Masai Mara - June 12, 2009 AM

Cheetah

Jambo!

We were awakened this morning at 5am by one of staff delivering coffee. I drank my coffee on the front porch and listened to all the birds and animals. There is one animal called the Hyrax. It is a very large ratlike animal that screams at night. Sounds like a human screaming. Very strange.
We headed off with Letif for our 6:30am game drive. It is really something to see the sun rise on the Mara.
Right away Letif spotted 2 hyenas running in our direction and we came upon a mother eland standing over her newborn that had been killed by them. Shortly afterwards we saw why the hyenas were running away. A large male lion approached and began helping himself to the kill. Shortly after that a female lion and 4 female cubs and one male cub approached. One of the female cubs approached the lion and begged by laying down and rolling around in front of him. For some reason he just got up and walked away and all the cubs began eating the kill while the mother watched. After a few minutes the male lion came back and the cubs all ran off leaving not a trace of the kill. Then he decided to go after the male cub. Letif told us that full grown male lions will often kill young males to eliminate future competition. The mother lion proceeded to follow and she would growl and try to confuse him. At one point even Letif and all the other drivers started to maneuver and try to cut the him off because nobody wanted to see the cub killed. This went on for quite a while and finally the lions all headed off into the bush. We did see the mother and the cubs another drive and looked like the little male survived.
After the am drive we headed straight to breakfast then back to our tents. We showered and got back in bed so we wouldn't be too tired to eat lunch. LOL! I couldn't sleep as usual so I enjoyed some tea and the hippos on our front porch. There are also Sykes monkeys that hang out in front of our porch. Evangeline calls them the "cheeky monkeys"!
Hope to have some pictures posted on Flicker soon. I have just about given up on trying to upload them onto this blog because it takes so long. (The picture above took about 15 minutes to upload). I also have some really neat videos (one of the big lion eating the kill) but may have to upload those when I get back home to my computer with a faster internet.
Love,
Adina