21:54, Thursday, 24 May, 2012

Happy birthday Grandma!  I love and look up to you very much.

Slept in yesterday because it was too wet to traverse out.  When I awoke and was laying comfortably in bed, I heard some faint rustling outside my window, and slowly unzipped so I could discover what it was.  There was a family of dik-dik right in front of me, and I watched them for about 20 minutes.  The tiny baby would dart this way and that and run back to nurse from its mother, while she and the father wandered about foraging.  Such delicate and beautiful creatures.  They lift their spindly little legs high and deliberate when walking, twitching their tails something like white-tailed deer.  Their eyes are disproportionately large, with the gland where they mark stalks of grass big and black in the corner, their noses pointy black and twitchy.  And I was impressed at how flawlessly they darted through the brush when leaving.  It’s moments like these that remind me how very anthropocentric our universe has become.  Here these tiny little creatures are living their lives, and they do not disappear when we move on with our day after a morning encounter.  Couldn’t we just as easily exist as a different form of life?

I spoke into the DVR again last night, and transcribed this morning.  The typing-up part was not half as bad as I was anticipating!  Michelle helped me through it very patiently.  But on obs it was just Benson and me.  At the den we found the gajillion cubs, all in a huge clump so that I had a heck of a time attempting to ID each one for my scan.  Scrabble was nursing either Tuli or Great Smokey (national parks lineage) in den hole 3, I think it was.  It is astonishing how very alike Scrabble, Parcheesi, and Monopoly’s faces look.  Funny when you start to recognize hyena family resemblance; it’s yet another confirmation of how strongly genetics shape life.  Speaking of Monopoly, I forgot to mention that she was nursing the other night, and Loki came up and licked her nursing cubs.  It was extremely sweet and unexpected; these two hyenas are unrelated.

I am incapable of leaving out stories of the bushbabies and Kelsey.  I just love them to pieces.  Kelsey put her little paws up on my chair looking for food last evening, and when I touched her nose she didn’t flinch.  A bushbaby chased her off just as she was about to accept the guacamole-covered chipate I had saved for her, so I stayed about 15 minutes in the lab tent after the others had gone to bed to make sure she got it.  While I was waiting, the bushbabies were sniffing noisily around.  I had to spare a little piece for the baby (the others had already received a-plenty).  I held a small piece of chapati out, and that bushbaby stood on its hind legs and stared me in the eyes, sniffing uncontrollably loud and clearly very nervous.  It would jab its hand in and grab a piece before nearly spitting with the tremendous breaths it was taking and then leap-bound away.  It returned after the first piece, and I attempted to give it another, but when it stood sniffing like an olympic sprinter and nervously grabbed at the food, it drew back its hands with nothing in them and looked so confused before throwing an indignant sniff-spit tantrum and bounding away.  There was also a moment when one of the adults came flying out of the night onto one of the tent poles, grabbing on flawlessly to the side exactly like Spiderman.  Clearly he should have been called Bushbabyman.  At any rate, I found Kelsey on the path back to my tent, and when I knelt down she keenly ran up to take the chapati I had saved.

This morning Michelle and I drove out on obs while the other three went darting.  We saw tiny little black cubs, probably six weeks old, at the den.  I cannot even begin to express how cute they are.  They head-bob to absolutely everything, even guinea fowl and plants blowing in the wind (according to Kay), cautiously avoiding any confrontation with other hyenas through instant appeasement.  A good survival mechanism at that age.  We think these cubs might be either Amazon or Yogurt’s, more likely Yogurt’s since Amazon was not acting very momish.  We only glimpsed Yogurt running off on our way in.

The others darted, and while heading over to help them, I really had to empty myself.  Hate doing so out in the middle of the savanna where any Tom, Dick, or Harry could drive up, but I didn’t have a choice.  So we wait until presumably no one is around, and I go squat by the side of the car.  While in the process I look up to see a hot air balloon in clear range.  Can you imagine looking down from your peaceful safari balloon ride to find someone in such a compromising position?  Come to find out later, the BEAM kids flew today, and recognized that we had made a darting.  Good God in Heaven, please say that’s all they recognized.  They must have been in that balloon – it was the only one around.  Not funny, God.  Not at all funny.

Two hyenas – Harpey and Ted – had been darted at the same time, so we had to work quickly.  It was necessary to take body measurements on Ted first as he was still going down, head bobbing beneath the cloth.  Then I took her teeth measurements with the calipers.  All went well, and they were loaded into the back of the cruiser like people in an ambulance to speed off to their recovery bush.  Michelle and I took the samples back to start centrifuging them and preparing tubes for the various blood work. 

21:37, Friday, 25 May, 2012

Back in camp, I got full bloodwork training.  I think it is so amazing.  While the samples are being centrifuged, we prepare many viles labeled with the darted hyena’s name, ID number, sex, the date and sample type: serum, buffy coat (white blood cells), red blood cells, plasma, and EDTA whole blood.  When the blood samples are all centrifuged, the red blood cells sit at the bottom of the tube.  A thin layer of white blood cells then separates the red blood cells from the serum, which sits on top.  We pipette out the plasma and serum into tubes first, then break off the tip of the pipette to make a wider hole that sucks up the clumps of white blood cells.  Finally, we stick that pipette to the very bottom of the tube to gather red blood cells.  We also use thoroughly mixed whole blood to generate DNA samples by adding red blood cell lysis (to break up the red blood cells, which have no DNA), then centrifuge it so the whole cells (the DNA-containing cells) sink to the bottom, where they stick.  We poor out the red blood, then add cell lysis to break up the cells and make the DNA accessible.  Kay further showed me how to make one cell-thick slides for microscope viewing with a capillary tube.  You tap the blood in a thin line and then gently smear it across the slide.  All of the samples we prepare will ride back to Michigan State with Kay in June.

Kay’s friends from Rhode Island are visiting – they are great people, really great people.  Paula, the woman, was Kay’s roommate in college if I understand correctly.  It’s her and her husband.  The table is nice and full at meal times!

I think I must have a very odd sense of fun.  No one else likes doing blood work, and I had an absolute blast when our car got hopelessly stuck last evening.  It got to the point where we were all fairly covered in mud, hauling rocks and branches from the nearest bush thickets to try and build our way out.  Eventually my shoes were absolutely caked, so I ditched them and went slogging through the mud and across the savanna barefoot.  I saw my first Kenyan frog hopping along!  After at least an hour of hauling and building up the wheel, not to mention jacking up the car (which I played no part in because I’m pretty sure my fright of the jack qualifies as a phobia), we finally had a go at driving it out.  Rev rev rev....almost....nope.  Only sunk further.  We resigned to waiting for Kay (whose phone was not working) to return to camp, all climbing atop the car to watch the savanna become cloaked in night.  The stars came out, and I almost started crying because they were so beautiful in the big treeless dome above.  The big dipper was enormous and especially twinkly.  We laughed as we listened to each other’s “getting stuck” stories (it is not at all an uncommon occurrence out here, especially when it rains like it has been).  Benson shone around with the light every once in a while as an upset elephant screamed in the distance.  Only tommies and topis on our plain, the topis who were none to happy to see us as expressed in huffs and snorts.  I decided it was a good time to pose the question of whether each of us would rather be squished or tusked by an elephant; after all, that would advise our escape tactic should one decide to be grumpy, and is really quite an interesting ponder.  We all decided squashed in the end; I was the only one who wavered.  I just think being tusked would make a much better obituary.  But don’t worry Mom and Dad, nothing was really going to happen.  Although I hear say that some elephants from a different forest region were released in this area about five months ago.  Apparently poachers were causing too big of a problem where they were.  This group of elephants is known to be more hostile toward humans, and who can blame them?  Sounds like they may have defeated the purpose and found their way home though.  The story is a bit muddled.  Excellent creatures, elephants.

Tilt’s GPS points show that she is up and well!  What a relief.