Niva's Task

Niva is a snow leopard who lives in the Himalayan Mountains, over 18,000 feet up in the air where very few ever dare to venture. She has made her home in the crags of two overhanging rocks where her two little cubs wait for her patiently. However, patience doesn't last long for the young and soon their are crying for something to eat. Niva rushes from her perch to soothe them before she decides to make the trek out to her favorite hunting grounds. Traveling in this cold mountain habitat is very precarious journey, but Niva has cubs to feed and can't back down no matter the cost.

Her first task is getting up to the altitudes where her main sources of prey come from. These include large game like blue sheep and ibex with some smaller creatures like pikas, hares, and marmots in between. The journey up the mountainsides are treacherous, with plenty of boulders that could break out under her paws and ice that anyone could slip on, most wouldn't dare to carry on. In Niva's case though, she can make through it without much trouble thanks to her claws that give her traction with built in snowshoes and her long tail that acts as a counter balance in order to distribute her weight more evenly.

After making it up the ridge to where she can get a better look of her surroundings, she lucky spots a lone blue sheep. Quietly she gets down from her perch and slowly makes her way towards the lone sheep. Normally, a blue sheep would be with a group of others of its kind, but this one is a male. It had recently challenged another male during the rutting season and lost in a bad way. Having to leave the fighting ring, he was now licking his wounds in hopes of being able to challenge again in the future, but his luck may have just run out.

The young blue sheep does not realize that a snow leopard is closing in. While blue sheep often congregate in lower elevations, they have been known to be up higher if the conditions are well enough. With him being injured and unaware that a snow leopard is closing in, he is truly tempting fate. With a flash of speed, Niva closes the distance and clamp onto the throat of the sheep. Struggling to recover, the young sheep tries to shake off his assailant, but after a number of futile shakes, the blue sheep falls to the ground and the big cat claims her prize. Once her prey is down, she begins to feed until her belly is full. After eating her fill, Niva rests a bit before she starts to drag her prize off towards her dwellings.

On the way back, clouds begin to roll in and snow soon starts to fall. Visibility drops below being able to see about fifteen feet in front her, so Niva decides to slow her pace and use her sense of smell and hearing to find her way back. The trek that she took on that morning was about a four mile journey from her den and with the weather getting worse, Niva was in a bind and about as blind as a bat would be. However, using her keen senses, she picks up the faints cries of her cubs and slowly starts moving towards them. After about another half hour of trudging through the snow and climbing over rocks, Niva finally makes it back to her den with her starving cubs. Soon this leopard family is comfortably chowing down on what dinner has been brought while Niva keeps watch outside her den. The world of this snow leopard is vast with great danger, but for her cubs she will face any challenge head on.