“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”― Winston S. Churchill. This is what we were extremely fortunate to witness earlier this week where we watched a male cheetah face off with two Spotted Hyena. The day had started like any other, the excitement and enthusiasm grew just like the dark and gloomy clouds rolling in over the horizon as we drove through the maze of roads looking for our next animal to view.

All of a sudden, my tracker (Heavyness) shouts with excitement, “Cheetah, Cheetah, Cheetah!!!” and pointed into the distance. I immediately reached for my binoculars, scanned into the distance and what looked like an eagle perched in a tree was this male cheetah. As we approached he stood there gracefully scanning into the skyline, lifted his tail and began to urinate as high as possible against the tree as a form of territorial marking. Moments later he jumped down and moved through the grass continually looking around him. The ever-vigilant male cautiously walked through the grass, climbed a termite mound and lay down, staring proudly into his kingdom. As a vulture flew overhead he looked up watching its moment whilst a pair of millipedes marched on and around the male.

Suddenly something caught his eye in the distance, Heavyness was certain it was a herd of impala feeding in the tree line of this open area. The male cheetah got up and went to an enormous Knob-thorn Tree, he smelt around it like a basset hound on the scent of an animal. He kept looking up into the fork of the tree and I thought there was no chance that he could climb up here, as cheetah only have semi retractable claws. He leapt up and locked his front paws over the fork of a tree, this reminded me of movies where mountaineers jump in a last ditch effort to make the summit and often risking their lives in doing so. Eventually he managed to pull himself up this 4 meter high tree giving him the most incredible viewpoint to scan for any potential prey or predator.

Minutes passed, his eyes then locked onto something in the distance, his body stiffened and he began to snarl and hiss at this approaching animal. It was two Spotted Hyena who had their noses down to the ground trying to follow the scent of this cheetah. Hyena will often follow the scent of cheetah and leopard in hope that the animals have killed and thus being able to quickly run in and steal a quick meal. Immediately this male cheetah jumped out of the tree and it was not an area of immediate security. We speculated that he might jump and run to escape the brute force of these two hyenas. However, he turned and faced this force standing his ground and intimidating the hyena. “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” ― Nelson Mandela

his stand-off lasted around 10 minutes, the cheetah did not move at all, frozen like a statue with an extremely rigid body and making himself seem larger than he was. The hyenas were playing it cool and even began to eat the branches of the Knob-thorn tree. The younger of the two hyena, looped around pushing its associate closer to the cheetah. This was the final step for the cheetah as he launched his body directly at this hyena, his teeth snarling and front legs out with their claws aiming at this hyenas head. The first hit missed the head but caught its body, but the second hit was what many boxers would dream of. The front paw landed directly on the head leaving a ripple of movement through the hyena’s face, the paw dragged down and across the ear sending the hyena jumping into the dead branches of the Knob-thorn tree. The cheetah moved slowly off whilst the hyenas just stood there in a complete shock and amusement of what had just happened.

It is moments like these in the bush where you realize we can never predict what will happen and the outcome, as the more fragile and delicate cheetah stood up to the intimidating brute force of two hyena, complete courage and an incredible sighting. “The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of a final moment; but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy.” ~ John F. Kennedy