17th August 2000
Soon after sunset Tjololo was on the corner of his south eastern boundary. How they found each other, initially without sound Tjololo met up with his male neighbour from the south east. They had met before, the encounter lasting about an hour without much ado.
For the rest of the night the 2 leopards would lie up growling at each other about 20m apart. At the same time they would often scrape mark in the grass and also roll over on their sides as if to say “see how cool and relaxed I am. I’m not scared of you.”
Then one would get up and the other would follow moving parallel to each other along their invisible boundary only to lie up again growling.
This went on the whole night with the leopards only having moved about half a km.
By dawn when we left they were still at and the Mala Mala rangers had them going on with it late into the morning.
We followed their every move hoping to capture that big event, but they never came together. A long frustrating night.
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