The Leopardess

The other day I went to the zoo looking to snap some closeup leopard photos - now there's this leopardess that was captured last year from the mountainous wild since she had become a cattle lifter and the next graduating step for her was quite plausibly man-eating - so before she turned her harassment of the frontiersman to fatal effect - she was trapped and brought over to our local zoo.

Now the dilemma was ~ owing to her aggressive and mischievous reputation ~ zoo authorities had ensured that the wire mesh on her enclosure's grill was overly narrow ~ so even with my 12x zoom lens I couldn't get a clear shot of her from a distance of few feet...so against my better judgment somehow the condescending keeper convinced me to take a few quick pics through a slightly opened door...now I've done some volunteer work and been next to lions and tigers but this was something totally without precedent for me...leopard is by far the most cunning of all cats - and according to every dictate of sense and reason - never to be trusted...

However, I was amazed to find the great cat totally relaxed ~ there was not a single growl or hiss and it almost seemed as if the solitary feline kinda relished some company for a while ~ so I was able to take some decent snaps ~ though at one point it became perceptibly tense when she shifted her back legs underneath her torso to attain the classic pre-strike profile ~ I felt then the spring was inevitable...had she launched herself it would've taken the leopardess a split second to cover the three metres or so between us...but fortunately it never came and the beautiful cat calmly posed for quite a while before gracefully strolling away...