"Cheetah Girls, Cheetah Sistahs"

I glanced down at my hand--it smelled like a mix of Bubba and raw meat.  I'd just stroked two of the 10,000 living cheetahs left in the world.  I squinted my eyes into the searing South African sun as the cheetah trainer said with disbelief in his voice, "In about 15 to 20 years, cheetahs will be extinct.  The whole lot of them."    Within 30 feet from me were three cheetahs; one male, two female.  The trainer continued: "So on the right we have Mikka, the male, and on the left, two females, Savannah and Shadow.  Hopefully they'll mate and produce offspring but if Savannah and Shadow don't like Mikka or Mikka is sterile, nothing will happen."  Nothing will happen.  That meant, one less cheetah to carry on the genes.  One less cheetah in Africa.  In the world.  Eventually "one less" would add up and there would be none.  Did these animals, each with over 3,000 spots on their bodies, feel the pressure?  Did Mikka feel the pressure?  He's being tested this week to see if he can have offspring.  If he couldn't...it would be devastating.  One less cheetah makes a huge difference when there's only 10,000 left around the world.  That number might sound like a pretty good chunk until you hear that there are an estimated  690,000 elephants in Africa alone.  20 years from now when I tell my kids I pet a cheetah in the summer of 2011 they'll look at me and say:  What's a cheetah?  And I'll have to describe the graceful and lightning-fast animal to them because chances are they'll never see one.