You are a cheetah.
You are a single mom. You have had it tough, like all single moms, but you still have some good years left to go.
You have an impressive four hungry young mouths to feed not including your own apex predator appetite. Life is lived on the brink out here on the mean streets of the Masai. Cubs all too quickly fade into oblivion for any number of awful soul crushing reasons (disease, drought, starvation, murder at the teeth of other predators, murder at the hooves of angry herbivores, your mother and sole caretaker dies). No pressure on you to get this lot to adulthood with your species vastly on the decline due to a cruel genetic bottleneck and, what else, humans. No pressure at all, Charlotte. Better kill something edible soon or things could turn dire for these young uns. And yourself.
Baby-daddy is nowhere to be seen since that long weekend together in Vegas. You knew he wasn’t going to stick around. You always liked the bad boys.
The hot baking Masai day is rapidly diminishing into night. There has not been food, not even Arby’s, on the table in a few days. These kids won’t feed themselves. Better make a move while the sun is still yielding some light. Hunting at night is bad mojo. Terrible things come out at night.
What is a girl to do?
Time for a Cheetah drive-by!
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Start off slowly with a cool saunter through the grasslands. Yeah, you know that you look good! There are some shrubs up ahead that have previously yielded some punks that you rapidly gobbled up – Thompson’s gazelles, duikers, and the occasional impala…mmmm, impala. Remember how fast you are. If any snitches fall out of those shrubs you can get the drop on them before they even notice.
You are in luck! A bushbuck comes walking out of the shrubs with a ruminant gut full of leaves like some rube exiting a casino with its pockets loaded with cash. What an easy mark! Those big black glossy ungulate eyes haven’t spotted you. Instinct kicks in and you are running before you know it. The bushbuck realizes that the jig is up and takes a few steps, but its acceleration cannot outpace your full sprint. This is too easy.
There is a cloud of dust. Then, you commit a little murder on the grasslands under the waning sun. Hey, a girl has to feed her kids, right?
You are so tired from the sprint that you cannot bring yourself to dive right into the meal. Those kids haven’t eaten in days so let them have first crack. This meal is plenty big enough for all of us…As long as none of those nighttime hood-winkers come and take it from us. The vervet monkeys in the trees are doing their best to alert every hustler and gangsta out here to our banquet. You hate those monkeys. Better hammer down this meat quickly before any trouble arrives.
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Luckily, no one malignant shows up to rob your family of its murdered spoils. Tonight you all dine to your fullest capacity and then go to sleep fat and happy. Tomorrow, the hustle starts anew. There are so many suckers out here on the Masai. So many drive-bys to perform. You are a good mother, Charlotte. You will save this species!
