14:36, Sunday, 12 August, 2012

Monday night brought the Happy Zebra clan.  Dave and I imitated the chorus of grunting gnu as we drove past their noisy herds; I can only imagine what an onlooker would have thought.  One thing about wildebeest though: they never seem to get over the novelty of a car, even after it has ceased to be novel.  I kind of love this about them.  They’ll look at you like they’ve never seen a car before, with their oddly spaced eyes on either side of a flat face looking surprised and indignant, sure you are paying utmost attention to them.  Then they show you what’s what by bucking and kicking away, grunting as they stop and turn again to face you from a greater distance, something like my old paint Licorice when she didn’t want to be caught for a ride.

We saw Mumbai!  Mumbai, the male from last summer whose perceived ugly face earned him the name of a perceived ugly city.  I love his face though.  It’s so stretched out and cute, huge forehead, and I couldn’t tell you what his spots look like because all I need to see is that face and I instantly know.  It was excellent to see him again!

At Windsor Den were Cosby, Go Fish, Ojibway, Muon,  Sawtooth, Malo, Hawk, and Nat Geo.  Cosby is Go Fish’s mom, Ojibway Muon’s, Sawtooth Malo’s, and Hawk Nat Geo’s.  These hyenas are way more relaxed than those of the Talek West clan, who constantly aggress on one another; I think this is probably because their clan is so large, so the hierarchy begs constant reinforcement, and there is always a hyena around to coalition and make some poor guy feel extra small and giggly.  Sure, the Happy Zebraites, Northites, and Southites aggress, but it seems a lot less frequent and intense.  Affability outside of the family is tossed around for a change.  Hawk gave off a friendly groan as she approached and sniffed Sawtooth, who allowed her there as she nursed Malo.  Cosby attempted to play with the nursing Ojibway, then going from her to Hawk to the nursing Sawtooth, lightly attempting to play and licking them.  The cubs ambled right up and around the little Maruti, not so different from our cubs, but they remained totally unconcerned even when we started the car.  And I have yet to see a mother play with her cubs in Talek West - not so here.  Hawk ignored her severe limp and played like a little cub with Nat Geo.  She grabbed onto his leg, pulling him back as he tried to hobble away.  Upon allowed escape, he’d run back out of the dark, his distinctly huge spots whizzing by in the maglight’s beam, and jump at her until she grabbed him by the neck and they turned circles chasing and nipping at one another, Malo and Cosby periodically joining in the fun.  Marvelous!

Tuesday morning after obs we drove to get some drinking water, the rain water that currently filled our last remaining jug rapidly declining.  The drive to Olooloolo (sp) Gate was the goddess of picturesque.  I had never driven so close to the escarpment, light purply blue growing into deep and light greens as we got closer, a long mountain-like ridge rising flat and rapid like a  tree-spattered plateau.  I made a pact with myself to climb it before the year is up.  I cannot imagine what the view must be like from up there, what with the view being so unimaginable from its base .  On the drive we also saw itty-bitty baby warthogs, little tails stuck like flags in the air as they ran about their mother.  I must have driven Michelle, Charlie, the IRES boys, Julie and Nora nuts talking about how much I couldn’t wait for October so that I could see baby warthogs, and here I barely had to wait until August!  I wished to be like Fern with a warthog Wilbur.  Then, as though baby warthogs weren’t enough, we found a tiny fuzzy waterbuck wandering about its mother.  They look even more out of place in miniature with their seemingly Arctic-evolved coats, something like an impossibly cute diminutive-faced reindeer who puffed up after a bad run with the hair dryer.

I could spend all day every day at the North and Happy Zebra dens.  The north den Tuesday night was great; Sauer’s two little black cubs were out, tumbling and play-romping, continually getting stuck on Sauer’s back as they unsuccessfully attempted to climb over her.  Mom disciplined them with t2 lunges when they got too out of line.  Dave says Sauer is a wonderful mom, always at the den.  Waffles is always at the den as well, usually either sitting in it so we can barely see her head poking up, groaning into it so that we can see everything but her head, or renovating it as dirt flies everywhere.  She’s quite the construction worker.  Her cub is the youngest; I think it’s barely a month old.  Dave and company had to dart her twice due to a malfunctioning collar, and in the week between she went from being dry to having milk.  Then, when her cub was only about a week old, Queen Waffles moved her to a communal den!  One week is an extraordinarily short time for a cub to be at a natal den.  I guess no one would dare mess with the prince/princess, but no harm in sticking around to safeguard just in case.

Peepers is often at the North den as well.  We suspect Peepers and Waffles may have been litter mates.  The Serena clans have not been studied half as long as the Talek ones, so the histories of many of the adults are mysteries.  But Peepers and Waffles are crazily tolerant of one another, groaning and sniffing about each others’ faces.  (And after all, they did overthrew RBC together, no small feat.)

Toronto, the male, showed up at the den as the evening progressed.  Silly stupid Toronto; did he really think he could get close to the den with so many little black cubs about?  He knew it was a harebrained idea too, the way he was creeping forward.  He looked pitifully afraid, lifting each leg high and placing it softly down, crouched in slow-motion terror but desperately desiring proximity.  Ten meters and Sauer had it; she chased Toronto like there was no tomorrow, Waffles hot on her heels.  Toronto zipped away and they all disappeared into tall grass as Peepers, with her perpetually tired-looking white-eyebrowed face, stood up to watch them off into the distance, ears perked forward.  Dave narrated the whole thing; he and Andy Gersick, a graduate student, have decided that Sauer would always be yelling if she had a voice.  It makes me laugh so dang hard when he imitates what she would be saying.  Then he gives Waffles this play-land voice.  So when Sauer lifted her head, it was a deep, “Toronto, is that you?”  Then she tore off after him, and Waffles got up, “Oooh!  Chasing males!  I love chasing males!” and joined in, to which Peepers stood and said, “Hey, where’d everybody go?”  Anthropomorphism at its finest.  Even the best scientists like Dave (who has the most incredibly careful, precise, and ambitious methodology of anyone I’ve ever met – excellent mentor), can’t resist the occasional in-jest comparison were hyenas to think like people.  Sometimes their behavior just begs it, although it never enters our work.

For the first time in something like a month, I fell asleep to the patter of rain on my tent.  I talked to Michelle on Wednesday morning, and she said they received 20mm even in Talek, where it has been dry as a bone and a thousand times as dusty!

We darted Bartlet Wednesday morning!  Dave had a perfect shot.  I’m not so sure her name shouldn’t be Fartlet, though; she about killed me as I rode in the back of the little Maruti with her.  Good grief!  Despite her unladylike ways, she now has a pretty new necklace and is doing perfectly.

21:18, Sunday, 12 August, 2012

We drove through Oz Valley Wednesday night as we passed from South, where we had gone to pick up the eye-covering shroud and make sure Bartlet was gone, to Happy Zebra.  Oz Valley has recently fallen prey to a routine burn; where once the hills were grassy and green, now everything is charred, and I couldn’t keep the Lion King instrumental during Simba’s return to his ruined home from playing through my head as we drove.  Supposedly man-made burns are good; many antelope like the fresh green grass that comes up, and before 200 days are up the land has returned to its former state.  It just makes you wonder, though: why?  Surely natural processes would take care of things.  Dave is researching burns as a small part of his dissertation, and we had a good discussion on management practices, coming out of the conversation just as puzzled as we entered in.  The only thing I can think is that maybe natural fires scare the conservancy managers because they are more uncontrollable, so these smaller burns are a safeguard.  But who knows?  Dave plans to talk to the head of the conservancy for some more insight, and I will be curious to know what he says.

A few topi wandered about the green-dotted black ash.  A female stepped aside, and lo!  A freshly born topi, still all sandy brown and gangly-legged!  I have never seen such a little topi; it hadn’t even been painted with dark browns and black yet, still raw woodwork. 

I met Pike in Happy Zebra; I only saw her once last summer.  She has become the alpha since her mother Coi died at the paws of lions.  She was out with her two year-old cubs Arbalet (sp) and Eremet (sp), her subadult kid named Boom, and her little sister Coelacanth.  The males Yuma, Istanbul, and Mumbai crowded the outskirts of the family meeting, Yuma with a completely useless and hanging back left leg leg, poor guy. :( But how Pike and her family played!  They played for at least an hour; she, Boom, and Coel romped about with the cubs, chasing and chasing and chasing some more.  We followed them off into the grass, ready to record critical incidences, but all they did the entire time was play.  How wonderful to see!  My favorite moment of the night was when the family surrounded the car.  Another testament of how behavior is affected by lack of people: to them, our car meant nothing other than a novelty.  I was reminded how absolutely huge and impressive adult hyenas are as Pike stood right next to our dwarfed car, her big nose sniffing the side-view mirror and poking slightly through the window inches from a nervous Dave.  It was spectacular having her so close. Odd, though, how this big white thing that periodically revved only yielded curiosity. I love the curiosity; it makes me exquisitely happy.  But shouldn’t evolution have made these animals more cautious?  Suppose the car turned out to be a big white monster?  Well, if so, Pike wouldn’t have it fit and healthy.  We had to start the car and move because she attempted to make it her chew toy.  The animal with the greatest jaw pressure per size in the mammalian kingdom is not what you want chewing on your car.

Just before we left for the night, we followed Pike et al. to a dead wildebeest.  Yuma stood over it and Boom sniffed, but pretty quickly everyone left it - untouched.  The adult wildebeest was not killed, apparent upon inspection.  We think perhaps it died of some parasite or disease that made it unappetizing to the hyenas.  It seems terribly odd that no one even took a bite.

13:39, Monday, 13 August, 2012

Love spending my days in these Fisi Camps, both so wonderful and yet so different.  For instance, the butterflies.  I have traded the graceful little white flutterers with orange tipped wings for a big beautiful species with green wings outlined in velvety black, the gentle yellow wind-riders for long-flapped orangey red current creators.  Yet the little white ones are here and there and everywhere.  Kelsey and the bushbabies are having their place temporarily held by tiny trilling mongooses, who I cannot look at without wanting to squeeze the living daylights out of because they’re so stinkin’ cute.  I love sharing my breakfast eggs with them.  The baboons frequent here more than Talek.  A troop that resulted in a baboon hanging, feeding, sitting, or meandering about in every direction I turned cracked branches and yelled at one another Thursday morning and afternoon, returning day after day.  I will be sitting in my tent transcribing, and look up to see either Philimon’s (finally learned how to properly spell his name!) little rocks flying past my screen, or Jorji thumping by chasing them away in his sandals.  Therefore, as usual, they did not understand that I only wanted to watch them when I wandered back into the trees. They shot furtive glances over their shoulders as they rushed off deeper into the woods.  I sat in a patch of sunlight hoping they would return, and laughed as instead a herd of impala, startled by the sudden influx of baboons, whipped through the brush.  Impala must have developed a recent liking for the surrounding area, because I frequently hear the ridiculous “shooooooo throaty burp eee throaty burpy eee throaty burby eee. shoooooooo” of a male pursuing some unfortunate member of his harem.

Bats are still here, although they don’t have any gargantuan moths to eat like the fake-eyed one we saw back in Talek, which I mistook for a bat itself as it was quite literally their size.  The moths at the Serena dinner table are all sized like those in Michigan.  Plus, the bats here take to alighting on the roof within the lab tent as opposed to just under its awning.  Therefore if I am working while my computer is charging, I often have one flapping about my head.

Skinks.  Skinks and geckos are easier to find here, as the brush isn’t so thick.  Lots of lined skinks running this way and that, and a little gecko shamelessly sticking to the side of the shower.

Exercise has changed too.  I miss playing soccer, I really do.  But jumping on a mini trampoline at the bottom of the driveway, leaping an exuberance the drop-dead gorgeous view ahead makes you feel isn’t so bad, although sometimes I wonder how I can survive such awful, awful alternatives.

Thursday night I watched as Sauer fetched her cubs out of the den in her mouth, apparently announcing dinnertime as she then sacked out to nurse them.  Dave had told me Sauer likes to pick up her cubs, which made me very excited because I had never seen a hyena do so.  Hyenas pick their cubs up by putting their mouth around the little ones’ tiny heads and lifting!  I would not want my head anywhere near those powerful jaws, let alone inside them, even if they belonged to my mother.  But Sauer was very gentle as she set them down beside her and started to groom while they ate (or rather while one of them hogged most of the food by repeatedly t2 lunging the other away, until finally the smaller one squeezed into the less-preferred position between Sauer’s back legs and accessed a nipple).  Sauer is an amazing mom, something like Martin in South, who is always at the den in the mornings when we go there looking for animals to dart.  And Dad, you would appreciate that almost every time I see Martin, I cannot help but ask her, “MARTIIIN! What is your profession?”  To which Dave appropriately responds, “Hoo hoo hoo!”

Friday night felt like Fall, the wind just so that I put my sweatshirt on almost immediately, the sky gently sunny with the perfect amount of benign wispy clouds.  We drove through the area where Lia and I originally coined the term Dr. Seuss Ville due to the appropriately spaced, craggly Ballonites (sp) trees.  Mumbai gave us a good chase loping to the northeast; Dave thought he was a female, and when Mumbai turned his distinctive head, Dave yelled, “Aw!  All of that for this?!”  I, however, was delighted to see him.  We were terribly curious as to where he was going as neared the Happy Zebra border, but he got rid of us by pooping and disappearing as we got out to collect the smelly gift.

Hawk’s limp from a few nights ago was completely healed, yet another testament to the miraculous immune system of Crocuta crocuta.  Then, a testament to how deceiving tall grass can be, we drove into a hole.  I expected the hyenas to bolt when I got out to push; that’s the only reaction I’d ever witnessed.  Nope.  Sawtooth couldn’t give two hoots, and she and the others just stood there looking at me!  I was standing amidst the hyenas, the nearest cub 15 meters away.  Wonderful experience, but undoubtedly unnerving, and I had Dave keep a close eye on them from the wheel as I turned to push.  I was the one prepared to bolt this time, adrenaline swiftly pumping, but pretty quick they were going about their business again, not minding me much.  Wild!  I was nervous they’d feel the need to test me with nips like they try to test the car.

Saw Pike’s family playing about near the landmark called Culvert City again.  They appeared one by one out of the culvert beneath the road.  Snapper was there this time!  Snapper is Pike’s sister.  Dave says they always used to be together, but then they didn’t seem so close after Pike rose above Snapper to be queen when Coi died.  Therefore, we were happy to see them together again.

Saturday morning we saw two of the target females: Java and Badger!  Dave hasn’t seen these two since he’s been back, so what luck!  We staked out near the den, hoping they would wander away from the lugga toward us.  But those lazy loafs just stayed sacked out the entire morning, until we were forced to give up around 10:30.  It was kind of neat staying in one place for the entirety of obs though, a change to observe the single buffalo, tommys, and topi as they wandered by about their day.  We also used Dave’s phone to get the latest on American politics.  Paul Ryan.  Oh bother. 

Saturday night I had a hippo loudly munching grass next to my tent as I fell asleep, smiling into my pillow.  I woke up at 1:00 for some reason, and that hippo was still munching directly outside my tent.  I shook my head and rolled back to sleep.  Woke up at 5:15 for obs the next morning; you guessed it, that hippo was still munching.  Luckily it had moved away back into the trees, so I could exit my tent for work. 

I swear I would be 1,000 pounds were my metabolism any slower, what with Philimon’s muffins.  Dave and I have blown through three full breakfast buckets since I’ve been here.  Breakfast buckets consist of about three muffin tins (36 muffins) each, and I always have more than my fair share, eating at least 2/3rds - with permission, of course. Today Jorji is replenishing the bucket with cinnamon rolls.  We’re roughin’ it out here, I tell you what.