In this exciting story, follow a cheetah named Yarra, who escapes from Kafue National Park and a boy named Paul Jeremiah Anderson or PJ, who decides to escape from school and the police during a thunderstorm.
PJ's escape is motivated by his wish...
Ten miles away, northwest of the wood in which PJ was dressing and about four miles a little to Southern which is near to Livingstone, and the towns along the Livingstone-Lusaka road which are covered in From Livingstone to Lusaka, was Kafue National Park the largest national park in Zambia. Kafue National Park covers a massive area in western Zambia. It's known for its abundant wildlife and the Kafue River, running north to south through the park. In the north, the fertile Busanga Plains are home to lions, zebras, abundant birdlife and the sycamore fig trees of Busanga Swamps. In the more remote south, elephants and antelopes roam the Nanzhila Plains, and hippos swim in the waters of Lake Itezhi-Tezhi.
Part of the park had been turned into a wild animal reserve. Every day of the year cars rolled into Kafue National Park bringing tourists to see the treasures of the beautiful Mukambi Safari Lodge and also to see the Lions and the other animals which were kept in huge, penned-in stretches of the parkland. Every day, cars moved around the road, which twisted and twined through the high-fenced animal en closures.
The road ran first through the East African section which held giraffes, zebras, ostriches, and antelopes; and then on through the monkey jungle with its baboons that often cadged free rides on top of the cars; and so into the lion reserve where the kings of beasts sometimes lay lazily across the road- way refusing to move out of the path of the cars until the mood took them. Finally, the car procession entered the cheetah area.
Today, because it was February and a storm- and rain-filled day, there were no more than three or four cars in the whole animal reserv. At this moment, there was none in the cheetah section. In fact, there were few animals out in the enclosures either. They no more liked the rain and the storm than human beings. The baboons were in their dugouts and the lions in their wooden pens or stretched out on the sheltered verandahs of their huts. In the cheetah reserve, all the cheetahs were under shelter in their huts all, except one.
This cheetah was a female. Her name was Yarra. All the cheetahs in the enclosures had names. Apollo, Chester, Lotus, Suki, Tina, and Schultz. Yarra was a full-grown female. She weighed a hundred and thirty pounds. She stood nearly three feet high to her narrow, raking shoulders, and from the point of her black nose to the tip of her long tufted tail, she measured seven feet and one inch. Yarra was a good-tempered animal. She had been captured as a cub.
She was a magnificent animal. Under the rain, the spots on her tawny orange coat were as black as small wet coals. The dark lines of her face maskings, running from inside the eyes down around her muzzle, were boldly drawn charcoal lines. Her throat and underbelly were creamy white, and her eyes tawny gold. As she moved, she swung her long tail from side to side, flicking little sprays of rain from the tuft at its end.
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When the Cheetah Warden came into the enclosure in his Land-Rover and Yarra felt in the mood, she could jump in one easy long-flowing movement to the top of the driving cab. Sometimes, to give the cheetahs exercise, the warden towed a trail rope from the back of the Land-Rover with a piece of meat tied to it for the cheetahs to chase. Even though he accelerated to forty miles an hour, Yarra could easily keep up. If he had gone at sixty miles an hour, she could have held pace with the car for a while.
