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| Meet cheetahs and eagles face to face |
Facilities at Spier feature magnificent creatures
 Naive of me, but I didn't expect a cheetah's fur to be so rought. We are patting Josie, a large male, at the Cheetah Outreach at Spier in Stellenbosch. this meet-a-cheetah facility is enormously popular and we queue for about 20 minutes to get into Josie's enclosure.
Cheetahs are the most endangered of African cats and could be extinct within a decade, largely due to loss of habitat and being hunted. Cheetah Outreach aims to help preserve these animals through education.
The cheetahs at Spier have been raised by people and will never be released into the wild, but nevertheless can be dangerous. Just before we enter the enclosure, our guide Richard Ashcroft reads a long list of instructions: only approach Josie from behind; lean down on one knee; pat him only on the sides and back.
"Do cheetahs ever get sick of humans patting them?" asks our photographer. "I hope he doesn't get sick of it when we're in there".
His caution is partly justified. No cheetah at Spier has ever attacked a member of the public, the cheetah handlers say, but these cats don't qualify as pets. They're too powerful; if they tried to play with us they could hurt us badly.
After a few minutes with the dozing cat - cheetahs sleep for 16 hours a day - I'm quite ready to leave. He seems content. His head in his handler's arms, lifting it occasionally with his eyes half-closed. But his body is lean and strong, his claws huge. I don't want to push our luck.
It's an unforgettable experience to be so close to this magnificent creature. But jus as good is the educational video. We learn that cheetahs face problems other big cats don't share. Their heads are relatively small, so they're less powerful than a lion. Their extraordinary speed is both a boon and a disadvantage.
The cheetah is the fastest land animal, able to accelerate from standstill to 80km/h in only three seconds; its top speed is 120km/h. Such speed is possible because their spines bunch up and release as they run, and their hips are extremely flexible.
At top speed, a cheetah does not touch the ground for eight meters. It is flying, rather than running. But sustaining such a speed could be fatal.
Cheetahs are much faster than buck, but can't keep their speed for long, so they must be within 30 meters of their prey before they can even start a chase. This takes careful stalking and some luck.
Many farmers trap cheetahs, leaving them to die slow, painful deaths. Cheetah Outreach has an innovative plan to help preserve the animals. It is breeding Anatolian sheepdogs - used in Turkey to protect livestock from wolves - for South African farmers.
The big, cream-coloured dogs are brought up with goats or sheep so identify with them completely. They will fight a predator to the death if necessary to protect their herds. But their mere presence is enough to deter a cheetah from attacking a herd, which means farmers don't need to set traps.
The dogs are very intelligent, says Ashcroft. He gives example. One Limpopo farmer was very worried one night when his herd of goats returned withour a female and the Anatolian sheepdog. Much later, the dog came back with a kid in its mouth.
This is what had happened: the dog had been in the hills with the herd when a pregnant female became tired and was struggling to keep up. The dog realised she was in trouble. It quickly herded all the goats back to the farmstead then went back to her. She gave birth and the dog made sure that both the goat and her kid returned safely.
About 10 farmers are already using the sheepdogs, one of them near a farm belonging to former environment minister Valli Moosa, who raves about the animals in the video.
Visitors could spend a whole day at Spier. We've been here for two hours already and have not had time for the winetasting, picknics and craft market.
But next door to the cheetahs we see Eagle Encounters - much less crowded than the cheetah place and equally interesting. At 2pm here, visitors can don gloves as the raptors hop from person to person feeding.
Owner Hank Chalmers, a falconer, shows us around. His passion for the birds is contagious. Many of the birds have been confiscated because they were stolen from nests in the wild. These animals cannot be rehabilitated as they have "imprinted" on humans, believing they are the same species.
Hank goes up to Bella, a female black eagle, and nuzzles her feathers with his face. Like a cat, the big bird nuzzles him back affectionately, raising her feathers as if preparing to mate. This is because she was hand-raised and thinks she is the same specis as Hank, he says. She would fight with Leo, the black eagle near her, rather than mate with him.
Next we meet martial eagle martine, whose single foot has the same crushing power as a lion's jaw and who once inadvertently damaged Hank's jaw and tore a vein in his face. But the spotted eagle owl Mom provides the best story.
She got her name after Hank passed her cage one day holding a spotted eagle owl chick. Mom went beserk, attacking her cage, so Hank went inside with the chick, keeping a safe distance, to see why se was so disturbed.
She immediately chased him away and started mothering the chick. Mom has a gammy leg and a gammy eye, but an outsized maternal instinct; she has now nursed 130 eagle owl chicks back to health.
Every day Hank enters her cage with food, calling out "Mom, Mom", and she hops off her perch and comes down to him. She takes the bits of food, one by one, and takes them up to the chicks in turn. she is so busy that sometimes she forgets to eat herself.
It is ironic that Mom's mothering continues unabated: her charges are all the size as her these days, if not even bigger.
It costs R40 for an adult's day pass to Eagle Encounter and R20 for a child. Experienced handlers are available to show visitors the birds all day, and there are several shows. At 11am, falcons eagles and hawks are trained to hunt; at 2pm in the interactive falconry display; in which visitors don gloves and hold food, and the birds jump or fly from person t person; at 3pm the secretary bird takes on a snake in a simulated hunt; at 4pm the falcons and kites are taught to dive for their food, using props and lures, to show how they would naturally hunt in the wild.
Log on to www.eagle-encounters.co.za or phone 021 858 1826 to find out more.
Entrance to Cheetah Outreach, which includes the tour and video, costs R10. The cheetah encounter costs R80 per adult and R40 per child under 12; meeting a cheetah cub costs R160 per child or adult. Log on to www.cheetah.co.za.
The general information number for Spier wine farm is 021 809 1913.
Cape Times - Tuesday, 8 January 2008
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