One green season afternoon at Bomani, Imvelo guide Vusa is in the field scouting and sending intel back to the lodge – where guide Ndaba is about to leave with guests on a game drive. News of a lioness marching purposefully across the plains comes over the radio. 

While watching the lioness, the two male cheetahs we call The Chiz Boys (brothers Scar and No-Scar), spring up in front of her. Without skipping a beat, she takes off after them – followed in hot pursuit by her current beau, Lobengula. Just then Mzilikazi, the other half of the two-lion coalition, charges in from the left, and the two cheetahs split up, Scar running east and No-Scar running west. 

Our vehicle stays with Mzilikazi and No-Scar – watching the lion as he makes short powerful charging rushes at the cheetah and pushes him further by trotting after him, while No-Scar is skillfully keeping out of harm’s way. After about two kilometres, it is clear that Mzilikazi has had enough of trying to catch a male cheetah in his prime – he growls and grunts and turns back.

No-Scar carries on for a few hundred meters, calling with a soft mewl, scanning the surrounding area, trying to locate his brother. Eventually, he sits and calls continuously, scanning around, clearly agitated. He and his brother have been together for nearly eight years, born on the Bomani concession. As youngsters together, they dispersed as far as the Zambezi Valley escarpment above Lake Kariba, spent some years there then came back, Scar sporting a massive snare injury around his waist. 

A Tense Standoff

Our vehicle leaves No-Scar to go and find out what has happened to Scar – last seen with the lioness and Lobengula 20 minutes earlier. After a lot of searching, we found the two lions again, who link up with Mzilikazi at sunset but by dark, there is still no sign of Scar, and No-Scar is on his own. There are perhaps only some 20 cheetahs in Hwange, and to imagine that one of the males in a most successful coalition has been killed, is worrying.

No-Scar searches for his brother

CONTINUED…

Scar, one of our famous cheetah coalition The Chiz Boys, is missing after a dramatic encounter with two lions and a lioness last afternoon. 

The next morning both vehicles are out again, finding no sign of either cheetah, and now even the lions have vanished. Guides and guests are filled with dread. 

In the afternoon, just a few hundred meters from camp, while watching some handsome waterbuck bulls splashing in shallow water with emerald green grass surrounding them, we spot the cheetahs! Under a tree, two of them, together again, stretched out contentedly, surrounded by woolly-necked storks. How we all love a happy ending!