13:29, Thursday, 7 June, 2012

Life has settled down into the old happy routine I remember from last summer.  It is a routine full of animals; what could be better?  Get up at 5, hit the snooze button four times, roll out of bed at 5:16, arrive at the lab tent at 5:27, leave at 5:30 for obs.  See tons of crazy cool things on obs – work hard to id hyenas and record everything.  Get very excited with each familiar face.  Good morning Monopoly!  How’s it going Twister?  Oh hey, there’s a baby giraffe with the most ridiculous tufts that look like brown sea anemones coming out of its horns.  And try your best not to hit the guinea fowl while in third gear.  Maybe get a darting, return and do bloodwork around 9:30.  Finish at 10:30.  Delicious breakfast from Joseph.  Type of notes, camp maintenance (which sometimes takes up most to all of the afternoon), free time to watch the plethora of camp life or read or write or attempt to learn how to use your awesome new camera or play the harmonica, cold shower after exercise every third day, nap every other day, obs again at 5.  Lots of interactions as the sun begins to set, cubs playful at the car side.  Keep an eye out for elephants on the return trip at 8:30 – they’re huge but hide amazingly well after dark.  So hungry by dinnertime when we get back.  Share half my plate with Kelsey and the bushbabies.  Sit around for a bit after dinner talking.  Head to the tent at 9:20-9:30ish, watch out for hippos on your way there, and for heaven’s sakes don’t use the actual choo.  Read for a bit, lights out at 10, fall asleep to the music of a sawing leopard or roaring lions or hippo burps or elephant rumbles or the crazy starling above your tent and always whooping hyenas.  Coolest job ever. 

But things are never too routine.  For instance, lately we have tried a whole new experiment.  Michelle has gone to Nairobi to help Dave and Julia pick up the IRES students, and in her place for a few days we got Steph and a lion researcher from the Serengeti named Ali.  Ali brought some lions with her.  Finally, lions you can cuddle!  A little oversized, however, and very fond of standing in one place.  Transvestites too, with Velcro where a mane can be attached if desired.  A few places where some stuffing is popping out, but very realistic eyes.  Enough to fool the hyenas, at least for a bit.

The point of our experiment has been to record lion-hyena interactions for later study.  So, for the last three or four days, we’ve used a good chunk of evening obs to get a feel for where the actual lions are hanging out; that way we can pick a spot far away to set up ole Lethario and Fabio (don’t want to give them any more holes, or unnecessarily cause hyena injuries). Then, just before dawn, we would set them so they poked out of some bushes.  Kay attached rope to some dead goat from Talek (RANK!), dragging it around – hilarious – the lions and across the nearby grass to spread the smell.  Next, we positioned our cars in order to tape from two different angles, and played recordings of lions roaring and hyenas whooping at a kill.  This is a useful tactic Steph used during her dissertation research to draw hyenas to the supposed action.  Eli and Benson recorded the going-ons into DVRs, Ali and I taped, Steph played the recording and then she and Kay sat back to take in the gestalt of combined behaviors.

Our trial in Talek East the first morning was a bit of a bust; only about five hyenas showed, and they were too nervous with such a small number to approach the fake lions.  But that’s just as well, seeing as it enabled me to retain my head after somehow getting the pause and record buttons on the camera confused. The second morning we drew in at least 30 of our Talek West hyenas, giggling and bristle-tailing and whooping to draw in more troops.  However, they figured that something was fishy before forming any of the desired coalitions.  Funny watching them approach the lions, waiting for a roar or a swat, only to make off with some meat unchallenged.  Some stared from 3-5 meters away for prolonged periods, clearly confused but too nervous to approach.  Eventually their bristle-tails relaxed some, and Loki actually came up from behind and sniffed Lethario and Fabio.  Our cover was blown, and the hyenas began to disperse and have side squabbles over the meat chunks.  We hastily picked up the lions before the hyenas could decide fluff tastes good. 

One of my favorite things about this second run was the jackals – they never cease to amaze me with their boldness!  Such tiny little carnivores, but among the very first to arrive when the roars and whoops were played, as though they enjoy eating at a table with carnivores many times their weight who might easily add them as a side dish.  But they, unlike the hyenas, never hesitated.  Not five minutes passed before a jackal was trotting off, head in the air with a chunk of meat half its size.  Some of the hyenas decided this just wasn’t fair, but that jackal was up for the chase and kept its prize.

Well, we were going to try to fool our friends one last time.  But this time we tried harder to elicit coalitions.  Eli got some lion roars from the internet so that we could play them once the hyenas started feeling comfortable, which would hopefully keep the situation more realistic.  We also bought a fresh sheep from Lasingo.  I made sure not to set eyes on that sheep, and to be absent from camp when the guys slaughtered it.  Much of it went to meals (Kay made a delicious mutton dish!), but the things that are impossible to stomach (head, bones, intestines and other organs) plus a few cuts of meat were run about the savanna two days later (we took a day off due to a lion sighting in our spot the previous morning) by Eli in front some bushes near Fig Tree Territory.  We had to stifle our gag reflexes with all our might, it was so horribly fowl.  Then, not two seconds after alighting at our posts, what should come out of the very bushes Eli had just been running about with meat attached but six lionesses!  That probably could have been bad.  No time to think about that though – time to rescue Fabio and Lethario!  The cruiser blocked the lions, and we jumped out to heave the fakes into the back of Kay’s new pickup and drive off, leaving the ladies with a stench-ridden meal.  Well, in came 15-20 hyenas, and we had ourselves a real lion/hyena interaction to record!  The lionesses chased off and roared at the hyenas, but eventually the hyenas banded together enough so that they retreated.  Although the hyenas won, it was after the lions had a good share, and Kay is inclined to think that lions don’t care for old meat so much.  But I must not sour the victory of my friends!  They were heroic.  And of course, there were a couple of jackals trot-trot-trotting around in the mix, as well as a lone obnoxious guinea fowl that belted on the sidelines during the entire escapade.  A good end to our latest adventure.

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!  

21:56, Thursday, 31 May, 2012

Monday night I discovered a new love for Buenos Aires.  Although extraordinarily high ranking, she allowed three cubs at the den to come up and lick her face without aggressing upon them (which is what high ranking females tend to do as a hierarchical reinforcement).  It was very sweet to see such behavior.

Apparently the baboons are back around, as Michelle was startled to find an enormous male in the lab tent one recent afternoon.  Sometimes we hear them making their “ooo, ooo”  short barks at night while sitting around the dinner table.  The baboon researcher named Robert Sipolsky says the only explanation he can come up with for when baboons start barking after waking up in the middle of the night is that they have had a bad dream and are asking for reassurance from their troop members, who often bark in return to let them know it’s alright.  At least this is what they did for Benjamin in A Primate’s Memoir.

Tuesday morning Benson and I assigned two more cubs of unknown motherhood to Baba Ganoush.  Their names (I think their lineage is something to do with Britain) are now Yummly and Galaxy.  We also saw Gaza Tuesday morning!!!  He is a bit more skittish around the car after his traumatic experience, but he looks well, and were we ever happy to see him!  Much needed since this batch of telizol drug is still letting us down – Juno was a difficult dart, and Pantanol didn’t go down at all, yet Eli hit each square in the butt as usual.  Befuddling. 

I have decided that if picturesque were an adjective that could kill the soul mine would have been reincarnated at least a million times since my arrival.  Picture two cheetahs sitting on a long-grass hill, about 20 meters apart, green grass blowing in sunny fragrance, the essence of light temperatures and dreams of days past or unexistably lovely lulling against your cheeks as you stare at those breathing, living works of God and evolution’s finest art.  And then imagine how wild and free the realization it was real and happening a couple mornings ago.  Places like this still exist on our earth.  Pray may we never let ourselves take them away.

My transcription from the day of the tommy kill turned out to be ten pages long!  I feel as though I am getting the hang of the formatting now that Michelle went through it all with me.  Slowly, slowly inching my way to being a fully-functioning research assistant.  I’m in that odd transition phase where I can’t get away with thinking of myself as new to this job, but definitely need more work, so it’s hard to know when to ask questions and when to trust that I am doing things correctly and to know whether feeling a little put out because grad students still turn to Eli and Michelle when asking about the hyenas is acceptable.  Funny how everything involves a journey of sorts.

Played soccer across the river with the guys on Tuesday afternoon.  I was late arriving since I had to finish my novel of a transcription, so Joseph Mzee (old man Joseph) kindly walked me down to a good place to cross, very amused that a girl was going to play football.  I had to calm down my indignation with a reminder that, like any culture, African culture has areas in which to improve.  The river was much too wide at my normal crossing site.  Joseph Mzee’s way involved grass clumps and rocks on a shallow part of the river, followed by a relatively steep climb up the bank on the other side.  One of my legs got nice and cooled off when I didn’t make it all the way to the middlemost clump.  I found Joseph, Jackson, Benson, and Eli on the other side, along with a local supposedly named Ranger.  The goals were two fairly sizeable rocks spaced apart on either end of an arbitrary field.  It was so much fun playing, although I am quite terrible!  Jackson and Ranger took me on their team.  Ranger probably only passed me the ball twice in the 30-40 minutes we played, but I bullied Jackson since I know him.  When he tried to make it so it was just him and Ranger, I yelled that I may be a very bad player, but that he must remember I am part of the team too.  After that all I had to do was yell “Ukumbuke!” (Remember!), and I was sure to get the ball. Bet I cost our team a win (it ended in a draw), but at least I wasn’t made useless.  The heat and altitude and sprinting had me breathing hard for at least twenty minutes after we finished.  Exhilaration!  I have been invited to play again, and play again I will – hopefully with Michelle in tow.  :)

21:45, Friday, 1 June, 2012

Happy birthday Uncle Lee!  Thanks for always being such a great godfather!

I learn so much from Kay when we are eating meals.  Minus the fact that she has the most incredible stories about her wildly awesome life, we often get on topics involving conservation and hyenas (go figure).  The other day we were talking about how one cannot fault the Maasai for killing an individual animal that is repeatedly dangerous to them, but to seek out and kill one problem individual is very different from poisoning or persecuting the whole lot of them.  She made it seem so simple, a solution to something that has always bothered me – what of the animals that endanger people?  How do we argue for them in the face of someone who has lost a loved one or a body part to an aggressive carnivore or charging elephant?  Well, we must be reasonable, that’s all.  And we must hope for reason in return.

Kay also told of some playback experiments she conducted back in the day.  I guess she played tapes of dead hyena’s whoops (for example, one that had been dead for three years) to live individuals, and it was clear they recognized the voice and became thoroughly confused.  The most confused were the cubs of the deceased whooper.  Kay said individuals also recognize their own voice when it is played back to them as their own.  Hyenas are no less than astoundingly amazing!  Animals are not given enough credit.

At breakfast the other day a bird with black and blue sheen, looking something like a grackle from home but slightly bigger, landed by the table; and would you know, I’m pretty sure it made some of the sounds I hear every night and morning!  Just goes to show yet again that you can’t judge a book by its cover.  Such a beautiful song from such a common-seeming bird.  I was also pleasantly startled by a great big ibis the size of a flamingo on my way back from the choo, dark blue with its elegantly curved beak, wading in the last remnants of Lake Choo.

Tuesday I had a walk down memory lane when we went to JK Safari Camp to help the BEAM students with trapping and measuring African grass rats.  It was so odd returning to the place I stayed when I met Africa, the first taste of my dream come true.  Going there made me miss the people I shared it with.  But I certainly didn’t miss the stressed looks on the faces of the students, hunkered down at each available moment working on their final paper due the following day.  Thank God my tassel has made the trip from right to left! 

Tuesday evening we took the night off obs to get drinks at Fig Tree Lodge with the BEAM students.  It was delightful to get to talk with Dave and Julia some, and Michelle and I climbed up into a gloriously built treehouse, where there were habituated vervets galore, young ones tumbling about not five feet from where we sat, a big male sauntering not arm’s length in front of us before sitting on the post and looking very thoughtfully at the forests and river below, totally unconcerned over our presence.  There was one female, looking to be rather young but older than the majority present, who was a human behaviorist.  She was fascinated with us, and twice I swore she was going to jump onto our shoulders.  A magic moment came when I decided to wipe my hand back and forth across the boards of the treehouse, just to see what she would do.  She looked at me, looked at her hand, looked back at me, and copied the motion!  I repeated it, then she did; I did, then she did.  Michelle tried, and she copied her too.  There is nothing more special than a broken communication barrier.  I will never forget that monkey.

Big elephant making one of my favorite sounds close by.  

15:46, Wednesday, 30 May, 2012

Things are finally drying up!  We have had nothing but sun since last I wrote, and the afternoons have been hot indeed, more like the common conception of African weather.  It’s nice to be able to use the quicker crossings and have shoes that aren’t caked in mud.

Monday was filled with learning.  I learned how to do a car check, and I feel like a right mechanic now that I know the name of all the whatchamacallits and thingamajiggers.  My favorite part was getting down and dirty laying face-up under the car.  Now I know why Maina and his men wear those overalls; it rains dirt beneath there when we shake the shock absorbers, universal joint, bushings, etc. to make sure they are intact.  And who knew a car held so many different types of fluid?!: brake, steering, transmission, wiper, obviously oil and gas, and I think I’m missing one or two.  I can identify an engine, radiator, and fan belt.  Eli also showed me some parts of the wheel and how to use both types of jacks; I can hardly push the big one down without using all of my body weight.  More reason for my terrification (wish that was truly a word).  I don’t think I’ll be touching that thing.  I would rather spend the night in the car amidst a whole horde of elephants, thank you.

The car was cool, but I have a love/hate relationship with cars since a) they contribute greatly to climate change, and b) we could still be riding horses if it weren’t for that swine (I have been around a Brit for too long now! calling someone a swine) Henry Ford’s genius.  So the real fun part came when I was taught how to use the darting gun  It’s not as complicated as I thought it was going to be, and practicing is a great time!  There is one switch that must be pulled so that the gun can accept air; another so that the proper amount of air can be loaded from the carbon chamber based on distance (there is a meter at the back of the gun); then you load the practice dart into the disconnected barrel, just barely fully in so that the red tuft of it is still at your end; properly line up the barrel with the scope; attach the barrel; turn on the scope; remove the safety; line the red dot up so it’s on the protruding bit of metal at the end of the barrel; line both of those up with your target; and shwoop!  Pull the trigger and the dart shoots out to stick in the cardboard box (in this case).  I practiced standing first, at a distance of ten meters, and then we pulled the car around so I could shoot out the window (since that’s how it’s done).  I hit the box every time (thank God), only once outside of the circles that are supposed to approximate the circumference of a hyena thigh.  I am going to like this; I get to shoot, but I don’t hurt the animal apart from a slight sting.  Who says you need to kill in order to shoot?  We are allowed to practice whenever we can, and are expected to gradually increase the distance up to 25 meters.  Normally the hyenas are much closer, but if you practice at 25, 10 is a breeze.

Monday night Michelle and I left for obs early to collect paste.  Hyenas have a substance termed “paste” in their anal sac, and they often wipe it on grass stalks, many times pasting over where a different individual has already pasted.  The reason for this is still under investigation.  One of the graduate students is currently studying the difference in composition of paste at versus away from the den.  No hyenas were out at Res Den, which is above a creek at the edge of the reserve, so we got out of the car to sniff stalks for paste.  I can only imagine how ridiculous we must have looked, running our noses up and down tall stalks of grass.  We have to find where the paste ends on each confirmed stalk in order to collect a control, which is snipped off into a glass vial separate from the pasted stalk bits.  It was absolutely wonderful to be freed from the car for a bit, especially on such a gorgeous afternoon.  The sky was so blue, and it felt almost like we were two little girls playing in the most glorious meadow imaginable, mountains crystal clear in the distance.  Although what sort of weird game a child could concoct to match the situation I’m not sure. 

21:46, Sunday, 27 May, 2012

So sleepy!  Good thing I love hyenas so much, or I might resent them for being crepuscular.  Gosh it’s rough when that alarm goes off at five in the morning!  But Grandpa and Dad, I will have you know that I manage to get out of bed every time. 

We have accomplished three more dartings each of the mornings this Friday and weekend:  Endor, Buenos Aires, and Cy.  One of the current lab projects is to sequence the genome of hyena bacteria.  I felt sort of bad while sticking a q-tip up the nose of even a sleeping hyena, let alone while swabbing the anus, anal sac, and prepuce.  The mouth and ear weren’t so bad, but someone needs to teach hyenas to clean their ears.  After all, they seem to have the tooth brushing down.  We snip off most of the q-tip stick and leave just the cotton end in a little glass vile, labeling where each came from.  Just another thing in addition to taking blood, tooth and body measurements, and weight.  After we had weighed Buenos Aires and were trying to determine a good recovery spot, I held my hand against her paw.  There is just something about the look of a human hand against an animal paw that depicts solidarity among species.

We are pros at blood work by now.  We could have won a contest the way we whipped through Cy’s this morning.  Wabam!

Michelle and I went to Talek the other day to run a bamillion errands.  One of the errands was buying some produce from Mama Kristie’s shop, and we got to play with her baby named David.  He is extremely adorable – about eight months to a year old, I would say, and although you can tell when he is happy his smile always stops when it is halfway up his face and remains in his eyes alone.  Michelle has a new mission to make him smile.  We also visited Maina for a new universal joint.  I am liking Maina more and more as I get to know him.  He is very quiet with English and doesn’t smile much, but I can tell he has the best of hearts.  And you can get him talking if you speak in Swahili – sometimes so fast that I can hardly catch a word he says!  Then I had a very interesting time trying to explain to the butcher what a “fillet” of meat was.  We almost ended up with kidney and liver, but caught the mistake just in time.  We picked up some internet credit, transmission fluid, and refilled our soda and beer crates.  The last thing we accomplished was to pick up a few new bookcases that Kay had the “furniture man,” Mama Kristie’s husband, make for us. One of them was for me, and my tent is so much more homey now!  But the furniture man insisted he ride home in the back of our cruiser and support the bookcases.  Michelle and I squinted every time we hit a big bump or went through a water-filled crossing on the way back to camp, but he beamed and said everything was “sawa sawa” each time we asked.

Friday morning I had a heck of a time transcribing.  Pantanol came running from near the den with a fresh tommy kill that we must have just missed, as we were with her not fifteen minutes before.  Helios, the head hancho, began chasing Pantanol so that she giggled loudly over and over while avoiding her.  Pretty soon hyenas were arriving from every direction; there were 16 of them, behaviors occurring left and right.  It was of course amazingly cool to watch, but very stressful attempting to record everything! Helios ended up stealing the food from Pantanol, and the high rankers got to eat most of it, although none of them were bloody, indicating they had not contributed to making the kill.  Only after the high rankers were finished were the others allowed to eat, others meaning other females, subadults, and cubs.  A few of the lowest rankers didn’t get a share, least of all the male Wellington, who sacked out about 100 meters from the whole thing.  He knew it was a lost cause to try and get even a smidgeon of a scrap.  Stinks to be male when you’re a hyena.  But by golly, it’s about time females had the upper hand somewhere!

The speed with which hyenas eat is quite amazing.  They made extraordinarily fast work of that gazelle, and when all of the good stuff was gone, the two horns were carried around so that they stuck straight out from the hyenas’ mouths like narwhal tusks. 

Benson and I saw Chips nursing from Scrabble!  Now that we knew his/her mom, we could assign a proper name.  Scrabble’s lineage is national parks.  Chips’ sibling has died, so one of the two names lined up had to be discarded.  It came down to a tie in the votes between Tuli and Great Smokey.  Mama Kubwa had the final say – when we told her she had a problem to solve, she looked so unhappy (Kay has been solving many bureaucratic issues lately).  She was overjoyed to hear what the issue was, and happily yelled “Ready?  Smokey!” (arms thrown up in the air).  Eli and I were happy with her decision, although I felt kind of bad since Benson and Michelle really liked Tuli.  Also a cute name indeed.

The driving lessons continue.  I can shift up and down no problem, but I still have trouble starting and reversing.  Dave (one of the Rhode Island visitors) and Eli rode to the lodge when we got water, and made very good instructors.  Along the way, we found two leopard tortoises in the road.  I got out to move them to the other side – I had no idea they are so heavy!  Used to painted turtles.  One of them narrowly missed soaking me as it pulled in its head, hissing and peeing.  I kicked myself afterward though; I sure hope that tortoise is okay, because it is quite dangerous for a tortoise to lose so much water all at once.  Pray he’s alright!  Two other adventures of the Keekrok Lodge water expedition: we attempted to go bait grass rats for the BEAM students to catch and measure in a few days, but the people at the lodge staff’s living quarters had no idea we were coming.  Interesting trying to explain to these people that we were from a hyena camp but wanted to lay out oats to attract rats so that students could come trap and let them go.  Didn’t really work – more bureaucracy for Kay.  Then we found some tourists whose drivers had driven illegally off-road to get a better view of some lions in a bush for their customers, only to get stuck and scare the lions off.  Not one cruiser stuck, but two, and one of the tourists waved out of the top of the vehicle in distress when we were within about ten meters, as though we couldn’t see these two ginormo cars on the side of the road.  We managed to pull one out, although the tourists had to evacuate because there was a very close call during which the car rocked so hard it almost fell on its side with all of them aboard.  Oh dear.  Not to mention that this whole time our car was already weighed down with huge jerry cans full of water.

A quick wildlife rundown before I let myself sleep.  Antelope everywhere still, although it has finally dried out quite nicely.  Michelle has named the one-horned impala we sometimes see by the den “Derrick.” I saw a topi and a hartebeest laying together tonight.  I think they are rafiki.  I also think jackals and hyenas get along exceptionally well for some reason, as I have never seen them do anything but interact peacefully.  Parcheesi lay in the road today when a jackal approached her, and merely watched it with ears perked forward.  Saw some bat-eared foxes playing the other day, all puffed out like scared cats as they leapt sideways this way and that in our headlights.  I have a gecko that pitter-patters across my tent again, and the crazy bird that is always singing in the most hilarious chortles at five in the morning has become quite fond of singing at nine to ten at night while I am getting ready for bed.  I wonder if that thing ever sleeps.  Found out dik-dik make noises like squeaky toys when they stot.  I also noticed that many of them have the funniest little tufts of hair between their horns that look something like the poorly styled haircut of a human boy.  About twenty giraffes walked majestically in a single-file line across the plain tonight, towering over us as we drove within some meters, especially since we were in the tiny Maruti, which makes you feel absolutely dwarfed in comparison to even an ostrich.  For two nights in a row the frogs in the river sang no more restrained than Luciano Pavarotti on a climax note.  Oddly, they are quiet now, as they were before.  Gorgeous birds absolutely everywhere as usual; Michelle and I have a plan to learn them on the side.  I have seen two little kingfishers in the past couple of days.  Lord, are they beautiful!  Brilliant blues and oranges and a very sophisticated head with a smart little beak.  And how they shine in the sun!  Butterflies everywhere too, big and small, white and orange and black and blue. And would you know – we saw a porcupine disappearing into one of the den holes!!!  My first wild old world porcupine!!!  Just hope the cubs decide not to use that particular hole.

Oh, and I cannot leave out last evening’s sky!  It was rainy in patches, so sheets of gray that spread like sunrays slanted here and there, while the sun itself simultaneously lit everything around them.  A very clearly defined rainbow shone bright, eventually arcing halfway across the sky in a stretch of mist that covered the mountains.  And off to the south, just above the horizon, were mountains of puffs of billowy clouds.  I’m afraid this sky lessened the quality of my work; it’s hard to find hyenas when you cannot stop staring upward.

21:54, Thursday, 24 May, 2012

Happy birthday Grandma!  I love and look up to you very much.

Slept in yesterday because it was too wet to traverse out.  When I awoke and was laying comfortably in bed, I heard some faint rustling outside my window, and slowly unzipped so I could discover what it was.  There was a family of dik-dik right in front of me, and I watched them for about 20 minutes.  The tiny baby would dart this way and that and run back to nurse from its mother, while she and the father wandered about foraging.  Such delicate and beautiful creatures.  They lift their spindly little legs high and deliberate when walking, twitching their tails something like white-tailed deer.  Their eyes are disproportionately large, with the gland where they mark stalks of grass big and black in the corner, their noses pointy black and twitchy.  And I was impressed at how flawlessly they darted through the brush when leaving.  It’s moments like these that remind me how very anthropocentric our universe has become.  Here these tiny little creatures are living their lives, and they do not disappear when we move on with our day after a morning encounter.  Couldn’t we just as easily exist as a different form of life?

I spoke into the DVR again last night, and transcribed this morning.  The typing-up part was not half as bad as I was anticipating!  Michelle helped me through it very patiently.  But on obs it was just Benson and me.  At the den we found the gajillion cubs, all in a huge clump so that I had a heck of a time attempting to ID each one for my scan.  Scrabble was nursing either Tuli or Great Smokey (national parks lineage) in den hole 3, I think it was.  It is astonishing how very alike Scrabble, Parcheesi, and Monopoly’s faces look.  Funny when you start to recognize hyena family resemblance; it’s yet another confirmation of how strongly genetics shape life.  Speaking of Monopoly, I forgot to mention that she was nursing the other night, and Loki came up and licked her nursing cubs.  It was extremely sweet and unexpected; these two hyenas are unrelated.

I am incapable of leaving out stories of the bushbabies and Kelsey.  I just love them to pieces.  Kelsey put her little paws up on my chair looking for food last evening, and when I touched her nose she didn’t flinch.  A bushbaby chased her off just as she was about to accept the guacamole-covered chipate I had saved for her, so I stayed about 15 minutes in the lab tent after the others had gone to bed to make sure she got it.  While I was waiting, the bushbabies were sniffing noisily around.  I had to spare a little piece for the baby (the others had already received a-plenty).  I held a small piece of chapati out, and that bushbaby stood on its hind legs and stared me in the eyes, sniffing uncontrollably loud and clearly very nervous.  It would jab its hand in and grab a piece before nearly spitting with the tremendous breaths it was taking and then leap-bound away.  It returned after the first piece, and I attempted to give it another, but when it stood sniffing like an olympic sprinter and nervously grabbed at the food, it drew back its hands with nothing in them and looked so confused before throwing an indignant sniff-spit tantrum and bounding away.  There was also a moment when one of the adults came flying out of the night onto one of the tent poles, grabbing on flawlessly to the side exactly like Spiderman.  Clearly he should have been called Bushbabyman.  At any rate, I found Kelsey on the path back to my tent, and when I knelt down she keenly ran up to take the chapati I had saved.

This morning Michelle and I drove out on obs while the other three went darting.  We saw tiny little black cubs, probably six weeks old, at the den.  I cannot even begin to express how cute they are.  They head-bob to absolutely everything, even guinea fowl and plants blowing in the wind (according to Kay), cautiously avoiding any confrontation with other hyenas through instant appeasement.  A good survival mechanism at that age.  We think these cubs might be either Amazon or Yogurt’s, more likely Yogurt’s since Amazon was not acting very momish.  We only glimpsed Yogurt running off on our way in.

The others darted, and while heading over to help them, I really had to empty myself.  Hate doing so out in the middle of the savanna where any Tom, Dick, or Harry could drive up, but I didn’t have a choice.  So we wait until presumably no one is around, and I go squat by the side of the car.  While in the process I look up to see a hot air balloon in clear range.  Can you imagine looking down from your peaceful safari balloon ride to find someone in such a compromising position?  Come to find out later, the BEAM kids flew today, and recognized that we had made a darting.  Good God in Heaven, please say that’s all they recognized.  They must have been in that balloon – it was the only one around.  Not funny, God.  Not at all funny.

Two hyenas – Harpey and Ted – had been darted at the same time, so we had to work quickly.  It was necessary to take body measurements on Ted first as he was still going down, head bobbing beneath the cloth.  Then I took her teeth measurements with the calipers.  All went well, and they were loaded into the back of the cruiser like people in an ambulance to speed off to their recovery bush.  Michelle and I took the samples back to start centrifuging them and preparing tubes for the various blood work. 

21:37, Friday, 25 May, 2012

Back in camp, I got full bloodwork training.  I think it is so amazing.  While the samples are being centrifuged, we prepare many viles labeled with the darted hyena’s name, ID number, sex, the date and sample type: serum, buffy coat (white blood cells), red blood cells, plasma, and EDTA whole blood.  When the blood samples are all centrifuged, the red blood cells sit at the bottom of the tube.  A thin layer of white blood cells then separates the red blood cells from the serum, which sits on top.  We pipette out the plasma and serum into tubes first, then break off the tip of the pipette to make a wider hole that sucks up the clumps of white blood cells.  Finally, we stick that pipette to the very bottom of the tube to gather red blood cells.  We also use thoroughly mixed whole blood to generate DNA samples by adding red blood cell lysis (to break up the red blood cells, which have no DNA), then centrifuge it so the whole cells (the DNA-containing cells) sink to the bottom, where they stick.  We poor out the red blood, then add cell lysis to break up the cells and make the DNA accessible.  Kay further showed me how to make one cell-thick slides for microscope viewing with a capillary tube.  You tap the blood in a thin line and then gently smear it across the slide.  All of the samples we prepare will ride back to Michigan State with Kay in June.

Kay’s friends from Rhode Island are visiting – they are great people, really great people.  Paula, the woman, was Kay’s roommate in college if I understand correctly.  It’s her and her husband.  The table is nice and full at meal times!

I think I must have a very odd sense of fun.  No one else likes doing blood work, and I had an absolute blast when our car got hopelessly stuck last evening.  It got to the point where we were all fairly covered in mud, hauling rocks and branches from the nearest bush thickets to try and build our way out.  Eventually my shoes were absolutely caked, so I ditched them and went slogging through the mud and across the savanna barefoot.  I saw my first Kenyan frog hopping along!  After at least an hour of hauling and building up the wheel, not to mention jacking up the car (which I played no part in because I’m pretty sure my fright of the jack qualifies as a phobia), we finally had a go at driving it out.  Rev rev rev....almost....nope.  Only sunk further.  We resigned to waiting for Kay (whose phone was not working) to return to camp, all climbing atop the car to watch the savanna become cloaked in night.  The stars came out, and I almost started crying because they were so beautiful in the big treeless dome above.  The big dipper was enormous and especially twinkly.  We laughed as we listened to each other’s “getting stuck” stories (it is not at all an uncommon occurrence out here, especially when it rains like it has been).  Benson shone around with the light every once in a while as an upset elephant screamed in the distance.  Only tommies and topis on our plain, the topis who were none to happy to see us as expressed in huffs and snorts.  I decided it was a good time to pose the question of whether each of us would rather be squished or tusked by an elephant; after all, that would advise our escape tactic should one decide to be grumpy, and is really quite an interesting ponder.  We all decided squashed in the end; I was the only one who wavered.  I just think being tusked would make a much better obituary.  But don’t worry Mom and Dad, nothing was really going to happen.  Although I hear say that some elephants from a different forest region were released in this area about five months ago.  Apparently poachers were causing too big of a problem where they were.  This group of elephants is known to be more hostile toward humans, and who can blame them?  Sounds like they may have defeated the purpose and found their way home though.  The story is a bit muddled.  Excellent creatures, elephants.

Tilt’s GPS points show that she is up and well!  What a relief.

21:46, Tuesday, 22 May, 2012

This morning we darted the adult female named Tilt.  I don’t know if I am bad darting luck or what, but it was another very atypical experience in that she didn’t go fully down after one dose.  Eli shot her again, and then unbeknownst to us, that one didn’t inject.  Kay very bravely walked up and shot her in the butt with some more, and she finally fell asleep. Traumatizing.  We are worried about how she will react to the car now.  Hopefully she was drugged enough that she won’t remember.

Once she was down, it was another unbelievably neat experience.  This time I got to see blood taken, and was shown how to put pressure on the neck to pop the jugular.  I recorded all the measurements taken by Michelle, and helped to hold the mouth open for the teeth measurements.  Tilt started to move her mouth and tongue a bit while we were still measuring the occlusal surface of a premolar, so I pried extra hard.  The BEAM students came by toward the end to observe the process, then I helped to carry Tilt on the stretcher to the scale (59 kg) and then the back of the car to drive her to a recovery bush.

As I was sitting staring over the seat at Tilt, it was one of those moments where you think Holy Cow, this is actually happening.  I’m riding around in a car that has a live hyena in the back of it, rubbing its forehead and adjusting the cloth over its eyes.  Wicked.

Well, we had a bit of trouble finding an appropriate spot to lay her, unsure of the present whereabouts of the resident lion pride.  An enormous herd of cape buffalo came up onto the hill where we originally planned on putting her, raising their heads defiantly, facing us with their perpetually grumpy countenance.  That wouldn’t do.  Some elephants were also nearby.  Finally we found a place where they seemed far enough away.  Carefully lifting Tilt out of the car, we laid her beneath some bushes.  We gathered branches to build a protective boma around her, made much easier since elephants had recently passed through and snapped many large branches.  One last pat, and we were off.  I only hope she’s doing fine now, running around out there with a piece of my heart.  Such a lovely girl, but man, did she smell!  We had to scrub for ages.

We found Puma, a subadult male, in Talek East territory, probably preparing to disperse.  He defecated, which I guess is very fortunate since the hormonal state of dispersing males is a hot topic.  I was reminded how to scrape poop back in camp, although I remember that one well, perhaps because smells tend to imprint particularly well on one’s memory.

Watching the bloodwork being done was super cool.  We have a centrifuge in camp, and separated out the blood into plasma, white blood cells, and red blood cells.  We took several different blood measurements and made microscope slides after drawing out white blood cells with a pipette.  Especially cool since I have seen these samples in lab; now I was on the side preparing them from raw form.  So superbly sciencey!

I did my first transcription recording tonight!  It was short and sweet, since we didn’t see many hyenas before having to head back.  It’s the rainy season that won’t stop; we got 28 ml in camp in ONE HOUR.  When we were heading back up the driveway, Michelle in the driver’s seat, we slid quite substantially to the side, and it was most hilarious: the front window did a panorama over a group of giraffes standing in a line staring at us (how embarrassing).  The way they were looking at us had us almost in tears laughing – just standing there watching us make fools of ourselves.

Well, more games tonight.  I taught everyone how to play Euchre, which only Eli had ever played, and then we played golf.  My favorite moment was when Kay was shuffling the cards, and all of a sudden starting flapping her arms and saying, “Oh no, oh no, oh help!”  We all thought something was seriously wrong, but she had only dropped a card beneath her in the sand, and was tease-worthily concerned over its getting sandy. :)

Something very large is very near the side of my tent right now.  I’m almost certain it’s an elephant! Time to lay down and listen to them.