The ranger stood on the dirt road, facing south, and the rest of us, scattered about the parked safari truck, facing north and paying close attention to what she was saying. The sun was slipping quickly below the red sand dunes to our west, and the day\u2019s warm breeze was rapidly changing to a chill wind. She talked about what we might see after we remounted the safari truck, which we had just driven out of the campground at the southern end of Kgalgadi Transfrontier Park, where we were staying in the South African camp, just across from the Botswana camp. This would be a night drive, cold, dark, uncomfortable seats, loud engine in the giant 26-seater truck, scanning the brush and the roadside with three or four strong spotlights wrangled by volunteers among the nature-loving tourists, and of course, the headlights of the truck. But for now the sun was still up and if anything interesting came along we\u2019d see it just fine in the dusk.<\/p>\n
And, of course, something interesting came along. Just as the ranger was telling us that we might see wild cats \u2013 well, not wild cats, but rather, Wildcats, the wild version of the domestic cat, Felis silvestris lybica, one of those cats popped its head out of the brush about 50 feet beyond her. As she continued her monologue about these cats, the Wildcat cautiously walked in our direction, never taking its eyes off of us, stiff-legged, ears motionless, striped like a standard \u201ctiger\u201d domestic cat but entirely in grays. The most interesting thing about this cat was lack of kitty-cat-ness. It was not a kitty cat, even though all of its relatives in the Americas were. It was deadly serious, intense looking, nothing like a kitty cat at all. And just as the ranger finished her monologue with \u201c\u2026 so if we\u2019re lucky, we\u2019ll see one of those cats\u201d the person standing next to me intoned, in a mimicking fake british-sounding accent to match the ranger\u2019s South African dialect, \u201cYou mean like that one, there?\u201d and all of us pointed simultaneously to the wildcat now about 10 feet behind her.<\/p>\n
She turned, looked, and by the expression on her face I guessed she was thinking \u201cGoodness, I\u2019m glad that was not a lion.\u201d<\/p>\n
… READ THE REST HERE … <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The ranger stood on the dirt road, facing south, and the rest of us, scattered about the parked safari truck, facing north and paying close attention to what she was saying. The sun was slipping quickly below the red sand dunes to our west, and the day\u2019s warm breeze was rapidly changing to a chill … Continue reading Feral Cats as Invasive Species<\/span>