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Marula Mafasi

My love affair with a leopard

By Rachel Tobias

March 17^th, 2018

The Hunt

I am off on my first safari drive only a couple of hours after arriving at Tanda Tula. With Ant as my guide and Given as my tracker, we head out into the bush, with all the trimmings of an Indiana Jones movie. As night falls, Given picks up the tracks of a male leopard, who we follow for several hours, plunging the 4x4 into the brush and sending my body violently into the depths of adrenaline. Given’s flashlight peers through branches, down into the dry riverbed, in search of those unmistakable rosettes. I feel dazed; lost between the incomprehensibility of chasing one of the continent’s most powerful hunters in the dark, and the hopeful anticipation of meeting. Finally, we spot him, for a moment, and just as quickly, he moves off, into the coming darkness, living up to his elusive name.

The following morning, we return to the road. The winter air is cold, yet my cheeks are flush with excitement, still reeling from the night before. It is this morning that I will meet my second leopard. She is called Marula.

PURE SOVEREIGN

We can likely all agree on the impressive continental dominion of African cats. But female cats, and female leopards in particular, are a species quite profound. After all, the Shangaan word for leopard, ingwe, means ‘pure sovereignty.’ When I first see Marula, I am struck not just by her elegance, but by her air of complete self-reliance. In short, she is a strong, independent, badass lady leopard. She is queen. Pure, sovereign, queen.

Leopards are solitary mammals, and females are made of courage and grace that no male can ever rival. A female leopard maintains her own territory, hunts for herself and for her cubs, and will do whatever it takes to protect her young. Infanticide is common, and if she believes her cubs are threatened, she will go so far as to go into false oestrus to distract a threatening male. (And a male leopard’s ‘member’ is barbed, so it’s not a walk in the park, if you catch my drift.) She is a teacher; a hunter; a protector and a provider; she can carry prey of her own body weight to the top of a tree. She reigns over her territory, and we stand in awe of her.

My first time watching Marula feels thankfully endless. She is feeding on the head of an impala, which she has dragged high up into the branches of the ancient leadwood tree, but it is all just beautiful. Her stare is piercing; I feel as though she can see right through me. I am insignificant. I am aware of the sound of bones cracking beneath the teeth of a powerful predator. But it somehow blends into the silence. We sit beneath her, loyal subjects.

A Second meeting

Several months later, I return to the Timbavati. We have searched for Marula high and low, for days, which have now become weeks. But she has been absent, having recently lost her two newborn cubs, and on my last day in the bush, I have nearly given up.

But it is a special day. I am with Ant, and Given is tracking, just as it was on my very first time meeting Marula, my very first time in Africa. We are down to less than an hour on this last drive, before I must head to the airport. We are tracking lion, when Given suddenly raises his hand and Ant brings the vehicle to a halt. Given has picked up on the tracks of a leopard. “Mafasi,” I hear him say in Shangaan, as he studies the tracks. Female. He sets off to see where they lead, while we wait with the vehicle, with the other guests, I doing everything in my power to keep my hope in check.

Minutes later, Given steps out onto the road and waves, and we race to meet him. “I have found the leopard,” he says, as he climbs back onto the tracking seat. “Now you must find her,” he grins. My eyes scan the nearby leadwood trees in the direction where he had come from, desperate. And then I see her.

I feel frozen in the time it takes to drive from that patch of road to the tree in which Marula lies. When we finally stop beneath its branches, I am overcome. I feel the tears on my face almost immediately, and though I try to hide them with my camera, I can’t make them stop. This animal, this remarkable predator, is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. And her presence overwhelms me. It is a mixture of awe, relief, and sadness. Awe, of her beauty, her power, her unquestionable sovereignty. Relief, in being reunited with someone you love, someone who you lost, for a time. And sadness, in realizing that goodbye must return, once again.

Given looks back at me and registers my tears. He holds my gaze with kindness and pauses for a moment. “It is magic,” he says. It is all he has to say.