Ed McFarland – an uninvited hyena guest comes to dinner

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.

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).

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!