Specters & Bounty

from the pervious episode....
...at first not much was happening. Mostly a lot a birds were flying in for an evening drink, some competitive squawking & a snack of a bug or two.
The sun large & orange rested for a quick moment on the tops if the short Acacia trees before it slipped into the night. It was in the short twilight we saw it. A brief movement, a shadow really, low to the ground in the grass at the edge of the clearing... Leopard!
The cat had come for an evening drink & it was nearly invisible in the dim light. You only saw it when in crept from grass to bush to rock on it's way to the waters edge.
There it drink, blending into the landscape like some old boulder or fallen log. Those of us remanning at the rock viewpoint were dead silent, each one glued to the large cats form. It was a beautiful animal. The spots dark on a tawny background, every once in awhile it would look up in our direction with eyes that were large dark and chilling.
Eventually the cat drank it's fill and in short order was back to the tall grass. It gave us one last glance, just to let us know it was watching before it slipped into the bush becoming once again a specter of the dark, a silent breath in the wind, a thing that goes bump in the night. We remained for a moment longer awed at what we'd seen. (photos of another leopard will be posted latter).
In the next couple of days we saw more Zebra, Elephant, Kudu, Hartebeest, & Giraffe than we could count in the bush

On the road

Or by the waterholes

But still one animal eluded us, icon of Africa....continued

MH Holden PLS
[email protected]
Tacoma WA
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