21:37, Friday, 18 May, 2012

On the path to the lab tent this morning I had to stop and turn off my headlamp so as to better view the stars.  They are beyond beautiful scattered across the enormously vast sky of Africa, big and winking at the equator.

I rode with Eli and Kay in the darting car, sitting in back with the gun and all of the supplies.  As we drove out toward Lone Tree, taking the long way as it was still quite wet elsewhere, we came upon a group of lions.  It was impossible for me to tell in the dark who they were, but we did see a couple of very skinny lionesses.  I hope the migration comes sooner this year than it did last for their sake!

Very fortuitously, we happened upon the adult female Yogurt, a low-ranker and the hyena of highest darting priority.  Eli was especially excited, because supposedly Dave has promised to buy a case of beer for us if we get her darted and collared for his project.  She is very spooked of the car though, for reasons no one is quite sure of since she has never been darted.  It’s possible she has seen someone else being darted.  But either way, she wasn’t near as spooky as usual this morning, so I handed up the box and watched Kay prepare a dart after stopping the car.  Mork (sp) and Gaza, two male hyenas, were attempting to court Yogurt, but she showed no interest.  Mork was even pawing the ground behind her at one point – a very cute courting gesture.  However, the males would make our mission more difficult, because apparently male hyenas will attack a darted female (probably because they never get a chance to feel above the higher-ranking females otherwise).  But Kay was convinced we could get between Yogurt and the males.

And so began our day of showing me how not to dart, as Kay said.  According to her, “there are about 255 things that can go wrong during a darting, and they about all went wrong this morning.”  First, while filling the dart, the Telizol (sp; the drug used for darting) decided to spray all over so that we almost didn’t have enough for the 2.5 CCs standard for darting an adult female hyena.  But Kay salvaged enough that we got the gun loaded.  Then something went wrong with the CO2 cartridge, and so we were slowed down, Yogurt growing more suspicious of us by the second.  Eventually she got settled down once more, and we were in prime position (the hyena really cannot be more than 25 meters away from the car) before promptly backing into what must have been the only hole on that entire plain, and sat there cock-eyed for about twenty minutes waiting for the others to pull us out.  Luckily the guys had made us muffins to eat in the mean time.  By some miracle, the three hyenas were still around after we were towed, so we tried again, but by this time Yogurt wouldn’t let us near her.  SO, then we decided to try Gaza, as he needs to be darted as well.  We got within range, and Eli shot him perfectly in the butt so that the red tufted dart stood out against the backdrop like blood on a white cloth as he sprinted away.  It was a bit hard for me to watch, because he was lying there so peacefully before we totally betrayed his trust.  He ran a ways, and then chased the dart in circles like a dog chasing its tail, grabbing a hold of it and pulling it out, which is apparently normal and fine because the needle stays put, only to be pulled out later when the hyena is sober again.  So we watched Gaza become “drunk;” he lay down, and we waited.  And waited.  And waited.  His head remained up.  He was fighting it will all his might.  Kay says he must have a liver like Superman, because 2.5 CCs normally takes down even a bigger female.  Eventually, after like twenty minutes, we drove up to him to assess the situation.  Yogurt, meanwhile, is watching this whole operation from a distance, and will doubtlessly be terrified of the car now.  Mork, Yogurt's polar opposite who doesn’t care about much at all, had already fallen back asleep and was totally unconcerned, although he remained close to Gaza.  They seem to be buds.  As we drove up, we noticed Gaza was drooling while laying there, and Kay thought maybe she could just walk up with a head-covering cloth and shoot him with a bit more drug by hand as she has before.  But as Kay walked toward him, Gaza got up and ran off!   We had no choice but to just stay with him until he recovered enough for us to move off, because he would lose trust in us forever were we to try and shoot him again.  My heart ached to see him hobble around as the drug wore off, his back legs limp. I think darting is going to be emotionally difficult for me, but maybe I will feel differently after the first time I stroke a live hyena.  And it would be unfair to judge darting based on such an atypically bad experience.

Well, we all had a good sense of humor about the whole thing.  It was quite funny, really, how everything went so wrong.  And maybe had the darting gone right, the males would have attacked Yogurt or something.  There must have been a reason.

Two of the most adorable baby elephants made a good addition to an interesting morning on the way back.  They were slogging about in the mud on the road with each other so that we were forced to stop and watch until they moved off the road (darn!).  SO CUTE.  A pregnant female was also off to our right; can you imagine carrying around a baby elephant?!  Good riddance!