Things have been great here in the Mara! Very busy, but very good.
Last night the four of us (Julie, Wes, Lily and I) were sitting around the table after dinner and heard a pitter patter in the woods next to us. We grabbed a light in time to see a little hyena cub trotting past us! A cub in camp! It was wonderful, we tried to follow it and ID the cub. The cub was definitely from our North clan and one we would know if we got a good look. We couldn't see it well enough to confirm but we think it was Michelle or Jude (Beatles lineage). We saw at least one other cub sized hyena near the kitchen tent but also couldn't see it well enough to ID. Later last night when I was going to bed I heard some scuffling around the lab tent. My guess is that the hyenas were rolling around playing. They luckily didn't get into too much mischief for us to clean up this morning! I guess it is a good thing we love our job because apparently work comes home with us here : )
A few nights ago Lily and I were driving around Happy Zebra Territory trying to find the clan's new den. We were off-roading in an area we had recently seen some of the clan members. Around an old termite mound I saw a little black face with two big round ears. "HIGS!" The youngest cub Higgs, sub-atomic particle lineage, was hanging out by what appeared to be their new den! We found it! Because dens are the most active at sun rise and sun set we decided to come back in a few hours to check out the den scene. As we were driving towards the den later a herd of about 10 elephants got in our way. We were able to safely maneuver around them and make it to the den. That is when we realized that it was getting very dark, very quickly and there is now a herd of elephants between us and the track we need to take to get home. On the other side of the den is a rock field where we got stuck the day before trying to find the den, so driving that way wasn't an option. Crap! Elephants that you can't see are scary while you are driving a Maruti (our smallest car). I'm sure an elephant could easily roll and squash a Maruti without even noticing they ran into anything, basically, they're huge. I made Lily be on elephant patrol, we took pictures of all the hyenas at the den to ID later and got out of there. Lily said the elephants weren't really paying attention to us but I floored it past them just in case. We made it safely back to the track and headed for camp. It was very exciting! Because of getting stuck in a rock field and having to dodge elephants to get to Happy Zebra Clan's new den we decided to name it Oy Vey Den (this area has dens named after yiddish words)!
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