21:44, Saturday, 2 June, 2012

The cutest thing:  Humphries was following Harlem the other day!  I’m not so sure about Samburu’s mothering skills – we have seen Humphries far from the den multiple times with her nowhere to be seen.  He’s our brave little wanderer.  But to see him tagging along after a male was certainly surprising!  I wonder if Harlem is possibly Humphries’ dad?  I doubt a hyena could know that.  Genetics account for many affinities in the animal world though, true.  Maybe there is some way they can sense it?  Doubtful, but doubtlessly possible.  I cannot wait until we can dart some of these cubs and discover their parentage!

I sense trouble in Hyenaville.  We have seen FOUR alien females in the Talek West territory over the past couple of weeks – four!  An alien female hasn’t been confirmed since the summer of 2010 or something, and is a rare occurrence for sure.  It makes me wonder if things are shifting, and I feel nervous for our hyenas.  And the four alien females are not the biggest of recent oddities.  While we were compiling three months’ worth of notes and updating lists (new cubs, new landmarks, missing hyenas, aliens, new hyenas, master hyena list...), I was looking casually through the ID book, and noticed that the cub named Xena is the same individual as the cub labeled Hoth.  But Michelle had seen “Hoth” nursing from Loki, while we know that Xena is definitely nursing from Parcheesi.  Almost 25 years without a cub ever observed nursing from more than one hyena, and here it’s happened between two sets of hyenas in the last few months!  I have an extremely out-there hypothesis that the rising occurrence of aliens and this multi-mother nursing might somehow be connected.  Perhaps these females are more cooperative because they sense a clan war is brewing on the horizon?  Doubtful, but doubtlessly possible.

Vervets and baboons rampant in camp yesterday.  You can’t help but chuckle a bit when you’re sitting under a tent awning and energetic vervets are crashing onto the tarp above as though it were a trampoline, chasing each other and hollering and creating a colossal ruckus.  And apparently vervets do not like mongooses, as about five of them started throwing a tantrum and chasing a slender-tail, jumping at it from the trees above, poor little dude.  Then I was sitting reviewing notes with Michelle, and next thing we know there’s an enormous baboon just chilling to the side of the lab tent.  It gave me a start to turn and have that big guy right there!  Michelle and I took turns shooing his troop and the vervets away from the unguarded kitchen tent about every three minutes.  (British accents even sound amazing when the English are angry.  I don’t know why the settlers couldn’t have just retained them.  That’s the least they could have done in repentance for massacring the Native Americans and plundering their land.)

We went searching for Juno’s natal den last evening; her GPS points show she is spending a lot of time at so-termed Crocodile Den near Talek.  Although tracking showed her to be very nearby, we couldn’t find her in the tall grass, driving slow over the holey ground.  I was so hopeful we would see tiny black cubs!  Maybe another day.  On the way to Crocodile Den, a teenage elephant decided to throw a tantrum in our direction.  I must drive better when I panic, because normally all of the starting and reversing would cause me to stall at least once, but when that elephant was coming I moved the clutch fairly flawlessly and had us going back in the other direction in no time.  Looking back once we were at a safe distance, we realized it wasn’t personal.  The elephant was throwing a tantrum at all of the other elephants now that its more reasonable-seeming provocation was removed.

Some things about nature break my heart.  Derrick, our one-horned impala, has a limp.  I don’t think he will last long amidst carnivores looking to make the hunt as painless as possible.  We also saw a young topi with a broken leg that hung limp as it hobbled along after its playmate.  Eli insists that when you see a carnivore chasing something, it’s necessary to pick a side; it’s only natural to root for one or the other.  I don’t know about that.  What I do know is that in the heat of the moment it would be awfully hard to see anything killed.  Yet starving carnivores are also a worry, therefore  I find it hard to hope for either outcome.  It’s really too bad there isn’t a third option, such as carnivores deciding they feel vegetarianism is the only ethical option.

While on the subject of injuries, I am concerned over Kelsey’s right eye.  She is holding it more closed than her left eye lately.  It must have been awfully nice for Jesus in that he was able to heal.

11:02, Sunday, 3 June, 2012

Yesterday I named a cub!  It is in the Alien lineage, one of ET’s cubs in Talek.  R2D2, Spock, Mork, C3PO, Yoda, and some other names I don’t remember were already taken.  I came up with Jar-Jar, after Jar-Jar Binks on Star Wars.  Little Jar.  It’s so exciting naming animals!  Especially when they will be recorded in the master list for decades to come.

Speaking of hyenas I’ve had a hand in naming, Deanna (one of the RAs from Serena) came up yesterday to spend a night before heading to Nairobi to leave.  I asked her about Ratchet, and she said he is doing well!!!  So are Dru and Panda and Luta and Biggie, but I was unbearably sad to hear that Rotten has gone missing.  Rotten was my absolute favorite little dude, currently the background on my computer.  Rest in peace, Rotten.

Was walking above the river yesterday and met some Maasai kids: John, James, and a little one whose name started with an “L” but I couldn’t quite understand.  John loved my watch, and they were all very fascinated with my ipod.  I put it in their ears and told them to listen, and smiles cracked across their faces.  John allowed me to hold the stick he herds cows with, a big group of whom were behind us.  It’s very long and thin and whittled.  John, who I talked to the most before his brothers lost their shyness, asked me if he could have my shoes, and I looked down to see that his toes were poking through enormous holes in his worn black tennis shoes; in fact, the whole bottoms were starting to come off.  The things we take for granted.  I told him I need them now, but maybe I would give them to him in a year when I leave.  After all, I bought a used pair just for here.  I won’t need them when I go home.  I especially like living here because it is living simply.  I love only having a tent to return to – that’s all you need.  I love only having four pairs of pants and ten shirts, some shorts and tank tops, sweatshirts and pajamas, although it’s still more than I need.  Americans are too wound in the clutter of capitalism.  It’s nice not to have to constantly have THINGS promising empty happiness shoved in my face at every turn.  I can put my fists down.

I rode with Eli last night, and we saw lots of neat things.  There were many lionesses and subadults out.  I know some of the lionesses were the same as those I identified last year, but I am very rusty, so I took a picture to discover who they are later.  Artemis walked so close to a group of four that I worried for her safety.  We saw Gaza!  He is still looking well, although he was chewing on a wildebeest skull that was at least a year old, judging by the worm tracks shooting out the sides of the horns.  Pole (I’m sorry in terms of sympathy in Swahili, pronounced “po-lay”) Gaza.  Should have been born a female.  Puma is back in Talek West, although we saw him testing his dispersing skills not two weeks ago in Talek East.  Maybe it didn’t suit him, which might be for the better since many hyenas in Talek East get speared by Maasai :(.  Twister was hanging around Aqua without her mother Adonis, which was surprising!  I just love Twister.  Loki arrived and approached and she politely head-bobbed and they lifted leg for a greeting.  Loki also lifted leg over sacked-out Aqua’s head, and Aqua cracked us up by totally ignoring her.  Luckily Loki didn’t mind, and just continued walking.

Many elephants out on Lone Tree plain – probably 40.  We followed Helios and Loki up next to some of them.  One young one, probably a year old, flared its ears out at the hyenas, slightly charging them.  Super adorable.  But, like hyenas, Loki and Helios didn’t even look in its direction or start.  Just kept sauntering across the plain.  They never cared about being popular anyway.  And then we saw a TINY (well, as far as eles go) baby.  Deadly cute, absolutely deadly cute.  It curled its itty trunk up to a bit older one, who gave it all the attention it desired and more.  We later saw it nursing from its mother.  About 500 meters down the plain two big males (one especially ENORMOUS), were charging at and wrestling with one another.  A whole group of elephants was standing watching them, as though at a boxing tournament.  The smaller of the two fighters must have decided he was out-matched, because suddenly he turned tail and fled, the other close behind, reaching out its trunk to try and grasp the first , just out of its reach.  Running elephants are truly hysterical.  Their knees barely bend, big tree trunk legs attempting to move in a coordinated-enough fashion that they don’t fall and shake the earth, their awkward lumbering shape failing at to properly expand and contract so that they are lopsided in a new direction after every step.  Then you realize how much ground they are covering; these mammoth creatures are fast indeed, but certainly not due to agility.  Thank you, elephants, for that display.  The bigger male finally gave up the chase, turning our way and staring instead, the sheer breadth of his trunk and tusks taking my breath.

Eli tried to convince me that ostriches look somewhat like hyenas if they are positioned correctly in the grass.  Right...he said I will mistake an ostrich for a hyena eventually, and he will receive a message on facebook from me apologizing and telling him how right he was.  I told him not to hold his breath.  Ostriches.  Was there ever a thing further from a hyena?  I think you would have to be four plains over to mistake the two!

A couple of extra stories that I have let fall through my fingers in terms of sharing: one night I was out with Benson, me in the driver’s seat.  We were heading back from the den when all of a sudden Benson started yelling “STOP STOP STOP!” like bloody murder.  I slammed to a halt, alarmed, and Benson returned to his normal very soft voice, pointed to a male Thompson’s gazelle on the side of the road, and said “He is confused.”  It was the sweetest thing ever.  He made me switch off my lights until the tommy was no longer frightened and tiptoed to the other side.  Only then was I allowed to continue.  If ever I forget why I love working with Benson...

Then Michelle told me of an afternoon when she was sunning outside of her tent with a leopard-print top on, and all of a sudden the vervets start going crazy, alarm-calling and ganging up and throwing things at her.  They mistook her for an actual leopard!