We caught a new cat at 04:05 this morning. The snare is just 300 meters from camp so we decided that it would stress the leopard less if we walked rather than taking the ATVs. On our way to the snare Friday joined us. She had been out hunting and now decided that it would be nice with some traveling companions. Our efforts to convince Friday not to follow us were futile and we didn’t want to go back to the ger with her. So the little cat was walking next to me like a well-mannered dog all the way until I put my lights on the snow leopard in the snare. The movie “Gone in 60 seconds” is nothing compared to Friday, she disappeared so fast when she saw the snow leopard that we didn’t even see her leaving.
The leopard is an older female, we guess that she is 7-8 years old but she could be up to 10, very hard to say. She weighed 35.7 kg and has lactated previously but was not lactating now. I am quite sure that we finally caught Agnes!! We first got pictures of her with two tiny cubs in summer 2009, though the cameras were not collected until spring 2010. Same week as I collected the cameras my grandmother passed away so I named the cat after her. Agnes the cat eluded us last time we were here but perhaps we have finally caught her. We’ll look at pictures later to compare.
It is very cold for being late April, we had about 5 degrees below zero plus a bone-freezing wind. When we had finished collaring and gathering samples we applied the hot-water bottles and wrapped the leopard in a windproof blanket and my Mongolian del (robe). She stayed there almost 30 minutes after we gave her the antidote, when she left we made sure that she was walking into a sunny area and that she had got her temperature back. While doing this we found leopard tracks heading for the snare. The distance between the pugmarks was about half of what is normal. Unless she had been stalking her way towards the snare (which seems unlikely) she must have had at least one cub with her.
OK, now it’s tea-time and shortly it will be nap-time.
A one-way ticket to Ulaanbataar 
May 9, 2012 at 8:13 am |
Hi. I loved reading about your experiences. Its the closest I guess I’ll get to snow leopards in the wild, although I do wish I get a chance to spot one in the wild.
I think the work you are doing is phenomenal! I live in India, and I am currently working with a wildlife magazine called Saevus. In our upcoming issue, we are featuring the snow leopard in our cover story with some wonderful images captured by the Indian wildlife photographer Dhritiman Mukherjee. I was wondering if you would like to share your most exciting encounter with a snow leopard to be published in the magazine. It would be rally amazing if you could. Please do let me know if you are interested.
Sorry for writing all this here, but this is the only channel I knew of to get in touch with you. Thank you.
Eagerly waiting for your next entry 🙂