Raining cats and dogs

Having a bad Monday? Consider being disturbed during your intensive mating sessions by a pack of ruthless killers at 5:30am on a Monday morning. 

Waking up at 4:30am as usual, we departed camp at around 5/5:15, eager to make the most of our last morning at Tena Tena, in South Luangwa National Park - a places famous for its leopards that it’s sad they fall out of trees. 

5minutes out of camp, and we spot wild dogs messing around, in and out of the trees, maybe 300m away. It seemed like they were chasing baboons up a tree. We’d spent a fair amount of time with them already, and we’d decided to do just a quick check. 

Well. 

Certainly wasn’t a baboon they were chasing but…a male leopard. He came falling out of the tree, hissing and growling, sprinting to another tree as the dogs ran after him. They almost caught him as he jumped up the bark, pulling him down towards their razor sharp snapping jaws. With their pups to protect, these dogs were on a mission. The male leopard managed to hold on for dear life and proceeded to the highest branch of the tree. A very small one, might I add. 

We took 1000 of photos of the tree to set exposure, shutter speed and all, getting ready for when he’d come down, as the sun rose higher in the sky. The poor guy was snarling in the tree, clearly extremely offended by what had just happened. Until he decided to stretch and come down. Or, fall down, more like. None of us got the focused shot of the flying leopard -it was blurry even for our eyes. He ran at the speed of light, sprinting like a cheetah to another, larger tree, thankfully unbeknownst to the dogs. And again, we waited. 

What we hadn’t noticed in all the ruckus, was that there was a second leopard, a smaller, beautiful girl - who had clearly been in the middle of something very important with the male when the dogs disturbed them - who had hidden somewhere. We glimpsed her only when the male ran the first time, she was well hidden, but nonetheless decided to come back into the open, relaxing on a termite mound, much more so than her male counterpart. 

She posed diligently, and there were were, in between her and the male, not knowing where to look. Preparing for him to come down, or snapping shots of her trying to attract her man’s attention? too many options. Lithe, elegant, her pretty face caught the morning light. She danced and pranced around, walking in and out of trees, until the dogs (seemingly far away) came running back - they must have sensed her daring presence. Chasing her in a thick bush, they disappeared again. The female safely hidden away, we went back to the male, ready for him. I sneezed, and he came falling down - again. To give you an idea, my shutter speed of 1/2000 gave nothing but a blur of movement (focus was on him). He left his mate behind, racing off into the bush, far, far from the dogs. 

It seemed the female has vanished - either still in the thicket or as far from the painted wolves as possible.