

Nearly two hours into the drive we came upon a pride of lions that was in the process of moving from one little outcropping in the field to another.  Our driver wisely parked up by the new destination and we had a lovely view as the females and children made their way across.  I’d say fifty yards in front of us they all just sat and yawned.  Certainly it is clichéd beyond any reasonable differentiation but there they were all looking regal.  Not quite sure how else to describe it but they were utterly disinterested in us or anything.  They seemed the definition of contentment.  

Reluctantly we left the pride and headed off to find more things.  Soon we came upon a car or two who were looking out at what my driver suggested was a cheetah.  I see.  But I couldn’t.  My younger one saw him.  And then my older one saw him.  But then someone said: “he lay down.”  That didn’t sound good.  I looked for a while and saw nothing.  But then, he was on the move again.  My driver wisely anticipating his direction drove our vehicle about two hundred yards down the road to where a faint path came down to the road.  Sure enough the cheetah deliberately made his way, step by step till he was right in front of our Land Rover.  He crossed the road not ten feet before us. 

He looked, it seemed to me, like an Olympiad.  Pure muscle ready to spring at any moment.  I mentioned that there was, not surprisingly not even a single of the otherwise ubiquitous Thompson’s Gazelles in the area when I suddenly spied a solitary chap which our cheetah was now heading towards.  The driver mentioned that the cheetah looked hungry.  The gazelle who’s eyesight apparently isn't much to speak of but whose nose is profound, sniffed the air.  Oh my.  Did he not know the peril he was now facing?  The continued plodding forward, at an odd angle to the little gazelle.  Our driver took us around to the other side of the field.  Magically, ashamedly, irresistibly, we all sat there waiting for the kill.  It never came. 

The leopard, not unlike the lion seems to evoke a cliché when you look at it.  The pelt is undeniably beautiful.  It looks warm and sexy and stylish and of course verboten.  It’s rather irrational, but you see the leopard and you want to be near it.  You want to pet it and tame it.  At least I did, for the four or five seconds I caught it lounging in the tree a hundred yards across the field, before he or she stood up, and leapt down in to the grass to be seen no longer. 

Monday, 07/03/17