In the natural world power is often conceived to be the most important factor. What determines power? Is it bravery, courage, curiosity, size or are these just all qualities that are needed to work in harmony instead of being just a ‘thing’?!

"The encouraging thing is that every time you meet a situation, though you may think at the time it is an impossibility and you go through the tortures of the damned, once you have met it and lived through it you find that forever after you are freer than you ever were before. If you can live through that you can live through anything. You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, `I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' The danger lies in refusing to face the fear, in not daring to come to grips with it. If you fail anywhere along the line, it will take away your confidence. You must make yourself succeed every time. You must do the thing you think you cannot do." Eleanor Roosevelt

This is exactly what we were so fortunate to witness earlier this week as we had an incredible interaction between four leopards: Tortilis male, Maxabeni male, Nottins and her cub.

The evening before all chaos let loose! Warthog Wallow female had successfully killed a large impala ram and had stashed it in a thicket, after doing so she went to retrieve her son, Tortilis male. He is fathered by the old resident male leopard Mahlathini and not Maxabeni.

The next morning started off with excitement with us responding to the last known position of the kill. As we arrived we noticed the Tortilis male sleeping in a Marula tree with his prize, the impala ram. He lay there so confidently without a care in the world and watched over his mother’s territory. Warthog Wallow was nowhere to be seen, however the distance alarm calls of Vervet monkeys coming from a drainage line allowed us to assume her location, but was it?

Thirty minutes passed and the constant chattering and barking of the monkeys grew louder and closer to us. Suddenly over the rise appeared the massive dominant male leopard, Maxabeni, his nose in the air on the scent of the impala carcass. The Tortilis male, who was now stranded up in the tree, began to snarl, hiss and produce an eerie like scream for fear of his life. A deep growl began to echo from Maxabeni as he began to scent mark around the tree asserting his dominance. He stood there surveying his surrounding and trying to work out a tactical plan much like that of a general entering a war zone.

Suddenly Maxabeni ascended the tree within seconds in search of the young Tortilis male who was now shaking at the thinnest outer most branches of the tree. What happened next was like watching a professional boxer try to fight a young amateur. The amount of punches that were directed straight at Tortilis male was incredible and the noises were deafening. The thin branch cracked almost in slow motion dropping the young male who now by some miracle had managed to grip onto a lower lying branch with a single paw. He mustered all his strength and pulled himself up, the entire time he faced Maxabeni head on a true test of courage. "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave." Mark Twain.

Maxabeni moved down and started to reposition the impala carcass and feed on the fowl smelling carcass.

As if this was not enough, over the radio a call came in that Nottins and her cub were on their way directly to the impala carcass. She moved swiftly through the grass with no idea of what commotion she was walking directly into. The cub caught sight of the carcass and began to do a trot towards the tree; he stopped, looked up and saw the sight of two male leopards in the tree. The curiosity on the cubs face was incredible, all he wanted to do was to jump up, feed and play with the impala carcass. To add more drama a lone hyena made her way to the sighting, alerted by the smell and commotion of this once in a lifetime sighting. As the hyena began to walk under the tree Nottins came storming out of the bushes and smacked the hyena on the nose, all in defense of her cub and possibly due to frustration of not being allowed to feed.

Minutes passed and our eyes still didn’t know where to look; was it at the fearful Tortilis male, the now sleeping Maxabeni male next to the carcass, the cub climbing a neighboring tree or Nottins watching everything from the grass. Eventually curiosity and courage built up within the cub, with exuberating energy he climbed the tree and began to feed on the carcass. The underlying growls from Maxabeni did not bother this now brave soul.

As they young cub began to feed a large black swarm of flies rose off the carcass and moved to the nearby branches. The swarm of flies was too much for the now fat and content Maxabeni. Balancing like a tight ropewalker Maxabeni made his way to the main trunk of the tree, only to be blocked by the now arrogant cub that was wrestling with his prize, the impala ram’s head. The closer Maxabeni got to the cub the more the cub would growl back at him, unfazed the commanding male continued his approach.

What greeted him next was a paw straight to the head from the young cub. This act of bravery seemed to annoy Maxabeni and he immediately descended the tree and took shelter in the nearby tree-line.

That afternoon we returned to the sighting with all our excitement brewing as what had happened during the day. There was nothing, no carcass, no hyena nor any sign of the four leopards that had been seen there that morning.

We can all speculate and try to guess what had happened, my account of the sighting is this, Warthog Wallow and her son were feeding on the carcass when Nottins found the two and chased them off asserting her dominance. Nottins then went to retrieve her young cub from the den and on her return had found the stubborn young male Tortilis with the kill. It may have been the noise from a potential fight or the scent that had brought the Maxabeni male to the sight. All in all it was one of my most exciting and memorable sightings in my guiding career.