21:18, Monday, 21 May, 2012

Today was lovely, although I woke up this morning to more Maasai yelling, lions roaring, hyenas whooping, and for some strange reason elephant trumpets were in the mix.  Benson and I made sure no one needed help when we saw some Maasai running on our way out to obs, but they said it was under control.

I had an extended driving lesson, driving most of the morning.  I’m so glad that Benson was helping me, because he is exceptionally patient, and for some reason I started out terribly today.  I was very worried about the car’s transmission, and insisted we get out and check the fluid.  But it was just fine, and I got worlds better over the course of the morning.  I finally have some confidence in the matter.

While we were driving along, we saw several big male lions.  I hear say that four big males are going around, taking over prides, killing cubs and impregnating females :(.  I REALLY hope that’s not the case.

Helped push someone out of a ditch and got delightfully muddy.  Then Kay called and asked us to go into Talek and buy a goat head so they could try and lure Yogurt toward the car.  While we were in Talek, I was overjoyed to find a dog that actually let me approach and even PET it.  Its eyes were so sad, and I carefully held out my hand to let it sniff, and gently moved it to the top of its head.  I could tell it was surprised to have someone petting it, but also that it liked it because it did the contented mouth opening/chewing type thing that Belle used to do when satisfied.  I have named that dog “Ufuko,” which is “beach” in Swahili, because it is the color of sand.  I would give anything to take it home with me in a year...any thoughts, Mom? I hope I get to see it again on our next trip to Talek!

Well, Yogurt made off with the head and alluded the darters again.  I think Kay or Eli should write a book, Adventures with Yogurt.  They are both quite annoyed with her, but I think she’s brilliant.  So clever, watching the car from off in the grass with ears going this way and that, running up at the perfect moments, making off with our expensive bait.

Benson and I played a game while driving.  I told him we must pretend that I don’t know English, and therefore we talked only in Swahili.  It was a tremendous help in terms of fluency.  Languages are so hard to properly master unless you consistently practice.

Upon returning, the BEAM students had arrived.  It was great to see Dave and Julia!  And of course Booms as well.  I think the kids enjoyed the activities.  Eli showed them how to fill darts, and they got to shoot the gun at the practice box (all doing very well, and several apparently hitting the bull’s eye!).  Michelle showed them how we take measurements of teeth and body during a darting, and I handled the tracking, which took them a bit to get a hang of.  But on the whole, they did a very good job finding the collar.  The best tracker was one of their drivers, Chris.  He was intrigued by what we were doing, and we insisted he take a turn.  It’s very good when Kenyans are interested in what we do; it helps the face of hyenas.

Dave showed us some GPS points while they were over.  Magenta and Pan are spending considerable amounts of time outside the park!  It’s crazy incredible that a GPS collar can construct something like the map he had.  A point for each collared hyena is generated every hour, then only has to be downloaded onto the computer.  Baez’s first points were on the map, which made us feel quite proud.  Dave also had a video of the most amazing hyena-lion interaction, of course occurring on the morning we slept in.  The lions had presumably made the buffalo kill, and for once it was the hyenas who stole from them- good show, guys!  (Although somewhat concerning as the lions are thin.)  They whooped to one another, and all formed a big group around the two lions, a courting male and female, which I think Benson and I saw this morning.  The lion looked ridiculous in the video, just laying in the middle of this enormous group of hyenas.  I guess they eventually attacked him, and he and the lioness moved off.  I can only imagine such rare occurrences fueled the misconceptions of The Lion King.  Also in the video, Helios and Loki got a hold of the same bone, and each refused to let it go.  They were hilarious running about the plain, awkwardly connected by the bone in their mouths, reminding me of dragging the softball field in high school. 

Eli showed me how to clean darts after the students left.  It is great fun squirting the water out at the end by hooking up a syringe to one end of the dart.  We shot it up in the air, at the lab tent, ground, etc.  I think it would be fun to have a dart-cleaning squirt war.

We couldn’t go out for evening obs, because it rained a whole lot to the near southeast of camp (wild how spotty the rain can be here) , and the crossing was flooded again.  Therefore, we had a game night.  We played Quiddler; Kay is extraordinarily good at it.  I, of course, was what Kay’s friend apparently terms “toilet girl,” as I lagged behind for a significant portion of the game. :)

Lasingo came to us before dinner with a cut finger.  Eli and I doctored him.  It was strangely heartwarming and sweet to be wiping clean the finger of this big man who protects us at night, having him squint because it was “kali,” (severe/ it stung).  We fixed him up with antibacterial powder and a band aid, and all was well.

Kelsey and the bushbabies at dinner.  Bushbabies apparently love garlic bread.  One of the big ones came up and took it eagerly from my hand, and once touched my finger for a prolonged moment with its exquisitely gushy hand.  My heart is still missing since it liquefied.

Fresh lion or leopard tracks by the shower, hyena tracks leading to Kay’s tent (they know where they are most loved), and boisterous hippo burps nearby.  Wondrous.

21:39, Sunday, 20 May, 2012

Time limit to the wind tonight!

Yesterday morning Michelle and I ventured off to do regular morning obs, while the other three went in the darting car.  I got some good practice tracking, and picked up the signals of both Moon Pie and Pan.  It is always a feeling of great fun when you see a hyena you have tracked, as though you didn’t expect something so nifty to really work.

Many of the cubs were out at the den, and the subadult Zion was there too, looking up at us nearly full-grown amidst the much smaller cubs.  She really looked quite absurd towering over them; Michelle says she likes to hang out with the cubs still, and is still “a cub at heart.”  I like that.  Zion and I would get along well.

Trying to keep an eye on Hendrix so we could call Kay and the others should she be in a good position for darting, we received a call from them instead.  They had successfully darted Baez, and wanted us to come to the scene!  I was so excited to see my first darted hyena.  On our way over to the top of Lion Hill (where they were with Baez), we saw a buffalo with about eight leafy branches stuck behind its horns.  It looked absolutely ridiculous, and we couldn’t help but laugh, poor thing.

Touching Baez was like nothing I have ever done before.  We pulled up beside where Kay, Eli, and Benson had her lying on a stretcher while taking all sorts of measurements and samples: several teeth and body measurements, bacterial swabs in the ears and anus, paste, milk, etc.  The blood samples had already been taken by the time we got there.  I almost immediately asked Kay if I could touch her.  She is so beautiful, and I could not stop stroking her, a real live hyena.  Her belly rose and fell as she breathed.  I touched her bristly tail and squishy paw pads.  Such a handsome thing.  We fitted her with a collar and weighed her: 56 kg!  One group of the BEAM students arrived and got to see the end of the process.  Then Kay, Eli, and Benson loaded her in the back of the hilux and took her over to a group of bushes where she could come to in safety from lions and other hyenas.  As they were driving away, Michelle and I noticed two approaching hyenas, and quickly motioned to the others.  They drove back, and Kay got out of the car over Baez, hands on hips, scaring the pete out of these other hyenas.  Nobody messes with Mama Kubwa.

Needless to say, my feelings on darting have changed, and Baez will always be very special to me.

Michelle and I had to drive the car into Talek to get the universal joint fixed.  I met the mechanic, Maina.  He is wonderful, and we talked Swahili for a long time.  I also met John, a Kikuyu down in Talek for mechanical training.  He is 18 and loves animals, desiring to go to a university and study animal science.  He wants to come on obs with us sometime, which I think is a great idea!  Africans fear hyenas very much, sometimes for good reason, but I think it would change anyone’s opinion to see the side of them that we see. 

After the universal joint was fixed, Michelle was off running some errands, and I thought the hub was also supposed to be fixed as it kept unlocking.  I gave Maina the go-ahead to take apart the wheel.  Apparently we hadn’t settled that he was supposed to fix it, and I regretted my mistake after we sat in Talek for almost five hours, no breakfast and out of water while getting good and baked by the sun.  But it turned out later that evening that it was a very good thing I made that mistake...funny how things work out.  And in the meantime, I made some wonderful new friends, met some children, and Michelle and I bonded since we had a good chance to really talk.  I honestly don’t think she could be any more wonderful.

Back in camp, the vervets were out and about, mischievous as usual, their eyes with the depth of a human shifting this way and that as they refused to look me in the face for more than a fraction of a second.  They are not fond of people because others chase and yell at them when they are near the kitchen tent.  I wish I could let them know that I like their presence, even if no one else does.  Slender mongooses with the tips of their tails dipped in black paint have been trotting about through the camp bush as well.

The evening brought the type of adventure I live for.  We headed out of camp and started seeing loads of hyenas, including a perfectly recovered Baez (we were worried for a moment when we saw a lioness walking very near to her recovery bush!).  The collar didn’t seem to bother her at all.  We also saw Spaz, a cub who hadn’t been seen for two months, alive and well!  But the entire time we were seeing all of these hyenas, ominous dark clouds with sheets of rain shown over camp.  We decided it was necessary to cut obs short, and began to head back toward camp.  The sheets of rain came pouring down long before we could even reach the proper crossing (a “crossing” out here is a place where we go through a lugga, or sort of a dip in the land that often holds water and shrubbery).  All of the antelope braced themselves against it, entire groups turned so they were facing away from the blowing rain.  I worried for the giraffes as lightning began to streak across the sky.  When we reached Middle Sunrise Lugga Crossing, it was terribly flooded.  There was no way we could have crossed.  We called Kay, and she said we could either drive the car to the top of the nearest hill and attempt to jump across the crossing so she could pick us up, at which point we would be soaked through, not to mention run the risk of being swept away by the growing river.  None of us were too attracted by that option.  She also said we could wait and see if the water went down.  Or we could drive and try to hit a track she knew of that would take us up to the main road, but if we got stuck we would have to spend the night in the car.  We chose to go offroad in search of the track.  Eli did a heroic job driving us for the next hour or so in the dark grass, the chance that we could get stuck racking on all of our nerves.  I actually half wished we would, just because it would be so thrilling to spend the night out there, minus the cold and our growling stomachs.  We searched long and hard, but could see nothing, much less find a track under the circumstances, and decided to trace our tracks back to wait at the crossing.  Just as I was thinking it would probably be bad to run into any overly large animals at this point, given there was no way we could get away from a charging elephant under such circumstances, lo and behold we found one in our headlights, and after shining around us discovered it was not alone.  Michelle decided this was the opportune moment to enlighten us that someone in a national park had actually been impaled by an elephant tusk through their car and died.  Well, at least that was good for my unhealthy inability to fear elephants, and definitely added to the adventure.  I had a plan for us all to line up front to back in the center of the car, out of reach of its tusks, should we get stuck and an elephant come charging. 

Luckily we made it through the elephants, only to find that the water had greatly risen at Middle Sunrise Lugga Crossing as opposed to going down.  We almost resided to spending the night out there – I figured we could all stretch out in the back and tell ghost stories.  Michelle quickly extinguished that idea; our talk earlier included how horror movies and the like totally freak us out.  Since she uses a spot pattern that she finds looks like a ghost to identify the cub Bata, she promptly declared, “I sawr a ghost on Bata’s shoulder.  That’s my ghost story.”

Then we realized that we might as well try the somewhat treacherous camel crossing, given it probably wouldn’t be covered with water, and as we could just as easily spend the night somewhere else.  So we drove back up toward there, and no one can say we aren’t dedicated scientists, because amidst all the dangerous storm we still stopped to record the locations of some bat-earred foxes and jackals and attempted to identify a few hyenas that crossed our path.  Honestly.  Once we reached Camel Crossing, we all braced ourselves, holding the handles on and over our doors as well as our breath, and Eli plunged the car into the bumpy water and mud.  The ole girl cruiser struggled and pushed, and would you know it, we made it up the other end!  We were home free, as we could now make it to the road that would take us home, although it would take an hour.  Benson was so excited that he kicked the ceiling with his feet!

I kept the window open on the drive back.  The rain on the grass smelled absolutely delicious.  We found a delicate, oddly-proportioned serval along the roadside.  As we drove further, I tried to stay awake for Eli since Michelle and Benson were falling asleep.

Kay was very glad when we made it back to camp.  She had said she felt awful for us, never having spent the night out on the savanna herself.  We were all high on adventure at dinner.  I’m very glad I wasn’t the one driving, however.  Eli was brilliant.  My nerves would have cracked after about two seconds under the pressure.

The rain offered us a much-needed sleep-in.  It felt wonderful, but although I tried to make it until ten, there is so much happening here that I find it hard to stay in bed.  We prepared for a “lecture” we are going to give the BEAM kids tomorrow; they’re coming to camp.  I am going to be teaching them about tracking.  We took the unidirectional antenna off of the car, and set it up so that we can hide a collar around camp and the person with the antenna can track its location.  We practiced to see if it would work; Eli and Michelle hid the collar throughout camp whilst I attempted to locate it.  It was great fun, like a scavenger hunt, although it took me some time to master the technique.

Tonight we climbed onto the cruiser’s roof on top of a hill in the middle of the territory to do a routine tour-bus count for Kay, done weekly.  The view was phenomenal: rolling green plains with mountains in the distance, the sky a perfect mix of sun and clouds.  We also drove through an enormous herd of buffalo filled with calves, found ten lions to record, witnessed an impala totally clear a rather tall bush, and happened upon a group of 22 giraffes, some not far from camp (please God, let them come here).  We saw oodles of our hyenas.  Every time I see one, especially up close to the car, I realize just how beautiful they are, so contrary to what people normally think.  Maybe it’s an acquired taste, but up close it is especially hard to miss.  Rebman followed our car around; wherever we drove, Rebman was sure to turn up.  I wish I could hug him to pieces.  (We actually discussed around the breakfast table how weird it is that the universal reaction to something really cute is wanting to squeeze the devil out of it.)  We witnessed Spaz nursing from Aqua, meaning that she will lose her cub name and become Babe, as she is now for sure in the baseball players lineage.

Around the dinner table, two genets touching noses and puffing softly to one another got scraps of meat; one was Kelsey.  The other was more skittish, and I wonder if it was her mother.  A baby bushbaby stole my heart, and another accepted a string bean from my hand only to toss it unhappily aside.  Suddenly the craziest amount of yelling, hooting, hollering came from across the river, mingled with barking dogs.  At first we laughed because we thought it a Maasai party, but very quickly we became worried as our askaris Lasingo and Steven, along with Young Joseph and Jackson, began to run toward the sound and cross the river.  We heard little pikipiki (motorcycles) driving toward the sound as well.  Anxiously awaiting news, Joseph and Jackson finally returned to tell us lions had been found within a boma full of cows.  Luckily they had been chased off, and lions, humans, and cattle were all unscathed.  I was very afraid for both the people and the lions.

While all of this was happening, Kay told a story of a little boy who was decapitated in a park in Botswana by a starving hyena about seven years ago, and she was flown in as an expert in the matter due to a pending lawsuit.  The timing of stories out here!  The boy had fallen asleep beside his bed with his tent open, and the rest of the story is too gruesome for me to recount here, but probably also good for my unhealthy difficulty fearing hyenas.  Nightmares are expected tonight, but I am still delighted to hear lions roaring and hyenas whooping very nearby. 

23:35, Saturday, 19 May, 2012

After breakfast, I decided it was time for some exercise.  As I walked out to the firebreak, I caught a glimpse of a huge monitor lizard that quickly scrambled off of my favorite rock.  I snuck down to try and get a better look, but he was long gone.  Those things are so skittish!

The altitude had me going about the speed of the PE shuffle from high school gym class.  I’m pretty sure I glimpsed the mother tortoise of the nest Jackson showed me passing on by.  But one triumph; I got two dik-dik at the end of the firebreak to stop from running when I came near, because they fast understood that I would just turn around and go back the other way.

My first shower back in the bush was interesting.  I forgot that there is a switch that must be turned on to draw the river water out of the bucket, and I already had all of my sweaty clothes taken off by the time I realized that I didn’t remember how to work the thing.  Therefore, given there was no pitcher about either, I just plugged my nose and plunged my head into the freezing bucket of unfiltered river water to wash my hair.  Then I did a little dance every time I had to force myself to splash water on my body.  It was so cold!

Night obs were spectacular.  We saw Nora the lioness courting a much younger male!  You would think her a cougar as opposed to a lioness.  It’s so neat to recognize individuals, and I am learning to identify more and more of the 130 hyenas I have to learn spot patterns for as we encounter them one by one on obs.  I feel confident in my abilities to identify at least one side of about 20 of them now, two sides on at least 10.

The oddest imaginable occurrence became apparent while we were driving around.  On the plain past Den One Creek (I think it was) there were no less than 80 elephants, 80 elephants, spread across that one plain.  It was as though they were antelope!  None of us could believe it!  They had all broken into separate groups again by the next morning.  What a curious happening!  It makes you realize that we know so very little about the lives of animals.  What could have caused them to congregate in that same place, peacefully, all at once?  It’s a mystery; although, elephants are known to be able to communicate subsonically.  But why would one group call to another and another and another?  I wonder if they detected something seismically undetectable to us, akin to when some animals moved to the top of mountains before the strike of giant tsunamis.  However, I feel like if it was something worrisome, they wouldn’t have moved on out.

At Res (spelling) Den, I witnessed the most intense display of hyena behavior ever.  Shadowfax, a subadult who was just a cub last I saw her/him, got into a huge scuffle with Aqua.  Aqua is lower-ranking than Shadowfax, and she must have refused to show a submissive posture or something in an attempt to move up, because before we knew it there were great screams coming from beside a bush to our right.  Holy guacamoses, were they ever going at it!  I think some ear damage must have been produced, as Shadowfax held onto Aqua’s ear for the longest time, refusing to let go as she deeply bellowed and growled.  All of a sudden, Morpheus (who had been nursing her cubs nearby), the adult female identifiable by the white virus spots on her face and witnessed earlier this year committing the first case of known hyena cannibalism on two cubs she had killed, charged in and began biting Aqua as well.  Such a ruckus you have never heard!  So loud, so many simultaneously deep and piercing screams rang into the fast-approaching darkness.  A young cub refused to miss out on the action, and kept getting in the middle of things all bristle-tailed, while another sprinted in wide circles this way and that around the action.  Pretty quick the hyenas were recruiting others with their throatily wonderful whoops, and before long at least twenty hyenas were present, all biting and interacting and giggling and growling like mad.  Parcheesi came running in, probably excited to get in on the action, before possibly realizing that no one there was of lower rank than her.  Doing the smart thing, she left the scene almost immediately after she had arrived; “I’m getting out of here!”.  Eventually, after probably 20 minutes, the action started to slow.  Shadowfax had held her/his own, but both he/she and Aqua were bleeding, which doesn’t happen without a substantial scuffle indeed.  I can’t imagine what it must have been like for Helios to overthrow her younger, and therefore higher-ranking, sisters.  After watching that show, I know it took guts!

Spotted some bat-earred foxes on the way back to camp.  More carnivore data!  (And very adorable carnivore data at that.)  And finally, while driving down the driveway, we all felt thoroughly terrible because we had to drive through the most magnificently constructed web, stretching about ten feet across its width from one bush to another.  A hugely beautiful red/orangey black plump spider with a body circumference about the size of a quarter was still busy at work finishing it up, illuminated in our headlights.  Eli carefully lifted the side strand through his window in hopes of doing the least possible damage, but it must have gotten the memo, because it was gone this morning. 

21:37, Friday, 18 May, 2012

On the path to the lab tent this morning I had to stop and turn off my headlamp so as to better view the stars.  They are beyond beautiful scattered across the enormously vast sky of Africa, big and winking at the equator.

I rode with Eli and Kay in the darting car, sitting in back with the gun and all of the supplies.  As we drove out toward Lone Tree, taking the long way as it was still quite wet elsewhere, we came upon a group of lions.  It was impossible for me to tell in the dark who they were, but we did see a couple of very skinny lionesses.  I hope the migration comes sooner this year than it did last for their sake!

Very fortuitously, we happened upon the adult female Yogurt, a low-ranker and the hyena of highest darting priority.  Eli was especially excited, because supposedly Dave has promised to buy a case of beer for us if we get her darted and collared for his project.  She is very spooked of the car though, for reasons no one is quite sure of since she has never been darted.  It’s possible she has seen someone else being darted.  But either way, she wasn’t near as spooky as usual this morning, so I handed up the box and watched Kay prepare a dart after stopping the car.  Mork (sp) and Gaza, two male hyenas, were attempting to court Yogurt, but she showed no interest.  Mork was even pawing the ground behind her at one point – a very cute courting gesture.  However, the males would make our mission more difficult, because apparently male hyenas will attack a darted female (probably because they never get a chance to feel above the higher-ranking females otherwise).  But Kay was convinced we could get between Yogurt and the males.

And so began our day of showing me how not to dart, as Kay said.  According to her, “there are about 255 things that can go wrong during a darting, and they about all went wrong this morning.”  First, while filling the dart, the Telizol (sp; the drug used for darting) decided to spray all over so that we almost didn’t have enough for the 2.5 CCs standard for darting an adult female hyena.  But Kay salvaged enough that we got the gun loaded.  Then something went wrong with the CO2 cartridge, and so we were slowed down, Yogurt growing more suspicious of us by the second.  Eventually she got settled down once more, and we were in prime position (the hyena really cannot be more than 25 meters away from the car) before promptly backing into what must have been the only hole on that entire plain, and sat there cock-eyed for about twenty minutes waiting for the others to pull us out.  Luckily the guys had made us muffins to eat in the mean time.  By some miracle, the three hyenas were still around after we were towed, so we tried again, but by this time Yogurt wouldn’t let us near her.  SO, then we decided to try Gaza, as he needs to be darted as well.  We got within range, and Eli shot him perfectly in the butt so that the red tufted dart stood out against the backdrop like blood on a white cloth as he sprinted away.  It was a bit hard for me to watch, because he was lying there so peacefully before we totally betrayed his trust.  He ran a ways, and then chased the dart in circles like a dog chasing its tail, grabbing a hold of it and pulling it out, which is apparently normal and fine because the needle stays put, only to be pulled out later when the hyena is sober again.  So we watched Gaza become “drunk;” he lay down, and we waited.  And waited.  And waited.  His head remained up.  He was fighting it will all his might.  Kay says he must have a liver like Superman, because 2.5 CCs normally takes down even a bigger female.  Eventually, after like twenty minutes, we drove up to him to assess the situation.  Yogurt, meanwhile, is watching this whole operation from a distance, and will doubtlessly be terrified of the car now.  Mork, Yogurt's polar opposite who doesn’t care about much at all, had already fallen back asleep and was totally unconcerned, although he remained close to Gaza.  They seem to be buds.  As we drove up, we noticed Gaza was drooling while laying there, and Kay thought maybe she could just walk up with a head-covering cloth and shoot him with a bit more drug by hand as she has before.  But as Kay walked toward him, Gaza got up and ran off!   We had no choice but to just stay with him until he recovered enough for us to move off, because he would lose trust in us forever were we to try and shoot him again.  My heart ached to see him hobble around as the drug wore off, his back legs limp. I think darting is going to be emotionally difficult for me, but maybe I will feel differently after the first time I stroke a live hyena.  And it would be unfair to judge darting based on such an atypically bad experience.

Well, we all had a good sense of humor about the whole thing.  It was quite funny, really, how everything went so wrong.  And maybe had the darting gone right, the males would have attacked Yogurt or something.  There must have been a reason.

Two of the most adorable baby elephants made a good addition to an interesting morning on the way back.  They were slogging about in the mud on the road with each other so that we were forced to stop and watch until they moved off the road (darn!).  SO CUTE.  A pregnant female was also off to our right; can you imagine carrying around a baby elephant?!  Good riddance!

15:53, Friday, 18 May, 2012

Yesterday morning it was too wet to go on obs, as we had agreed the night before, so we were supposed to get a good sleep-in.  Supposed to.  The bats didn’t wake me up this time.  Rather, some sort of bird with the most beautiful repertoire of sounds burst into song right above my head at five in the morning.  I couldn’t fall back asleep, but who could be angry with such a happy creature?  And pretty soon all of Kenya’s birds awoke and erupted into a medley so beautiful it was as though they all had written parts.  Therefore, although I lay in bed for two hours attempting to defeat the last remnants of my jet lag, I was up at seven taking a walk down to the river.  Many graceful little dik-diks darted shyly away from the camp paths into the brush as I made my way there.

I owe those birds.  I was totally shocked to see a hyena crossing the river to the side opposite camp about 50 meters up from my favorite jutting rock.  It was a beautifully dark-spotted subadult, or so it appeared from where I was.  It stuttered on two clumps of grass in the middle before all-out plunging in and swimming.  They are remarkably good swimmers!  Especially considering this one had a considerable limp, as I was dismayed to discover as it climbed the bank on the opposite side.  I’m very happy no crocodiles were around!  I was extremely excited to tell the others – they couldn’t awake early enough.  Kay said in all her years here she has never seen a hyena cross the river! 

The agama lizards also ran rampant on the rocks that morning.  There were many more than last year; perhaps a good amount survived from the nest I saw the one laying last summer.  Jackson showed me where a tortoise had laid her eggs eight days prior.  You would never know a nest was under there; it looked just like the surrounding ground the way she had it covered.  It must be very sturdily covered, because a track showed that even a hippo’s weight had failed to cave it in!  Jackson also said he saw FOUR crocodiles at that spot the other day.  Kay had a very large one by her tent as well, which makes me think I will be waiting a while for the river to go down before I decide to go running on the other side.  Gah, that would be terrifying to happen upon one at eye level!  I am determined to see one from a higher point regardless.  There were none to my knowledge around this part of the river last summer.

I learned many more things yesterday.  Beneath the three bats that hung in the lab tent stretching their wings, yawning, and hanging from one foot while scratching their bodies like dogs with the other, I was given all of the clan lists, instruction manuals, directions around Nairobi for our trips there, etc. etc.  I have a lot of reading to do!  I also cleaned the solar panels with Michelle, set up tracking on the hilux with Eli, and assisted both of them in moving new supplies into the storage tent, whose whereabouts I now feel confident of.  Benson reminded me how to record the weather.

It rained again yesterday afternoon, but luckily it stopped soon enough that we were able to fish-tail it out of the driveway to the den and see some of our hyenas.  We suspect that the Talek West hyenas are expanding their territory, because  we saw Drake, the adult female, running in the territory of the Talek East hyenas.  About three of the cubs, including Rebman, earned tics toward graduation from the den because we saw them far enough away from it to qualify (I will have to check again as to what the distance is).  Three tics and a cub is considered graduated.

I met Galapagos, a small and cute hyena whose spots remind me of a Dalmatian.  I also learned more spot patterns, although I find it extraordinarily hard to ID in the dark, and I felt a bit like I was going backwards in my ability.  I got to see the adult females Helios and Hendrix again!  Helios’s leaf pattern is as helpful as ever in identifying her. Pentanol was there, another subadult who was quite small last I saw her (him?).  At one point, all of the cubs were below us fighting over some food on the ground, and one of them emitted this deep growly rumble at another that I had never heard before.  It was almost like a little angry elephant!

Kelsey and the bushbabies were at dinner.  Two adult bushbabies, terrorizing the genets as usual, came begging.  Kay gave one of them chicken, and it hopped off in seemingly joyous bounds to eat it in the brush.  Who knew bushbabies like meat?

This morning I alluded the bird above my head, but only because we had to get up at 4:30 so we could head out on a darting expedition at 5.  My first time experiencing darting!  I was very excited.  The bird just barely started singing at about 4:45 when I was washing my face.  I think he must have a favorite perch on a branch above my bed.  Looks like I’ve got more than fruit bats to get used to. 

More on the darting later – my time is up!  Five minutes over.  An improvement, however!    

11:16, Thursday, 17 May, 2012

Monday night I awoke in the middle of the night at the Nairobi cottage, and I think that is when it hit me (of all the strange times) that I would be gone for an entire year.  I began to feel very lonely then, but it only lasted for a moment.  Pretty quick something made a vocalization like a very hearty laugh – I would think a hyrax, but they tend to sound like they’re being murdered, not laughing.  A fruit bat chime followed, I cracked a smile, and all was right with the world again.

All remained right with the world the following day.  As I rode along with Kay out of Nairobi, keeping close track of directions since I am a horrible navigator and will soon be doing all of the driving myself, I could hardly keep the smile off of my face.  So Africa, so beautiful in every way, and so different from everything I’d ever known.

As always, words are woefully inadequate to describe my feelings toward the Mara.  The transition of the people out the window to Maasai alerted me that we were getting closer, as well as the fact that every few meters I was bouncing nearly high enough to hit my head on the car ceiling.  The Mamas bombarded us at the park gates with their jewelry and crazily persistent manner, shoving necklaces in our face, “This one, this one.”  It’s always stressful, but is another of the many signs that I have returned, which can only equate to happiness.  My favorite kind of road block met us shortly after entering the park – the type that is big and gray with a trunk and tusks.  Warthogs, tommies, grants, giraffes, lilac-breasted rollers – all of my old friends were there to greet us.  How I missed them!

As soon as we arrived at camp, I had a very happy reunion with the staff – Old Joseph, Jackson, and Benson (Young Joseph was on leave).  It was so good to se them, and they all remembered me!  I also met Michelle (good name, hey Mom?), the British RA.  She is perfectly wonderful, so sweet and helpful with a good sense of humor, and I would pay money to have her voice.  I just love her accent and funny British expressions.  And to think she told me she really likes my accent.  What an idea!

Camp is so green and full of flowers from all the rain.  As I walked back to the tent that had been made up for me, I realized the grass is much taller than before.  I am in Eli’s old tent, with a big old fallen tree right in front that makes a nice place to sit.  My sheets are 101 Dalmations again, a delight, and I have a desk within my tent.  However, the screen was filled with holes that I was quick to point out, because although I absolutely love the thought of seeing a nyoka kubwa (big snake) in camp, I have decided I do not want one in my tent! 

My training began right away when I went out to the newest den with Benson and Michelle.  It was absolutely excellent to be reunited with hyena cubs!  So much love.  I learned to identify some of the new ones, including Minotaur and Satire (mythical creatures lineage), Humphries (college lineage), All Star (shoe brand lineage), and Burger and Chips.  Something extraordinary happened with Burger and Chips!  “Burger” and “Chips” are cub names, because the mother is uncertain; Eli, Michelle, and Benson witnessed, for the first time ever in the over 20 years of the hyena project, two different mothers nursing the same cubs!!!  And they are unrelated!  I also saw Goby from last summer, and how strange to see her as a subadult instead of a little cub!  It’s funny, because although you know that the animals out here don’t stop living their lives while you are away, it is absolutely shocking to see how the little ones have grown!  Goby became involved in a hilarious pile of cubs attempting to roll in something smelly on the ground.  There were probably about six or seven at once, tumbling and rolling on top of one another almost more than in whatever they were attempting to rub all over themselves.

Loki was there with her big ears, beaten out by her sister Helios for the dominate position.  Dionysus and Juno were also beaten out, and very sadly, Dion is taken for dead because her cubs have starved and she hasn’t been seen in ages.

On the way back we saw a white-tailed mongoose already, and two subadult lions.  I just know they must be some of the cubs from last summer.  One was male and one female; I wish it would have been light enough for me to get a picture and see who they were.  Again, so weird how they have grown!

I nearly took a swim in the dark on my first trip to the choo.  Standing water from all the rain gave me a start and soaked through my shoes – the remnants of what was apparently dubbed “Lake Choo” during the big rains.  The bats were back at dinner (there is a baby!!!), and I saw a bushbaby at the kitchen tent!  Kay cooked us pork, but not even the smell of meat drew the genets in, and I had to wait until the following night to see Kelsey.  I am still waiting to see what Eli calls “extra babies” of both the genet and bushbabies, apparently smaller than ever before.

I still need to get used to the fruit bats again, because they woke me up well before my alarm went off at 5:15.  While Kay, Eli, and Michelle commenced on a darting expedition, I rode with Benson and continued to learn.  He is an excellent professor, and taught me many of the landmarks, including “Stupid Tree,” “Sleeping Creek Crossing, ”  “Den One Creek,” “Baboon Golden Sac,” “Lone Tree” (my personal favorite), and many others.  I discovered my new favorite cub, Rebman (explorers’ lineage), who lay below my window looking up at me for almost the whole time we were at the den.  I can also reliably pick out Xena now, and Benson was impressed that I remembered Centaur from last summer (although he shouldn’t have been, because she is quite easy to identify).

Many hartebeest were out, so gorgeous, and I had a fleeting whimsy that I would like to ride one.  And a bit of hilarity: a couple of giraffes started as we drove near.  One had some sort of oxpecker on its back.  Instead of flying away when the giraffe started running as one would expect, it held tight to its mount, pointedly squawking and seemingly angry so that I had no choice but to laugh aloud.

I got some practice tracking, although not for long since the system was running short on battery.  We drove to Talek, where I met two of the guys who work at the mechanic’s name Amau and George.  I was further reunited with Mama Kristie at the little place we get food, and met her adorable baby son.  Dogs and goats were everywhere as usual, even a little puppy, who unfortunately was afraid of my advances.

On the way back to camp we saw Twister!!!!  By golly, she’s big.  She was with Adonis in some tall grass.

It rained last night, so we didn’t go out on obs.  I rode with Eli the long way to Talek, which is less muddy, and received a good stick-shift driving refresher lesson.  I am already much more literate when it comes to cars than I was before I came, although I did get us momentarily stuck in some black cotton mud...if only I didn’t get so nervous when cars are coming the other way!  I try to concentrate so hard on staying to the left, and just go wherever that takes me, which is indeed treacherous in terms of mud.  The guinea fowl also make me nervous, because those colorful balloons on legs are not fond of getting out of the way. 

We picked up Young Joseph in Talek; it was wonderful to see him!  I love Joseph.  He updated us on his daughter Gloria of three years and one-year-old son Elijah on the way back to camp.  Then, out of nowhere, we happened upon a caracal!!!  How fortunate!  Eli has not seen one in his whole year here.  It’s funny how you can be here so long and not once see such things, and then at some spectacularly timed moment, there comes a caracal or an aardvark or some other wizardly rare creature.

Kelsey was in attendance at dinner!  My heart burst when I saw her, and she took some biscuit and chicken from my hand without hesitation.  We threw her chicken bones all night – I nearly whacked Eli in the face with a huge one on accident before it walloped loudly against the tent tarp to land on the kitchen floor.  Kay laughed and said I probably won’t have a career in baseball.

We saw jackal tracks on the way back to our tents.  Apparently lion tracks have been over by the shower, and elephants have made a recent visit, which is gloriously encouraging since one of the things I will surely miss most about Serena is waking up to elephant rumbles and lion roars right next to my tent.  It’s just so superbly wild.

My tent is lonely at night without Lia.  I miss her very much, but I have one of the sparkly-eyed spiders to keep me company at least.  I attempted to shoo it out of the tent, and then realized that I would actually really enjoy its presence, and told it I would be happy to have it stay. 

Well, that was an utterly miserable fail at keeping things short.  I absolutely must get better at this, especially since there are so many other ways I ought to be spending my time, for example reviewing hyena behaviors and reading over clan lists.  I will make a point not to go over 25 minutes at night from now on I think, and whatever is not written is going to have to remain in my memory alone, especially since Kay seems eager for me to switch to the official blog (which I somehow have to obtain a password too – I will have to check with her on that).  Speaking of Kay, I cannot imagine a more hospitable person.  She is always worried over my having enough to eat and getting enough sleep and happiness in general.  Everyone here has been so ridiculously helpful it’s insane. 

17:31, Sunday, 13 May, 2012

Well, here I am in the airport again, ready to return to the Masai Mara in all of its wonder.  Who knew I would be returning in less than a year from the day I began this blog?  Time to continue the adventures.  I can’t believe I will get to see Zenny and Centaur, Shadowfax, Obama, Adonis, Alderon, and all of the other hyenas again!  I bet the cubs have gotten so big!  I wonder what Twister looks like when he’s not a cute little stinker-bug.  Here’s to hoping they’re all alive and well! 

And I will get to see the lions, although they will not be my focus this time, don’t worry Kay!  I am not on Team Lion, as Dave so often accused me of.  I am especially excited to see Creedence and the M.J. Meowmorial Lion (such a ridiculous name...).  Oh gosh, and Triple B is probably all grown up, and little Kelsey the genet too.  I just cannot wait to see everyone!  Homo sapiens included, of course.  Eli and Old Joseph and Joseph and Jackson, Steven and Lasingo and Bensen.  And of course Kay.  I will be working as a research assistant in Talek Camp, but hopefully I will be able to visit beautiful Serena often as well.  That way I can see everyone over there, including Filiman, Jorjio, Moses, the lions (Mumford, Murdoch and Daisy May!!!  I would especially love to see them), the elephants, and my beloved little dwarf mongooses.  Not to mention Rotten and Skittles.

I will be staying for a year this time: Incredible!  Mom, Dad, and Grandma did not do a very good job holding in the tears when they dropped me off.  Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.  At least my dad still had his humor, as he yelled, “Have a good Thanksgiving, and Happy Labor Day!  We’ll go trick-or-treating for you.”

One good thing – I will be forced to be more concise this time around since I will have a great amount of work to do.  It will be good to teach myself that I needn’t write EVERYTHING down, although I know it will be hard.  So many amazing things are always happening in Kenya.  For now I will stick to this blog; Kay may want me to change to the official camp blog, but I don’t know if she will want me to write quite so constantly about the great repertoire of Kenyan exquisiteness as I have a habit of doing.  Perhaps it is supposed to be reserved mostly for hyena news, and the out of the ordinary occurrence of hippos crashing through tents, or the need to evacuate all tents in the middle of the night due to flooding.  I will have to check out the logistics in more detail.

Kwa heri, Marekani!  Take good care of Bus, Mom and Dad.  I will miss everyone more than I can say, but good grief, am I ever excited!

23:08 Kenyan Time, 14 May, 2012

I AM HERE!!!  It’s almost as if I never left.  The stars are so close, the air so African-even Nairobi is bringing back feelings of utter bliss!  It has this unique warmish smell, and the rolling hills and red dirt and people walking along the side of the road told me I am back. I got to practice my Swahili with Joseph, the taxi cab driver, for near an hour due to traffic.  He drove us IRES students back to the airport last summer, and he remembered me.  I can hold a conversation with next to no English at last!  It’s about time.  We talked politics – Libya, Iraq, Bin Laden, Romney, Obama.  Joseph is such a brilliant man; he taught me much in such a short time.  I hope he is wrong with his prediction that Obama will lose though.  He said he’s promised to do many things and hasn’t done them, and I said he has done what he can, and I believe he is an “mtu mwema” (a very moral person), not to mention crazy intelligent, and really tries, but there are so many things in the way.  We agreed that being president must be horribly difficult.    

Eli and Kay met me at the cottage with hugs.  So good to see them!  Up the trippy stairs with my luggage (they are the oddest stairs ever, jutting one way and then the next so that they exercise your brain every time you ascend or descend), quick chats, and now I am going to sleep at last.  I did not sleep well on the plane, but I did meet a new friend who graduated MSU in 2009 and is returning to the Peace Corp after visiting home for his sister’s graduation at MSU.  We are hoping to meet up later and climb Mount Kenya or something.

I think I have encountered more mosquitos tonight than both my other trips combined.  It must be a rainy season thing.  Some strange bird just made an excellently exotic sound, and “mbwa” (dogs) are barking like mad.

Back to the Mara already tomorrow bright and early!!!  Eli says there are “multiple kelseys” now, and an especially small baby!!!!!  AND more bushbabies.  Heaven.