I met with my next ride to Mkuze, to learn that we had to dash back to check on a cheetah cub and mother. The cub had been darted that morning to return him to the reserve, as he had squeezed out through a gap in the fence, and we needed to try to locate him and the mother to see if they had reunited. A dead impala had been left as bait to try to lure them all to the same place. When we checked the impala was untouched, and so we loaded it into the truck with us, and drove it around in the back of the truck with us for the rest of the afternoon. The impala very generously shared every critter that was crawling on it....I can tell you that ticks can jump a huge distance!

That evening we set up a camera trap in a secluded part of the reserve away from the public roads, and near to a hyaena den. We left the impala there, and sat and waited there in the dark. Within 10 minutes we could hear the hyaena calling as they smelt the impala. To be fair, by that stage after hours in the sun in the back of the truck it was possible to smell the impala from a significant distance!

The next day we returned to check the camera, to find the impala untouched....I was most relieved that we left the impala where it was and didn't attempt reloading it back into the truck.....