Thursday, July 2, 2009

Seeing a wild cheetah for the first time!

I have seen real cheetahs in Africa.  They don't live in Seattle and they are not at the Woodland Park Zoo --yet!  The first cheetah I saw in a zoo in South Africa.  The surprise that I got there was the NOISE that they make.  They make a squeaking noise that they use to 'call' the other cheetahs. A cheetah does not growl or roar, it just says "eeekkk" Our camera didn't have any battery but it was very close and I got to take a little movie.  

The next cheetah we saw was at Munda Wanga.  "Munda Wanga" means "my garden" and it is a wildlife park, sort of a zoo.  It is in Chilanga about 1/2 an hour drive from our house.  The picture above is from that park.  Mommy took it.  There are two cheetahs (we think) but there might be just one. The names are Zig and Zag because they run zig-zag to confuse their prey; they use their tails to steer zigging and zagging.

On Friday last week we went to Kafue National Park, named after the Kafue River.  We went to a place called Lufupa, named after the Lufupa River.  When we got there it was night time.  When we were driving to the campsite in the bush we saw a cheetah!  It was very close to our car - is was just standing there then it was walking away from us on the road then it just turned left and disappeared into the darkness.  Then we saw SIX lion cubs! That was the first time I have seen a cheetah in the wild!  I was VERY happy when I saw it because it's my favorite animal. 

2 comments:

Kathi of Clan Church said...

Owen, that is so very COOL you saw a cheetah out in the wild! Tell your mom she took a nice photo.

Did you stop the car so your mom could take the photo, or did you drive by quickly in case the cheetah got too interested in your family?

By the way, Hank is getting VERY excited to see you and Finny - yay!

Teresa said...

I'm so glad you are feeling better and back to writing your blog, owen. Your post is so full of good information. I just can't imagine a wild cat saying "EeeK!" like a mouse! I suppose it is a very loud "EeeK!"