Simon King - Diary

January has been a very busy month for me with the Wildlife Whisperer project. I saw the New Year in at the security check of Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Kenya. Wooohoooo! Boy oh boy, we sure know how to party!!!
We (Marguerite, Savannah and I) had been filming in Ol Pejeta and Lewa wildlife conservancies over the Christmas period and needed to get back to the UK early in the new year to start preparations for the launch of the WILDLIFE WHIPSERER website and our stand at the Outdoor Show at ExCel in London.
Filming at Ol Pejata included a search for Toki the cheetah and a visit to Lewa to catch up with a new little cheetah orphan whose progress we hope to chart through films on Wildlife Whisperer.
Sheba, as she is known, was found on Ol Pejeta in the most extraordinary of circumstances. There is a chimpanzee sanctuary in Ol Pej that gives succour and solace to chimps that have come from the most awful of backgrounds. Many of them have been confiscated from unscrupulous people using them as ‘props’ in the tourist trade to capture ‘cute’ photographs with clients. Some of these animals have been wrenched from their natural mothers who have been killed in the forests of West Africa. The result is a group of chimps, many of which are traumatised and in need of lifelong care. This they receive from the Sweetwaters chimpanzee sanctuary. They occupy a vast area, divided by a river, which is entirely surrounded by a 72 strand electric fence. Nothing can get out, or in…. or can it?

In September 2010, one of the Chimpanzee carers noticed a shrill chirping sound coming from deep inside one of the bushes inside the sanctuary. He thought little of it, but when, the following day, the sound was still coming from the bush he decided to investigate. To his amazement there crouched a tiny cheetah cub, no more than 8 weeks old, at the base of the bush. The fact that it had survived the attentions of the chimps (they can and do kill to eat meat) and that it was inside the well guarded sanctuary was nothing short of miraculous. How on earth did it get there and where was its mother?

Piecing together the possible events that surrounded the cub’s dilemma, it is likely that a family of cheetahs was attacked by a leopard or baboons somewhere close to the perimeter of the sanctuary. Typically, young cheetah cubs scatter when they are threatened and may try to climb a tree to avoid detection. This little scrap of a cat may have managed to scale the metre or so of fine mesh chicken-wire that surrounds the base of the enclosure, then push its way past the electric fence, perhaps receiving a shock in the process. The mother would not have been able to reach her cub and anyway would more likely have run with her surviving cubs away from the scene. A female cheetah with cubs of a similar age had been seen by Ol Pejeta rangers some days before, but she could not be located once the little orphan had been found.

The cub was taken to Lewa Wildlife Conservancy and into the care of Willie and Sue Roberts who live in and run Sirikoi, an exquisite game lodge in the heart of the reserve. Both have extensive experience of working with orphaned cats. Indeed Willie had lived with a cheetah orphan many years before that lived to a ripe old age, hunting for herself.

Sheba, as she is now known, was a ball of fury when she first arrived but quickly calmed and came to accept her new surrogate parents.

When we visited in December, she was some four months old and full of fun and high jinks. I filmed her chasing (and being chased by) the local population of vervet monkeys, and testing her running skills on guinea fowl, which frustratingly for a little ‘big’ cat kept taking to the air at the last moment! There was also a hilarious moment when she was showing off her tree climbing skills, only to slip and tumble into a very muddy bog below! Nothing hurt but her dignity, but one very soggy cat on film! We are in the process now of editing the material from the trip and all the films will be appearing on the Wildlife Whisperer website as soon as we have them ready.

Once back in the UK, the launch of the site and our stand at the Outdoor Show took over. Painting, building, sanding, and running around to procure all the necessary bits and bobs occupied the whole team.

To all those of you who came to the show, thank you so very much for visiting our stand and for all your kind comments. It seams the blend of Fieldcraft, Wildlife Gardening tips, Photography and Film Making as well as Wildlife Art, and Kids Activities was a mix you all enjoyed. We may well be doing something similar in the upcoming Gardeners World Live at the NEC in June. We hope to see you there.

After the show it was straight back into film-making, and work on the website which we are developing the whole time. I have been splitting my time between shooting (recently a film on how to chat up foxy ladies…. all will be revealed in the video section very soon), and post production on the material gathered in Kenya.

The early part of February was scarred by a family bereavement. My close family are still reeling from the loss. But the sun always shines somewhere behind the clouds, and I am starting to see the odd glimmer. I am currently staying with friends in Switzerland and the mountains are covered with powder snow. Alpine choughs whistle and swoop through the small town and great tits sing despite the wintery landscape. They know the spring is coming. So do I.

We have lots of exciting plans for new films and other developments on the website coming up. I hope you enjoy the journey with us.

Peace and Light

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