Marten gets sleepy

This morning we finally got her! For 6 months or so Dave (a phD student in the hyena lab) has been trying to tranquilize one of Serena South's adult females that had a bum GPS/radio collar.

This is Marten avoiding us a few weeks ago. You can't dart them near water due to the possibility of drowning. She sat here for hours, classic Marten.

A week ago we found her on a den (she probably has new babies) and we were so excited because now we knew where to find her! We waited until there were no male hyenas around (who will beat up the females when they get 'drunk') and none of them were looking at our car (we don't want them to associate us with a sharp pain in the butt) before Dave could get a shot off. It was great! Right in the butt where we want it.

We waiting for her to go down but she never did! She was really fighting off the effects of the drug and we were not able to get close enough to get a booster in her. It was terrible and really rarely happens during dartings. We hung around until we were sure that she was okay and then left but we were really worried that she would get nervous and freak out when she saw us next or move to a new den and we wouldn't be able to find her.

Luckily, she didn't move and wasn't nervous around our car at all! This morning we decided to try again. Dave had a shot, took it and we got her! She went down just fine this time. Dave opened up a new batch of Telazol, the drug we use. We were hoping that the last batch was just off and for whatever reason and luckily this time everything worked according to plan. She fell asleep really peacefully and was soon dead to the world. The first thing we did was draw blood. For some reason Dave trusted me with this even though I had never done it before. Turns out it went really well and we had no problem getting lots blood for hormone analysis among other things.

 

Carefully removing the dart

Next, we fitted her with a new GPS/radio collar so that we can track her movements for some of Dave's research.  We took body measurements, bacterial swabs and general observations about body condition etc.

Trying to measure her girth

Once we were done with our sample collection and measurements we rolled her onto a gurney and weighed her. We then put her in the back of the car with me!

This was really crazy because she was just starting to come to on the ride to her drop-off point. She occasionally lifted her head and I had to hold her to make sure she didn't thrash around and hurt herself. At one point I remembered that this is in fact a wild hyena that I am holding in the back of our field vehicle and got a little nervous but I was assured that she was still far too sedated to do anything other than drool. 

We found a shady spot to release her and built a little fence out of branches around her for some camouflage and to keep her in there until she was really coherent enough to get out. We will go check on her tonight. She should be long gone at that point, back to her den with her cubs and acting like nothing happened. 

When we got back to camp we processed her blood samples and got the darting kit restocked for next time. It was a pretty awesome morning, I finally got to hug my hyena!