Yes, the today photo is very bad but that's what it was like, snow, sleet, cold while the young leopard eats...
I didn't expect to be sitting here writing this tonight but the weather, well it's the Himalaya, have to be adaptable, do the whole change of plan thing quite a lot.
The leopard is the most adaptable of the wild cats, amazingly so. There's no doubt this is part of the reason it is so persecuted and misunderstood. The leopard has much less support, fewer friends than rock stars like the tiger and the snow leopard. It is a marginalized animal which is deceasing in numbers because in so many areas of its range, from Africa to South East Asia, the leopard is not given full protection.
So while I was wandering around early this afternoon, lost in a rhododendron forest while snow was falling, the temperature dropping, looking for Asa, the said leopard was safely in the nook of a tree, warm and dry. That being said, he did look surprised to see me. I had given the special call, I saw a tree shake and the next thing Asa is peering round from the bottom of the trunk checking it is me. He runs to greet me just as he did yesterday when the weather was fine with no snow.
The fact that I got lost and then somehow getting to that place without knowing Asa was there in that tree, in thick jungle, it's been like that for a while now, this communication between us, something I cannot explain and for now I don't really want to anyway. There's no doubt leopards have some extraordinary abilities. Only the cheetah is a faster cat and as well as being astonishing tree climbers leopards are great swimmers. While little is known about the telepathic communication between family members it is known to exist, siblings understanding each other whereabouts while several kilometres away.
Maybe Asa is pulling me into his world. Or maybe I am just waking up...
In the last post I mentioned my new feeding strategy. It has gone well so far, in yesterday's easy weather and in today's difficult weather as you can see by the images. I lugged meat in a drum from 2000m to 2700m, a lot of it in snow. I will give more details about these tactics soon.
Tomorrow morning I head back up the valley, trekking for most of the day to retrieve cameras, then a long trek back the next day. An unexplored ridge is drawing me, snow leopard may be there, perhaps Asa has told me this.
:)
Today marks forty-five weeks this leopard and I have been together. I have to do some serious fundraising soon, sell a lot of photographs, this has not been an inexpensive gig, far from it. The learning, the progress, make all this effort worth it. I understand more than ever that the leopard is a super cat, an amazingly adaptable animal... with other mysteries attached to it, unspoken ones...
