HYAENAS really do ‘slope’ don’t they? There simply isn’t another word to cover their mode of perambulation, so slope it is.
Anyway, as you know we were recently up in the Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Game Reserve in Zululand, enjoying a short bush break. One evening we were sitting on the stoep of our hut in Mpila Camp, overlooking the Black Umfolozi and the gathering dusk with suitable refreshment in hand, when my wife muttered, “Good gracious…” (or something like that) and pointed. A fully-grown spotted hyaena was sloping past our stoep, no more than two meters from our outstretched feet.
We had been warned when we checked in that there was a hyaena on the scrounge in camp, but we certainly did not expect him to join us for drinks. Later that evening as we stood around our braai watching the progress of dinner, we saw our friend at the braai outside the next door hut, but they had already disappeared indoors with their dinner apparently leaving nothing for the scrounger.
My wife kept our huge and very effective torch on him until our dinner was ready, just to keep him at his distance, and then we retired to our stoep while he sloped around in the faint light from the huts. A unique experience.
Pretty scary experience too, for the spotted hyaena can be an ugly character if he so chooses. Smithers* describes him as, “Somewhat large, like a heavily built dog,” but of course he isn’t a dog. The hyaena has his very own family in the order of carnivores, it’s a Hyaenidae.
There are others in the family, including the (to us anyway) charming brown hyaena and in North Africa, across the Middle East to India, the striped hyaena.
Back to the spotted hyaena, though, which Smithers says has been eliminated from nearly all of South Africa and other parts of the sub-continent. He doesn’t give any reasons, but my guess would be habitat loss and a touch of persecution, because the hyaena usually gets a bad press. Anyway, we were lucky to have spotted him.
And lucky to spot all sorts of things are friends of ours here in Trafalgar.
They have a rockery and water feature that starts at a game-friendly fence and leads down to a tiny pool which eventually forms part of the stoep.
It’s a delightful feature and we all spend quality time sitting there with sundowners listening to the gurgling of the water and the frogs in the pool. They have more than frogs, however, and over recent days have reported a fully grown Nile monitor, several times, a slender mongoose, also several times, a rhombic night adder and frequent blue duiker.
It’s quite a menagerie and just goes to prove what you can find in your own garden, particularly if you build in special features to attract wildlife, and their garden is almost entirely indigenous so that helps too. Cheers! CLICK HERE FOR MORE FROM MY HIDE
*Smithers’ Mammals of Southern Africa, Editor: Peter Apps, Southern Books, Halfway House, 1996.
