Good Try

BySafani Gunasekera

One early morning, when we were returning to the bungalow after our pre-breakfast roaming inside the Yala national park, we came across this leopard who seemed to be preying on another animal. We put our hunger aside and waited to see what was going to happen. The leopard was aiming at a rabbit. It had its body as low as possible to the ground with its tail lowered. It was amazing to watch the way it slowly moved towards the rabbit, quietly taking one step at a time, waiting and again taking another step, as not to alert its prey.

Unfortunately for the leopard, the rabbit detected it at the last moment and came running and hid under our safari vehicle. The hunter gave up the chase and climbed on to a tree. We went back to our bungalow to have breakfast, thinking about the leopard who possibly didn’t have any that morning.
(Yala National Park; May 2014)

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