Found Sabella!!!

Last night I saw a huge Baboon spider, and it was quite terrifying, especially since its in my room! Anyways, today was a great day! Woke up at 7 to start a long days search for Sabella the cheetah. We have been trying to track her using our telemetry for 2 weeks now, and haven’t had any luck finding her. Once we woke up, Alwyn had already received a call saying that Sabella is just by the main lodge, and that she had just killed a nice sized male Kudu. Once we got there, she had already left to get a drink of water somewhere, so we tracked her down. She had only eaten the rear end of the Kudu, so we knew she would be back. We finally found her just relaxing underneath a Shepard tree. We let her be for a few hours, and drove up to Kandoa Mountain to try and find the buffalo, but they were nowhere to be found. We drove back to our housing area, had some lunch, and then went to find Sabella again. We found her in a similar spot as last time, but while we were there, she walked about 6 feet away from us. It’s so amazing how habituated she is with people. She didn’t even flinch while I kept clicking pictures away at her. She walked back to her kill, and Alwyn was videoing some ranger next to Sabella, because he’s doing some Sabella diary to post their website since she is pregnant. Sabella wasn’t happy at all with how close they were getting… I’ll post the picture. They have about 8 or so cheetah on the property, and Sabella is the only one with a tracking collar on. The reason for the collar is so we can record what she eats, how much she eats, and are able to usually locate her quickly. They can then use this data to establish how many cheetahs are capable of living on the property, so that antelope species can still exist in healthy numbers. Anyways, it’s a lovely night here so I’m going to fetch some firewood for another braai!