As I distraction from polls and McCain's scuzzy campaign tactics I offer the following true story and photography diary.
We arrive at Chitabe Camp in the Okavango Delta of Botswana. Our guide informs us that there is a female leopard with a couple of cubs on a recent kill. We head out on the afternoon drive and find the cat family hanging around a two day old impala carcass she has stashed in the bush. The guide says she has another, more recent, kill stashed a short distance away. She is a good mom.
At first it is frustrating trying to get photos because her face is partially blocked by tall grass but eventually she gets up and walks around a bit, gnawing on the carcass, moving to another spot for a cat nap.
She is an incredibly beautiful animal of about 100 pounds. The cubs, when they appear, are indescribably cute.
I am sitting in the third of four tiered rows of seats in the open-topped land rover. Our guide has wedged us in next to a dead tree on the left and a bush on the right to get a better look at her chewing on the impala and to see the cubs when they periodically pop out of the bush where they are snoozing. The big cat then gets up an walks around the back left side of the big land rover and I lean over the side by the dead tree shooting photos with the medium zoom (70-200mm) lens. I zoom out as she comes right along side the vehicle just a few feet away.
She looks straight into my lens and gives a quick teeth baring snarl. I missed the shot. She does it again. Once again I miss catching a frame of the snarl.
She then looks up at the dead tree beside our vehicle and almost instantly she is in the tree. I pan up with the camera and there she is not four feet from me, with the front half of her body through a fork in the tree. She is right over me, now snarling viciously. I hear our guide saying "don't move, don't move". Ok. I am left holding the camera over my head and I lower my eyes and wait. A massive dose of chemicals pump into my bloodstream from various glands. I expect the flesh shredding to start any moment.
After a few seconds that seem like an eternity she loses interest and continues her climb up the tree where she settles in to survey the area, on watch for another leopard that is reported roaming nearby. My heart is racing along at 215 MPH and I am giddy from the massive adrenal overdose I've just received. They are laughing loudly in the vehicle parked nearby. I refrain from slipping into hysterical giggles.
Thanks to Agnes Buijs who captured the moment from a nearby vehicle. Thanks for allowing me to post this utterly off topic diary. Please feel free to tell a story, post a pootie pic, or rant, just be good to each other.
Aloha
More of my photography can be found HERE