Birdie gave us a good scare!

We had quite a scare last week. As you know, Birdie has new cubs.  If you animate her tracks on http://www.abycats.com/klplionmap/index.html, you will see that she goes out every day but always returns home to the cubs.  Well, last week she spent four days in a different location, and we were not picking up any movements!  If you zoom in on the map, you will see that the mysterious location was smack dab in the middle of the lava fields, so in a location that is virtually impossible to access.  But we mobilized the lion guardians to head an expedition into the lava to see if we could figure out what was going on.  There were numerous possibilities.  Did she move her cubs?  But if she did, why wasn’t she going out to get water or food.  Had her collar somehow fallen off? Was she hurt?  Dead?  If she was dead, was it because of other lions?  Is there a new male in the area who tried to attack her cubs and she got hurt defending them?

Well, phew!  We were relieved because on the 5th day she started moving again and headed back to the cubs! We are still going to try to find out what happened.  Once we get a visual on her, we can see if she looks like she has been hurt.   But we are all breathing huge sighs of relief!