We are sitting
at the dining tables waiting for our dinner to be served. The sun has set and
darkness surrounds the space that serves as our “dining room.” The
mouthwatering smell of beef fillet fills the air and my group of twenty female
Furman students waits in anticipation of the upcoming meal.
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| Furman students enjoying sundowners |
We’ve just
returned from our traditional “sundowner” drive – the African tradition of
finding the perfect location to watch a breath-taking African sunset and imbibe
with a drink of your choice and nibble on some snacks. On the way back, as we
navigate a tight corner to avoid a tree in front of us, we hear a large SMASH!
CRUNCH! and our two ton Land Cruise jerks to an abrupt stop. We’ve been impaled
by a downed tree that is now lodged into the side of the front passenger door,
where I sit. It has destroyed one of the back passenger windows which flops
open and down along the vehicle for better viewing. “What the hell was that?”
Paul asks. “A large tree on the ground, now stuck in the side of the vehicle,”
I say. He tries to reverse and we hear this horrible ripping of metal which
sets us free.
We drive back
to camp and Paul and one of the other guides, Frank, begin to assess the damage
and “make a plan” to deal with it. Once opened, my door no longer closes and
the window will have to be secured so Vervet monkeys don’t steal the entire
contents of the vehicle in the morning. They grab some tools and get to work. I
escort the students back to their tents and then the dining area for dinner.
As we gather
around the tables and wait for the cook and kitchen helpers to bring the food
to the buffet table, one of the students says, “What is that?” and points into
the darkness. Using my headlamp I shine in the direction of her pointing to see
a solo male hyena (He’s kind of small, so I’m guessing that he’s male. Female
hyenas are larger than male). Slowly he circles the perimeter of our dining
area about six feet away from the outer boundary of our group. I stand up and
move slowly between the students and our uninvited dinner guest (perhaps this
is why they decided my “spirit animal” was the mama lion).
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| Lion King hyenas |
I understand
that hyenas get a bad rap. Disney movies vilify them. In the Lion King they are primarily responsible for
Mufasa’s death (by triggering a wildebeest stampede) and join up with Scar in his reign of terror. In movies, they
are pretty sinister and in real life they are one of the key predators in the
bush. Their hunched walk, due to having much larger front quarters than hind
quarters, makes them seem even more devious. Their heads are huge with soulless
looking eyes of solid black pools during the day and yellow glowing spheres at
night.
“Everybody stay
calm. No one make any sudden moves. He’s just here because he smells the meat
and would like to join us for dinner,” I instruct. The students’ reactions run
the gamut from tears of terror to excitement. He seems to
be moving off, so I sit back down. Unfortunately, he is not finished with us
and after we cautiously go through the buffet line, and sit with full plates at
the tables, he returns with his same skulking moves just a few feet from us. I
call to the kitchen staff, that he is back, but they offer no assistance. I
position myself again between him and the students and try to deter him by
shining my headlamp in his eyes. He continues his undeterred stalking of our
campsite.
At one point he
visits the neighboring campsite and they shine a huge white spot light on him,
driving him back to our campsite (thanks for that!). On another pass through he
goes over to the kitchen staff coming within a few feet of them. They sit
motionless as he sniffs at the grill on the fire where the delicious beef was
cooked. Once he ventures deeper into camp by sneaking behind a parked supply
vehicle within mere feet of our buffet table.
I whistle for
Paul (like a grey hornbill, which is the call we use when we can’t find each
other in a store), but get no reply. He and Frank are still busy repairing our
vehicle after, what I’ve come to call, “the unfortunate log incident.” I’m on
my own. We try to eat, although I suspect the students feel as nauseous as I do
and don’t have much of an appetite.
After we finish
eating, I’m finally able to get assistance from our third guide, Thabo, who
helps me gather the students, escort them to their tents to get needed
toiletries, before we walk them to the ablutions block (toilet/shower area at
the campsite). All twenty students cram into the female bathroom, all pumped up
on adrenalin, brushing teeth, using the toilet, feeling slightly more secure in
the four walls of the cement ablution block. On our way back to the tent, Ed
(which one of the students has named him, perhaps from the Lion King movie), crosses our path. The student form a tighter herd
and pick up the pace with Thabo in front and me taking up the rear.
We zip them
safely in their tents (with a pee pot – I doubt anyone will be leaving the tent
tonight) and put down the front flaps of the tent so they don’t see lurking
yellow eyes at night. They are all in bed by 9 PM, on our first night in the
bush… and every night after. There’s some advantage to having an uninvited
dinner guest on the first night out.
When Paul and Frank finally return to the dining area after fixing the vehicle (they've used the hydraulic jack to "pop" the door dent back out and covered the broken window with a garbage bag), oblivious to the adventure we have been having, Frank informs me that this hyena is "resident" in the area and that he's been around for a long time since he was a pup (the den is fairly close to the campsite). Apparently, people call him "McFarland."
FYI - This event took place in March 2015. The hyena pictures are from Ngorongoro Crater, January 2007 - hyena pictures in the day are hard to come by!
Fortunately, in
addition to our typical office days, we’ve had a chance to get out to the bush
a couple of times this month. In less than a two hour drive we are past the
buffalo fence (that separates the wildlife from the domestic animals) and in
the bush with elephants and giraffes as our closest contacts. On one Sunday we
venture up to the Black Pools area of Moremi Game Reserve. I’ve mentioned the
pools before on previous entries which, while typically filled with hippos and
water birds, were dry as a bone this time. Unfortunately, the rainy season was
not that rainy this year and so some of the typical standing watering holes are
no longer watery and just…holes. The grasses which are meant to sustain the
wildlife until it rains again (in late October/early November) are almost nonexistent.
It is going to be a long dry “dry season” this year.
Just a few days
later we ventured back to Moremi to do a star show for our friend’s family who
was on safari visiting from South Africa. Staying in the “Bodumatau” area (roar
of the lion) we had beautiful clear skies for star gazing. Our star show,
however, was delayed a bit because there was a pride of lions (2 females, 1
male) in the middle of the road on the drive back from sundowners. As we came
up behind another safari vehicle we were traveling with we wondered why they
were moving so slowly only to realize that smack in the middle of the road,
without a care in the world, were three lions. It is nice to be reminded that
keeping to one’s time table is not so important sometimes.
