20:04, Friday, 3 August, 2012

Well, Gaza would be my boyfriend if I were a hyena.  So sweet, always hanging out with the new males, chill and (as an unnecessary bonus) handsome.  But now that I’m getting to know the Fig Tree hyenas, Nikk is giving Gaza a bit of a run for his money.  Nikk is just his own hyena.  He has an endearing limp, a unique face, and is obediently submissive to even little Jar without question.  Nikk is light-colored, and somewhat of a loner, but a happy loner low-ranker.  We found him rolling around in the dirt the other night just for the heck of it.  Yes, I could never desert Gaza, but had I never met him I think Nikk would be my first pick.

Of course then, there’s Santiago.  But goodness knows his heart is occupied.  Santiago follows the female Lu everywhere.  I have never witnessed such an endearing love story.  Wherever Lu is, Santiago is close behind.  When Lu was being baited the other day, something I wasn’t there to see, Santiago apparently rushed to her rescue.  Baiting is when a bunch of males gather together to run in and alternately bite at a receptive female, hoping to somehow achieve a mating.  I’m not entirely sure how it works, but I know it’s about the only way males can get away with being aggressive toward a female, and it doesn’t sound at all pleasant for the female.  Apparently Santiago sort of rescued Lu the other day, coming between her and the other males.  His heart must have roared in his chest to see those other males around his love, and he ran to reclaim her.

The hyenas in Talek West have shifted their hang-out.  Whereas they have hung out by Centre Tree on our side of Sleeping Creek all summer, they have relocated to be most abundant on the opposite side of Sleeping Creek Lugga near Border Tree.  We finally solved the mystery just yesterday; the hyenas have moved dens, explaining the sparse action at Riverbend Den for the past week.  I don’t know what causes hyenas to move dens, but it fascinates me.  I wonder if it just keeps the location low-profile in terms of lions, but then the lions must know after 3 months of giggles and whoops and cub smells coming from one area.  Who knows exactly what causes the move?  But it’s so much fun to rediscover them, and it will be a nice change to drive to Dave’s Den first thing in the morning and last thing in the evening.  It’s a nice location, not so bushy as Riverbend Den, but there are still many bushes and the tall grass is going to be a problem.  Except it shouldn’t be for long; the migration has finally arrived!  It is in Fig Tree, and headed toward Talek West territory.  I was never able to intimately appreciate the breadth of the migration last year since we switched camps at about the same time the wildebeest moved from one to the other.  The plains are covered with them – they stretch like ants, tiny bushes dotting to the horizon, slowing our driving as they buck across the road.  It’s incredible, the change immense.  Truly a wonder of our world.

I am constantly reminded of how much I love it here.  On the morning of the 27^th, the hyenas were still out and active in the daylight.  Fig Tree reminds me of Serena in its wildness, and sitting there watching the cubs and adults interact in the cloudy, breezy early morning massaged my senses, quieting my overactive brain so that I could live fully in the moment.  I knew right then there was nowhere I’d rather be in the world, nothing I would change about that moment.  Such contentment I think is rare for any, man or beast, and I am immensely grateful for each time I am blessed enough to hold it.

That same morning we had to stop and let the car cool off a bit.  As Benson took the opportunity to give Charlie a quick car lesson beneath the hood, I took the opportunity to lay back in the tall grass and look up at the clearing sky, stretching for miles with perfect little clouds, turning my head to see a male impala looking curiously at me meters and meters away, turning it the other to watch a little white butterfly gracing the air with its weightless patterns.  Happy.  That’s all I can say.

The 28^th brought the need for a break.  After a somewhat sad morning in which we saw a group of sorry zebras, one with a huge skin-hanging wound and another with a tumor the size of a basketball bouncing at its side, it was time for some popcorn and a movie.  We were also feeling slightly depressed given most of the cubs are leaving the nest, graduating and ending up kilometers from where we could before be sure to find them, cuddled up or playing or staring curiously up at us close enough to touch.  Now, introduced to a wide world of dangers, they are more likely to run from us than anything else.  Even Rebmann.  They will habituate again, but their comfort will never return to where it was.  We gathered around the lab tent table, three huge bowls of popcorn, and plugged The Help into a laptop attached to a solar battery.  Such a wonderful movie.  Normally I can’t stand watching movies during the day, especially here, but it was just what the doctor ordered.  Before we settled down, I found the most amazing bug on the way to the choo.  It had the head of a bumblebee and was the same size, but its body and wings were like those of a fly.  The wings were an iridescent blue, and orange fuzz coated just the front third of the thorax, the rest a deep black.  I coaxed it onto my finger and took it to show the others.  I love hanging around the people here, because they were every bit as excited as I was over this strange specimen, cute eyes and antennas of a bee staring up at us, no stinger to worry after.  I released it where I found it, glad that it needed to be coaxed back off my finger with even more persuasion necessary than when I picked it up.  The small creatures here fill in the cracks of a place already teeming with life.  They are gorgeous.  For another instance, instead of the normal toads, frogs have been about recently.  There was one that resembled a pickerel frog, legs delicately painted in alternating shades of green, illuminated in the light of my headlamp as I brushed my teeth before bed the other night.

The adult and subadult hyenas assisted in lifting our spirits the same day by laying in puddles on the main road.  We drove around the bend to find five plopped down in the way of everything, others’ heads poking up everywhere in the surrounding grass.  Cuuuuute!  Like a wild breed of round-eared lovable dogs (not to be confused as being more closely related to dogs than cats; not so!).