I WROTE a few weeks ago about a new book on the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park and some of its denizens, including the brown hyaena.
Well, the brownie came up in conversation the other day and someone asked me if they were ever seen down here. I made some enquiries and apparently one may have been spotted in the Oribi Gorge some years back, but it was not a confirmed sighting and if it was a brownie it was way out of its habitat. So no, no brown hyaenas here, I’m afraid.
But back to the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park and Dr Gus Mills, who wrote the book and who is an expert on the brown hyaena.
I have no idea how many times I had the privilege and fun of interviewing Gus, for with Gus it was almost always fun, but I do remember one particular night on a traffic island between two busy highways near what was then Jan Smuts Airport.
It was a large, well-bushed island on which a brown hyaena had been spotted and Gus had been called in to help find the animal and translocate it to a more suitable environment.
I had been called in because, well, ‘Had tape recorder, could travel’ as it were.
It was an extraordinary experience. It was a dark night, but our efforts (there were several of us involved) were almost constantly illuminated by the headlights of the traffic that was roaring all around us.
We put out bait for our friend (I named him Humphrey, it seemed right for a semi-urbanised brown hyaena and he turned out to be a ‘he’ anyway) and then retired to wait, impatiently.
Eventually Humph appeared and Gus had a clear shot at him with his dart gun and the game was on.
Humph was weighed, measured and generally closely examined. He turned out to be remarkably healthy and weighed in as one of the biggest male brown hyaenas Gus had ever handled.
Later analysis of his droppings showed that he had been surviving on rodents, scraps from fast food packages (the island was frequently used as a hang-out by local workers) and the polystyrene packages themselves.
Anyway, the examination over, Humph was crated, trucked and began his long journey to the Shamwari game reserve in the Eastern Cape.
My wife and I visited the reserve some time later and were told that Humph had settled in very well, thank you, and was in the process of being introduced to a potential mate.
We didn’t manage to see him, but it’s good to know that the exercise had been a great success and our urban scavenger was now in a much healthier and natural environment.
By the way, no one could ever work out just how Humph came to be on that island in the middle of the highways, was he a just a fast food junkie or had he escaped from a nearby game reserve or something?
We’ll never know, but cheers anyway.
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