The car is not food!

Yesterday morning I drove up to our Happy Zebra Clan's den and was greeted by ten little cubs running around and playing. Most of the royal family, Pike and her daughters, were there as well. I was having a lot of fun watching the adults in play with the youngsters and thought it was really cute how excited and playful everyone was acting. That was until they turned their attention to the car. Frequently, the cubs will play around and under our car or at least come up and check it out. If we hear them chewing we can hit the car door or turn the car on, and they will stop and run away.

Blue Band (Clov's daughter) chewing on what seems to be their favorite part of the maruti, the back bumper. 

This group of Happy Zebra cubs seems extra naughty. There are many bold cubs that don't seem to care at all if I am banging on the car door or even revving our engine. They just keep on chewing. Yesterday morning I tried all of the techniques that I knew to get them to stop, and nothing was working! Astacin, Silkwood's three month old son, came sprinting out from under the car with something in his mouth. When I looked closer it was some electrical stuff from one of our broken tail lights. I think I actually yelled, "No, we need that!!!" even though I was the only one in the car.

This is Astacin and the part he ripped off the car right before Pike took it. 

I was going to try and retrieve it, but I wasn't fast enough as Pike quickly approached Astacin and became the owner of the plastic and wire 'toy'. Just as that happened Claymore, Pike's sub-adult daughter, started pulling on our bumper! I (and our suzuki maruti) had had enough! Clay is huge now and I was not risking another part getting torn off! I had to drive away, carefully, from the den to get them to stop. When I drove back to try and get the wire I found Pike playing with it across the little stream behind the den, making retrieval impossible.