13:52, Wednesday, 13 June, 2012

So, hyenas.  Pieces of the drama of a world hidden continue to unfold. 

Some time last week we tracked good old Alice, now about 15 years of age, to the heart of a bush where she was feeding on a dead male cape buffalo – for the time being, low-ranking Alice had it all to herself.  She was FAT, fat and happy.  I have always been quite fond of Alice. At first this was mostly because Eli and Brian called her “Fat ugly Alice”, and I felt she needed a fan.  But now I love her for her own merit – not caring to be part of the hustle and bustle, a low profile low-ranker who does her own thing and has the most amazing cub ever.  Poor Alice though, her reproductive output has been quite awful.  Rebman is her only surviving offspring in fifteen years, compared to Helios who is only six and has popped out 8 babies, 6 of whom are doing very well.  It pays to be high-ranking, but Alice isn’t caught up in worrying about rank.  Living is enough for her.

Well, we left Alice to her buffalo and continued on to search for other hyenas.  Unable to find any, we returned to the buffalo, and Alice certainly no longer had it to herself.  The hyenas were absolutely everywhere, aggressing and squealing and alarm rumbling, and they were FAT.  We have to record into the DVR whenever a hyena is gaunt, fat, or obese.  Almost every single hyena I recorded was fat or obese, out of at least 30 of them.  Amusing transcribing the notes: “Endor is here, and he is fat.  Loki is sacked out, also fat.  Titan is obese, Hendrix is obese...”, and Benson going “Wow” in the background every time we’d see a new hyena, each heftier than the last.  I seriously cannot believe they could move – it was unreal. 

We buried ourselves in the bushes with our well-fed hyenas, several still gorging, and Eli had me just watch behaviors to learn, rather than stressing over recording them all.  It was extraordinarily helpful, not to mention terribly interesting.  I had never noticed the intricacy of behaviors devoted to appeasement: head bob, open mouth appease (hyena waves its head with its mouth open), submissive posture (a kind of sideways cower, exposing one’s side to the other while curling around, often with a “grin” of fear), giggle, back off, ears back, squeal, carpal crawl (hyena grovels about on its wrists like a feeding warthog).  And there are in turn many ways of asserting one’s dominance, starting with “t1” (least severe) and going up to a “t3 bite shake”, the most severe.  The t1 aggressions include intention movements, such as an aggressive look, a stand over (hyena raises its neck as though proud and stands over another like a statue with its nose pointed downward), a point (hyena approaches another with purpose and ears forward).  T2 includes lunging at another hyena, and half-hearted motions to bite.  The t3 bite-shake is very unkind, and looks rather painful.  It is just as it sounds, one hyena grabbing a hold of another while shaking its head.  Most times I’ve seen it the dominant hyena grabs the shoulder of its inferior.  Most aggressions are performed while “bristle-tail,” meaning the hyena’s tail is raised and the black wiry hairs all fanned out.  But you can imagine it’s absolute chaos trying to discern all of these behaviors left and right between a bajillion pairs of hyenas who are half-hidden in bushes, not to mention having to keep track of who is who and who is doing what.  Another thing hyenas do, rather human-like, is take out their anger on innocent bystanders.  If one hyena is aggressed upon, it sometimes turns around and aggresses on another, who has done nothing to deserve such treatment.  I feel this is because of something akin to embarrassment, or at least a need to reassure oneself that at least you are still higher than somebody, which that somebody better realize even though they may have just witnessed you being beaten.

Enjoying the show, learning lots, laughing at Foxtrot (one of the cubs – I think I remember it being Foxtrot) biting so hard on a piece of the head while trying to get a morsel that its back legs kept lifting right off the ground.  And before we knew it, there was only the enormous vertebrae and head of a once live and healthy buffalo, quite the stinky and impressive sight.  I began a final scan, but angry elephant trumpets in the bushes next door made all of our eyes widen and we cut the scan short and got out of there.  I loved listening to the DVR and hearing the elephants in the background, before I hear myself say, “Annnnnnnd elelphants are coming so we terminate this scan and leave.”

I got to draw blood from Hendrix the other morning! We were up on a hill with homey distant thunder and a rainbow.  With Kay directing, I got her nice big vein on the first poke.  Strange being on the other side of taking blood for once, tapping into physical diffusion and watching the tubes fill up with liquid.  You couldn’t even tell she’d had a needle in her when I finished, and I still have a couple drops of browned hyena blood on my jeans from when I pulled it out.  I almost don’t want them washed because the idea of having hyena blood on your jeans is just too awesome. 

Fun times at the den lately!  Juno has been sitting in den hole 4 for the last couple nights, staring out at us wide-eyed through the bushes, praying we don’t discover the secret we know must be nursing.  If only we could see them!  She has brought them to the communal den at last.  The other two little black six-weekers have been out some, head-bobbing at everyone and nearly falling over when they try to lift leg high enough so a big nose can fit beneath to greet them.  Amusingly, Sloth (sins lineage) is frequently sacked out and moves little during den sessions, and his sister Lust might have better been named Gluttony since we have seen her wandering around with an empty whiskey bottle!  Sloth and Lust’s older sister Vanity played with the cubs the other night.  She is Michelle’s favorite, and I can see why.  Although she is low-ranking and gets picked on by all the cubs, she keeps returning for more fun, happy to be accepted into romping with them at any level.  At one point Sloth was attempting to t2-lunge Vanity at the same time Rebman was play-mounting Sloth.  As Eli pointed out, it looked as though Sloth was saying “hold me back!” and Rebman was obliging, as Vanity submissive postured in fear.

Found two new cubs at Res Den!  We think they might be Magenta’s, as we have been picking her frequency up nearby.  She may have finally moved them from the natal den to where we can find them.  About time – they look to be as old as any of the others, 6 months or so.  We have dubbed them “Garbanzo” and “Chickpea” before we confirm our suspicion, and so can name them in accordance with Magenta’s “Pokemon” lineage. 

Tracked Moon Pie a couple days ago.  She always buries herself in bushes that you swear a mouse couldn’t fit under, and only leaps up when we are nearly on top of her.  Moon Pie is fairly easy to identify; her jaw is all off-kilter because she was kicked in the face by an antelope once while hunting.  She told us what she thought about our disturbing her slumber and left a smelly treat.  After dinner I began to wonder why I ever enjoyed scraping poop last year.  It felt so sciency, yes, but now I have blood work to satisfy that need, thank you.  The trick is to just not think about what you are doing.  And an interesting new fact I learned – some outrageously high percentage of hyena defecations (of which Eli could not quite remember) take place between 6:15 and 6:30 at night according to note analysis.  What on earth could cause such a weirdo phenomenon?

Met Moon Pie’s lovely daughter Honey, as well as the male Hartford.  Adding and adding until alas some day I will have seen them all, and their spot patterns might stop swimming in my head and settle down solidly beside their names.  I’m sure trying!  It takes so much practice though.  I once asked Benson for a hint when I was stumped on two subadults, and Nora, Eli and I busted out laughing when his hint was, “It’s Ted and Cy.”  Thanks, Benson.  I can sure get him laughing over that one now.

Humphries is missing and I am worried sick.  He was quickly grabbing my heart and becoming a favorite, eating right next to the car and looking up at us with big and sweetly expectant eyes.  We haven’t picked up anything from Samburu’s collar in ages, and I regret insulting her mothering skills because it seems something has happened to her.  Nature can be cruel, and it’s the challenge of all challenges for a zoologist to have to know a cub is starving and be unable to do anything about it.  But it’s not the only challenge.  The other night we saw Foxtrot and Echo sitting a ways outside the den, waiting for their mother Drake, but we knew she would soon be there to feed them.  But she wouldn’t be, and she never will be again.  Two days later during evening obs we received a call from Riz the balloon pilot.  He found her while out riding on his motor bike.  We expected Samburu, but were told this hyena had a green and yellow eartag, something only Drake has.  We had just collared her days before, and drove somberly to the darkening and deserted field above Talek town where she lay.  It is the weirdest feeling having just seen her alive and well, nursing those two precious cubs only days before, walking about being a hyena, unusually small and cute Drake.  And now she was lying in a field, with a few hyenas scattered in the distant bushes, doubtlessly responsible for the part of her stomach that had been eaten away.  We looked for a spear hole, but found none.  There were no lion bite wounds, no wounds at all in fact, and we were perplexed.  Had it been a poisoning, there should have been other dead hyenas around.  We collected the head and the collar – Eli bravely whacked off the head of one of his favorite hyenas with a machete, doubtlessly emotionally destroyed but hiding it well.  That’s when the tears started for me.  Maybe it seems foolish crying over a dead hyena, but it’s not only people who have complex lives and loved or loving ones to leave behind.  Life is so fragile.  So amazingly resilient, and yet so fragile.  This time it was fragile.

It was a quiet and gruesomely smelly drive home.  We all knew we were going to have to watch Foxtrot and Echo starve, or at least know that’s what had happened or was going on.  Michelle had stayed back after the long drive from Nairobi, and she was having a hard time when we returned, wishing for all the world she could go to the den and return with a cub under each arm.  Didn’t we all.  I kept her company while she said goodbye to Drake.  Kay told me before dinner this is the hardest part of the job, so I guess I can make it through the worst. 

While cleaning the head today Kay found that the zygomatic arch was crushed.  Drake was hit by a car.

Bye, Drake.