Taking care

by Darren

Parents can be frustrating, but they also give so much to help us on our way in life. Mine have been here this weekend to celebrate their 40th Wedding Anniversary (it was actually last week while I was out in the Philippines). Thanks Mum and Dad for everything, and congratulations on this momentous achievement.

Fathers don’t tend to hang around in the cheetah world so this mother is on her own. The tag might make you think this is a captive animal but it’s not, and I guess is just part of a programme monitoring the big cats of the Masai Mara. She has a difficult job – the survival rate for cheetah cubs is just 5% or one in twenty. That’s not to say that we should blame the lions or hyenas that tend to be responsible for this statistic: they have to eat, but we should recognise the difficult job she has in raising a newborn to a point where it can make it’s way in the world.