A cheetah caught jumping into a safari vehicle in the Serengeti created a Twitter storm because it was caught on video; good thing, because the look on one passenger’s face couldn’t be described in a thousand words, let along 280 characters.
Britton Hayes, the son of Seattle KOMO NewsRadio anchor Elisa Jaffe, found himself next to a wild cheetah while his tour group was out watching a pack of the animals recently, according to the Twitter message that was posted Thursday.
The group was watching three cheetah brothers hunting in the Gol Kopjes when one of the cheetahs started checking out the vehicle by jumping on the hood, KOMO reported.
"We started to notice the cheetahs became curious of the vehicle," Hayes told KOMO News. "But it was too late to drive quickly away or anything like that because you don't want to startle the animals, because that's when things usually go wrong."
Hayes said while his group focused on the cheetah that jumped on the hood of their SUV, a second cheetah from the pack leaped in the back seat.
"Alex (my guide) kept me calm and made sure I never made eye contact nor startled the cheetah, allowing the animal to see that it could trust us," Hayes told KOMO News, adding that their actions allowed the curious cheetahs eventually to just walk away. "Honestly, it was probably one of the scariest moments of my life while it was happening.
"I felt like I had to clear my mind of any thoughts because from everything you're told about predators like that, they can sense fear and any sort of discomfort you're feeling and they'll react accordingly. I wanted to be as calm and as still as possible to avoid a bad outcome," Hayes continued.
Jaffe told KOMO News that Hayes did not tell her about the scary incident until he returned from the safari.
"I was worried that (she) might freak out and would've forced me to come home," Hayes told KOMO News. "So I figured it's best to not have (her) worry, when there's not much you can do about it when I'm that far away.
The Serengeti National Park in Tanzania is the home of two million wildebeests along with thousands of gazelles and zebras who share the space with globally threatened or endangered animal species like the black rhinoceros, elephant, wild dog, and cheetahs, according to its website.
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