Five baby cheetahs were born at the National Zoo on April 14th (three girls and two boys), and they are available for public viewing for the first time on June 25th. Adult cheetahs can be individually recognized by looking at the stripes on their tails, and each cheetah's tail is unique like a person's fingerprints. Even the two sides of a cheetah's tail are different. The baby cheetahs have been shaved on different body parts (such as the left rear leg), so that their keepers can tell them apart.
Guess who?
It reminds me of a story I remember reading from the infamous former editor of Vogue (and doyenne of style), Diana Vreeland. She had a wonderful anecdote about Josephine Baker, by then living in Paris, and her pet cheetah, Chiquita.
Vreeland had gone to a Montmartre film theatre to see a film, L'Atlantique, about lost Foreign Legion soldiers in a desert oasis. The delirious soldiers dreamed of the beautiful Queen of the Lost Continent who was surrounded by a fountain of champagne with basking cheetahs. When the lights went up in the theatre, Mrs. Vreeland was shocked and delighted to find she was sitting next to Chiquita, Miss Baker's pet cheetah. Josephine told Diana she had brought Chiquita for an outing so that she could see the cheetahs in the film. Outside the hot theatre, an enormous white and silver Rolls Royce was waiting for Josephine Baker and Chiquita. Diana Vreeland describes how the driver opened the car door, Josephine let go of the cheetah's lead, Chiquita whooped and took one elongated leap into the back of the Rolls Royce, with Miss Baker in her white couture Vionnet dress leaping in behind: a vision of glamour and speed and legs, legs, legs. Mrs. Vreeland always said that for her, that one image always summed up the style and cultural climate of the Deco years.
Josephine Baker and Chiquita
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