21:42, Sunday, 23 September, 2012

The days have passed wonderfully since I’ve returned, as well as quickly.  There is always something to do, which causes time to fly faster than I like.  Yet it’s good to have a rhythm, especially one filled with things I so love.  It’s a rhythm, and yet I have completely lost all sense of time in terms of what day of the week it is; nature writes time without a calendar.  It’s a fantastic turn around from America’s obsession with schedules. 

Good thing I returned when I did; Lord knows I missed enough while away!  Charlie and Julia (the other graduate student doing two years of work in the Mara, along with Dave, and who will be switching between camps) saw a leopard kill.  Not only did they see a leopard kill, but they saw a water mongoose, an animal I had no idea even existed.  Not only did they see a leopard kill and a water mongoose, but they saw a puff adder smack dab in the middle of the path to the lab tent.  (After which time Eli proudly informed them that he had moved it off the path with a stick!  I can’t believe anyone would try that.  Only Eli.)  It was high time I returned to see the hyenas and other explosion of life and unexpected happenings.  Enough of this Nairobi stuff!

The young man I took to the clinic to have his knee wrapped brought me some smoked Maasai yogurt in thanks.  He was all smiles, so different than when his eyes were glazed over in pain and fear, and I was touched by his gracious gesture. The yogurt itself was  pretty tasty, especially considering it is concocted by leaving milk sitting in a gourd with smoke for an extended period of time.  The thought doesn’t exactly scream delicious.

I can hardly keep my eyes open.  I have switched to writing before bed so that I can focus on other work during the day, but thus far I haven’t been able to stay awake for long enough to get much down.

21:59, Monday, 24 September, 2012

Hyenas are my joy.  I never fathomed I could love them so much.  The Talek West clan is doing excellently overall, although we are starting to worry over some individuals we haven’t seen in a while, including Sukuma, Violet, Centaur, Lyle, Sloth, Foxtrot and more.  On the upside, we saw Lust the other day!  I shrieked in joy when she stood and I realized who she was. The dead cub can’t have been her like we thought; I’m wondering now if it was Violet, Foxtrot, or even Sloth, the sibling we thought was fine.

Unseasonable rain kept us in layered clothes and playing board games for a few days after I returned, but eventually it let up enough for us to go out.  At this time I was greeted by the sight of  Minotaur and Crimson playing tug-of-war over a wildebeest tail.  Most of the wildebeest have moved on, but carcasses are still plentiful, resulting in a need for over half of the hyenas to invest in a gym membership.  Julia and I saw a couple of healthy little 4-week-old black cubs at Dave’s Den, doubtlessly benefiting from the wildebeest transformed into milk within their mothers’ bodies.  I am ecstatic that we have some new little ones!  We suspect they are Carter’s cubs, but Charlie stubbornly holds that they must be Tilt’s.  We see both Carter and Tilt at the den all the time now; the race is on to see who is nursing the newest little furballs, temporarily called “Riff” and “Raff.”  We all kind of hope Carter is the mother so that we can name them Princess Peach (PPCH) and Toad (TOAD); Carter’s lineage of Mario is much more fun than Tilt’s lineage of “famous children,” of which the most recent member is Blue Ivy.

Julia’s research is superb, one part involving putting out novel objects to see how different cubs and subadults react toward them.  The first object she has been using is a little blue stool.  We set it out at the den one night; at first none of the cubs gave two hoots about it.  But as soon as one kid showed interest in it, the blue stool became the toy to have.  Scamper came over and started to sniff and chew, and eventually Xena decided all the commotion was worth her time and got a hold of one of the plastic horizontal bars, lifting it and carrying it in the air, the stool about 3/4^ths her size and awkwardly shaped. 

A laughable sight to behold!  Very different from Penne’s reaction the previous night; he looked at and bobbed his head, sniffing for a few seconds before moving on.  Variable personalities are hard to measure, but they’re certainly not hard to see.

Hydrogen and Helium are getting big, starting to develop spot patterns so that we can reliably tell them apart.  Their older sister Xenon always seems to be hanging around the den playing with them, and big brother Neon has made several appearances recently as well.  We even periodically see Yogurt, miraculously, for more than two seconds at a time before she runs off.  She was with the cubs at Pothole Den this evening, the new den we almost named Paradise Den because it is out in the middle of Lone Tree Plain, a fair distance from any pesky luggas or bushes that get in the way of IDing individuals and observing behavior.  Not to mention it’s a stone’s throw from Dave’s Den, which is directly through Teapot Tree Crossing on the opposite side of the lugga.  The newly christened subadults (only Hydrogen, Helium, and the little black cubs haven’t graduated),  frequent the area between the two dens, while the adults who don’t have young ones are hanging out at a beautiful rocky area named Den One Creek’s Dip, or “The Dip,” as we call it.  There is a lovely little thin pond in a lugga lined with a few trees and bushes, and everyone likes to laze about there.  Roosevelt has even been there; she is so beautiful.  Being one of Navaho’s gang, she previously wasn’t seen much, but now she, Obama, and Carter are regulars.  They are all three becoming some of my favorites, although I still don’t think I can be said to have favorites (apart from possibly Alice and Rebmann).