Tanzania Honeymoon
    After the kill, the cheetah rested for a few minutes, the chase having exacted a huge toll on her energy reserves. Finally, she started to carry the gazelle back towards the cubs. She stopped halfway there, and started to eat the gazelle, pausing frequently to stick her head up and check for competitors who might have picked up the scent. More minutes passed, and then the mother left the carcass to go fetch the cubs. The cubs bounded out of the brush to greet her, jumping, running, and playing. The mother led them to the kill, and they pounced on it with vigor - just as the lion cubs did last night on the buffalo, trying to be adult and learn how to survive. Tobias said that the cheetah cubs were too young to actually eat any of the meat, but that letting them play with the carcass is part of the learning process, giving them a taste of the kill. The mother still kept a very watchful eye, worried about the safety of the cubs. They are very easy to snatch if discovered, and typically 50% of cheetah cubs are taken within the first three months.
   Eventually we had to leave this drama, as curfew was approaching, but again we had had an unexpected thrill to end our day.

October 14, 2:45 pm:
We left this morning at 7:30 for the first game drive of the day. Very quickly we found an acacia with a gazelle carcass wedged up in the branches, suggesting the presence of a leopard nearby. The king of stealth, a leopard tries to sneak to within 5 yds of its quarry before pouncing (its maximum attack distance is only 20 yds). The leopard (who can run 37 mph) will quit its pursuit if it hasn't caught its prey after 50 yds.
    The carcass in the tree was pretty old, so we didn't figure on seeing a leopard there, and we continued on. Soon after, though, we saw a couple of trucks parked, and as we pulled up we saw our first leopard, up in a fig tree. We were pretty close, and had a great view. The leopard descended the tree - we weren't sure what it was after (if anything). There were some baboons in the area, as well as a herd of gazelle not too far away, which were very aware of the leopardís presence. The leopard is the most adaptable of the big cats - it has 30 species of prey on the Serengeti (compared to 12 for the lion).
    As the leopard disappeared into the brush, we saw a large baboon coming up behind it, probably to dissuade the leopard from going after any of the other baboons. (Tobias said he's seen three baboons kill a leopard by pounding it against a tree.) The baboon disappeared after the leopard, and suddenly there was an explosion of dust from behind some shrubs. We couldn't tell what had happened. We tried to go around to the other side to see if the leopard reappeared, but it didn't. We were left with a mystery.
    Later on we saw another leopard sleeping in a tree (pretty far away), 13 lions sleeping in the shade (pretty close), and a cheetah resting in the shade (fairly distant). Not much seems to happen once the heat of the day has set in.
    To add to the morning's list: elephant, hippo, crocodile, eland, ostrich, kori bustard, gazelles, zebra, impala, secretary bird, white-headed eagle, buffalo, warthog....
   There are permanent pools and rivulets of water around here. Must be spring fed, because it rains very little in the dry season. You can spot the stream beds from a distance by the changing vegetation - you see more ìgreenî in general, more yellow-barked acacia (which require more water), even some palm trees, which I really find amazing. There's a lot more variation in the micro-Serengeti habitats than I had expected.