Week 323 (30th October - 5th November 2009 )
Snippets from the Valley
Coco and JenB climbed into the pepper tree and stood around clawing branches closer and nibbling on leaves – talk about adding spice to life
For the first part of the week Madonna and the cubs were unable to hunt anything and were hanging around the Mini Camp’s gate – convinced that if they begged long and often enough they would be rewarded with food. In the afternoon they all huddled at the fence, silent but watchful. A day or so later there were only two young blesbuck left – they were finally able to take care of dinner for themselves. At first none of the tigers was visible but minutes later I spotted Madonna way in the distance dragging the carcass of a blesbuck with the two cubs in tow. By the time I reached their position they had been swallowed by the trees. I sat around for a bit and Princess slinked closer to say hi. After a while Princess left me and headed into the trees. I sat a while longer and King Henry appeared but didn’t stay very long. At feeding time Madonna came to check out the boy’s menu, found it quite appetising and hung around in the hopes of being included in the dinner party. When I didn’t invite her she stalked me, pounced out and followed it with two chuffs, this was their final kill, time for them to leave “The Wild” and move to more hum-drum existence where one gets waited on hand, foot and finger.
Hulooo was chuffing, Coco was whining and JenB was speechless (he couldn’t get a word in edgeways). Coco and Hulooo rubbed heads, Hulooo then head-butted JenB hard enough to make his teeth rattle. Later, Hulooo was trying to play with his brothers but they were in no mood to play with him. He was bounding between each of them in turn, pouncing on them. JenB retreated into the reeds and Coco tried to reverse into the reeds before Hulooo could get to him. This attempt failed and he could only get rid of Hulooo by waving his claws in his face and chewing on his neck.
327 and Cathay were the object of his fascination one day but they were forgotten when dinner arrived and he got stuck in. he was so engrossed in his meal that he almost wet his pants when a raucous group of Hadeda flew over. On another occasion, Madonna had also appeared and TW chuffed at her through a flemmen. With his tongue stuck out and his nose scrunched up his chuff sounded watery and more like he was blowing bubbles in a teaspoon of water. When I laughed at the funny sound he made threw me a drop-dead look over his shoulder as if to say “Well! See how well you can do it” and Madonna also was not impressed.