I felt a little guilty, but I asked for a “wake-up call” for the next morning. At daybreak a young man knocked on our door, but we were already awake. After breakfast two stout men lugged our four bags down the hill to our van and a waiting Ben. The roof was still up on the van. He was not going to let our sightseeing end so soon.
Our trip out of the area took us back through a corner of Maasai Mara before tackling the terrible roads back to Nairobi and our international flights. The wildebeest did not know or care that we were leaving today and they were butting heads to show the other who was boss. Soon we saw the gathering of vehicles that meant that something interesting was going on. Ben drove up to a cheetah and I took several pictures from very close. She was looking over her shoulder into a ravine where most of the attention seemed to be centered. She moved forward a little and looked back again.
Ben said that there was a male lion in the ravine. He had heard that the lion may be after her cub. Lions killing cheetah cubs was a common challenge to cheetah populations. He drove around the cheetah and up to the ravine where I was just able to see the shoulder and dark mane of a large male lion. Meanwhile the female cheetah had taken post at the top of a small knoll looking back towards the lion with apprehension. She was waiting, but she could not know what was going to happen. Out of the ravine came one of the safari vans with the driver holding a small bundle out of the window. At the south end of a field he got out and opened the red towel he was carrying and a small tan ball of fuzz was left on the ground.
At the north end of the field was the cheetah watching all of the vehicles and looking a little anxious. From the fuzz came the sound of a bird chirping. Through my telephoto lens I could see a small cheetah cub no bigger than a football. It was sitting up and mewing. It squeaked a few more times and fell over on its side. With everything going on the mother did not notice.
Across the field came another van towards the cub. As it approached the front wheel came towards the helpless animal. When it was less than six feet from the baby I could not help myself from yelling for him to stop. He stopped. He got out with a small towel and picked up the cub. Driving to the north end of the field in front of the mother he set down the fur-ball and backed away. Ben told us that the mother may refuse the baby. That was why they had used the towels. They did not want to get man-scent on the cub. Finally she saw her baby.
She walked over, cautiously crouched down and sniffed the cub, then looked left and right. She sniffed again and looked around. All the while she was ready to take off if anything spooked her. We all sat back and kept quiet. We were all silently praying that she would accept the cub and take it with her. A long moment passed of not knowing how this story would end. Reunion or orphan? Suddenly she was on the run. Looking back at where she had been you could see nothing left in the grass. In her mouth was the tiny fur-ball that had nearly been eaten by a lion only a few minutes ago.
Finally we could let out our breath. It was a happy ending. At least for today.
A few more hours and many miles later we were at the Nairobi airport. We had crossed the Rift Valley, stopped to pick up some beloved Kenya Blue Mountain coffee beans, and braved one more tourist stop, but Ben got us there in time for our Emirates Air flight to Dubai.
When we got to Dubai I was told that American Homeland Security would not allow me to enter because of a discrepancy between my passport name and the name submitted by the airlines. After a half hour of that we were allowed to board our flight to JFK airport in New York City. We arrived to find out that our Delta flight from JFK to Syracuse had been cancelled and we had not been put on another flight. I was pulled out of line twice for “special searches”. We tried several ways to get out of JFK, but finally had to skip visiting Dusty’s mother altogether and just fly directly to Florida. This all took only about fifteen hours. We had traveled halfway around the world and finally had to come to New York City, USA to get really screwed up. I am just glad that we got stuck after the trip of a lifetime instead of before.
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