It always amazes me how often something remarkable happens when you least expect it. We weren’t even on a game drive! We were simply on our way to reception, doing some of the fairly mundane tasks that are part of our role when we aren’t actually guiding guests, when a flock of Hadida ibises taking off with their typical raucous calls caught Nick’s attention.
“There’s a leopard!” he shouted as he brought us to a halt. And there she was, a young female known as uMoya, meaning soul or spirit in isiXhosa. She is the daughter of the Fort Dam female and now, as a young adult, she is in the exploring phase of her life as she tries to establish a territory for herself.
She was walking along the top edge of a near-vertical rocky cliff that rises out of the Botha’s River and within just a few minutes she descended the rock face and out of our field of view. After a few unsuccessful attempts to get a view from above we made the decision to cross the riverbed, which is now quite full of water, with Nicky, Josh and I winding Nick up with a few comments about how awful it would be if he got us stuck on the way through and we couldn’t find the leopard again! We all voted as to who we thought would have to get out and push in such an eventuality…it was 3 votes to 1!
We needn’t have worried. He drove us through perfectly, although there was definitely a huge sigh of relief once we were safely on the other side! From this angle we were able to spot her again, right at the base of the cliff.
The full beauty of the scene was impossible to capture in a single picture, but it was gorgeous. The rock face was in shadow, and her camouflage was just perfect as she lay on a ledge just above the water’s surface. Between her and us the insects that flew lazily above the water were beautifully backlit by the afternoon sunlight, little golden orbs flitting this way and that. The whole scene felt completely still, almost suspended for a moment in time. Just spending a short while watching this beautiful cat in such an incredible setting would already have made our afternoon.
But only a few minutes later, as we soaked it all in and tried to capture the moment, a sudden splash and quick movement on the water’s edge caught both our attention and hers.
It took a few seconds to figure out what we were looking at. A sopping wet rock hyrax, or “dassie” as we call them, had climbed out of the water onto a rock ledge just a few metres away from the leopard. uMoya crouched motionless, staring at the dassie, knowing the slightest movement would trigger an instant attempt to escape. The dassie was equally still now, staring straight back at the leopard.
Nothing moved. Neither predator nor prey, nor any of us, for many long seconds that soon turned into a minute, and then two. The leopard was waiting and hoping that the dassie would move, but the dassie stayed perfectly still, just out of reach, knowing that any movement would trigger an attack.
Two minutes became four in this potentially deadly stalemate. As they waited each other out, it gave us time to piece together what must have happened while she had disappeared from our view and we moved down across the riverbed. She had probably surprised the dassie while making her way down the cliff face and, with no deep crevice or gap in the rocks to escape into, it had taken to the water as its only option.
Although dassies can swim a bit of a doggy paddle if required, they are not strong swimmers and are easily exhausted. Unfortunately for this one, it had come back far too soon.
The leopard was the first to move, a blur of spots suddenly rushing across the few short paces that separated them, but the dassie reacted just as quickly, shooting backwards into a shallow crack in the rock before scrambling back into the water away from reaching paws.
The leopard was right on the edge now, peering into the water where the dassie had vanished beneath the surface. Although crocodiles do not occur in this region, there is still an instinctive fear of deep, dark waters in Africa, where such creatures and other imagined dangers could lurk.
The dassie suddenly reappeared in the water directly in front of her and she got a massive fright! She hissed explosively at it and took a step back but the huntress in her still knew there was an opportunity here.
She hissed repeatedly at the water and its unwilling occupant while both predator and prey tried to work out their next move. The dassie must have been unable to find any other purchase on the rocks and, probably exhausted, it made the fatal mistake of drifting back within reach of the leopard. In a flash she stretched out with her paw, hooking the dassie with her claws and pulling it within reach.
Clamping it in her jaws with a splash, she leapt backwards away from the water and up onto the rocks where she could secure it.
With the expertise of a born hunter, she quickly administered a killing bite and the hunt was over. We sat absolutely gobsmacked, still clicking away and recording the moment, knowing it would take some time yet to fully sink in.
I have been incredibly lucky to witness leopards hunting previously, even chasing dassies on cliffs before. Those experiences were unforgettable, but this was just so different, so unexpected, so unusual. And therein lies the beauty of what we do, every time we go out, it’s different and any day could be the next time we witness something unusual. Another unforgettable memory made.
She had taken advantage of such an opportunity so quickly, but that is in the spirit of a leopard. The eternal opportunists, who take their chances quickly and ruthlessly.
Her kill subdued, the leopard then climbed effortlessly across the cliff face like only a leopard can. She carried it all the way across to where the riverbank met the rock, paused there briefly and then disappeared into the shade and cover of the overhanging trees to feed.
And we went back to our original plans for the afternoon and, while I still cannot think of an adequate word to describe what we experienced, I do know it was anything but mundane.
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