Earlier the day of the 24th after morning drive,
around breakfast time, we noticed vultures circling just north of the lodge, so
firs thing that afternoon, as soon as we headed out for drive we went looking
for the main attraction of these vultures.
Our search party lead to a dead Impala
ram freshly killed lay over a small pushed over marula tree, and barely
touched! Nothing and no one was in sight so we decided to circle around to see
if we could find anything.
We found a female giraffe heading north from the
lodge as we came up cheetah road; she was in a hurry to get somewhere. So we
headed back to the kill. There she was! Inkanyeni the female leopard and her
two cubs, she had done it again! Inkanyeni means marula as she seemed to favour
the marula trees. She was lying in the grass cleaning her daughter (light
coloured cub), while her son was playing around the kill (dark coloured cub).
She eventually got up to start feeding, not long and her daughter took over
while she made sure everything was safe. The young male wanted to join but his
sister wanted it all for herself! After
a while she moved off to clean her bloody face, and her brother did not even
hesitate to take her place! He was so eager to feed he tried to keep his mother
away, Inkanyeni however, did not budge and joined her son for the feast! We
started to loose daylight, and as the cubs were merely five months old we could
not use our spotlight, so we left the area, but had a wonderful sighting! This
morning as soon as we had daylight we headed back to the kill. To our demise
the kill was gone and no sign of Inkanyeni or her cubs, we circled the area I
hope to see the kill in a tree, we did not find anything but tracks. 
Hyena
tracks lead into the area, we believe they stole the carcass and Inkanyeni ran
with the cubs, we are positive that both cubs survived the encounter as we
found both their tracks following their mothers’ tracks, heading south towards
graveyard pan. We hope to see them or more signs of them this afternoon!
Jaces Bornman
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