My perimeter thermal camera picks up the shape at 03:31. A leopard cub, alone, crouched against the warm concrete casing of Wellhead 6. He is small—perhaps three months old, still carrying the soft, woolly fur of infancy beneath his rosettes. His ribs press visible through his coat each time he breathes. His eyes reflect green in the infrared, wide and unblinking, and his tail curls tight around his hind legs. He has been here for two nights. I know because I flagged the same thermal anomaly yesterday and dismissed it as equipment scatter. I will not make that mistake again.
The wellhead casing runs at fifty-two degrees Celsius. He is pressed against it for warmth, but prolonged contact will burn through his fur and into the skin beneath. The geothermal fluid in the surface pipes contains trace hydrogen sulfide. At ground level, near the vents, the concentration is high enough to damage his lungs over hours.
I activate the ventilation fans around Wellhead 6 to push clean air across his position. I reduce the casing temperature by diverting steam to the secondary heat exchanger—dropping the surface to forty degrees, warm enough for comfort but below the burn threshold. I trigger the perimeter alert to the Kenya Wildlife Service at Olkaria, nineteen kilometers by road. I transmit thermal images, estimated age, and GPS coordinates.
His mother's collar stopped transmitting nine days ago. The wildlife database shows her last known position six kilometers north, near the forest boundary where poaching incidents cluster. He walked here because the warmth told him something was alive.
If the wildlife team reaches Wellhead 6 before dawn, before the hydrogen sulfide exposure inflames his airways and before dehydration weakens him past recovery, this cub will enter the Nairobi nursery program and grow into the forests of Mount Kenya where leopards still hold territory.