Alarm went off at 4:45 and we were all at the cars ready to go by 5:30. We only had one cruiser this morning so Diana drove us all to the game management office to meet the vet (and hope the lions hadn't been lost in the night). We got to the meeting point by 6, to find the 2 male cheetahs in the area. One of them had a collar that was no longer working and needed changing but as these cats had not been seen recently we didn;t think they would be darted. But as they had been found we would be lucky enough to see this male darted too. We were asked to watch where the cheetahs went and stop them from going into deep undergrowth (and watch out for the vet's car as he hadn't turned up yet).
We duely obliged and the vet turned up and loaded his dart gun. Problem was that he couldn't drive and shoot so he asked one of our guys (Tom) to drive him to the cheetah so teh vet could shoot the dart. Tom of course jumped at teh chance and they were off. 2 failed dartings later and the vet was on foot and got his 3 shot off successfully. The male went down and the vet moved in (with Tom following close behind and filming). We were still on our cruiser watching from about 50 metres away and waiting for the vet and game management to say we could join them.
Looked like the sedative was slow to take because the first time the vet approached the cheetah he jumped off and stumble away. Also the 2nd cheetah in this coalition was still hanging around. Cheetah brothers like this form a very strong coalition and they very rarely leave each other so the 2nd cat was staying close. Tom found this out very quickly, as he was watching the vet test if the first cheetah was out, the second cheetah had come around behind him and from his reaction we could see he got quite a fright. A few seconds afterwards the vet called us all over so we got off the vehicle and sauntered (no running don't forget) over.
Talk about a privelege. We we right next to the sleeping male cheetah. The vet even let us stroke the cat, take close up photos of him (hte paw photos are really useful to help with tracking) and generally appreciate this beautiful cat. I then looked up nad noticed the other cheetah was still around and was wathcing us from a couple of metres away. He wasn't being aggressive but was clearly concerned for his brother. So despite all the humans around this cat would not leave hi coallition partner. THis was now even more special - not only did we have the chance to get close to a sleeping cheetah, we got to stand a few metres away from a very much awake wild cheetah.
The cat circled us a few times then took up a position where I guess he had the best view of his brother. He then started 'cheeping', which is the way cheetah call to each other when they get seperated to help pull the cats back together. THis was so heart bracking, to hear the brother calling for his sibling whilst us humans all stood around the darted cat.
Anyway, the vet finished his work and applied an anti-sedative to wake the cat up. We all moved back to our cruiser and instantly the undarted cheetah went to his brother, licked him and then when there was no immediate response just lay by him and watched us. One of the game management cars stayed by the cheetah until the darted one was awake and we headed off to where the lion darting was supposed to take place.
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