Cheetahs

Our final activity on Sunday was going to Spier to a Cheetah Outreach program. You can pay to pet a cheetah! My first thought was, this is just like in China! My second thought was, if I didn't pay to hold a panda, why would I pay to pet a cheetah? A bunch of people were going to do it so I was convinced to go too. It was 80 rand for an adult, and 160 rand for cubs. The woman selling the tickets said you get more time with the cubs. Feeling cheap, I was going to stick with the adult, but it's a good thing I didn't for two reasons: 1) You really do get a lot more time with the cubs, maybe because there are 4 of them. 2) Looking in the pen, I thought the cubs were the adults. All I knew about cheetahs were that they are fast, and smaller than lions. The cubs are 6 months old so they're not all that little anymore, and it's not like I remember what adults look like from TV.

Petting the cheetahs was ok. They were cute up close. (Again no long lens!) It was mostly uneventful, which is a good thing. Though the third cheetah was a little disturbed by some nearby dogs and rolled over into a ready-to-kill position while I was petting it. I was pretty much done by then.