A hyena's bloody feast

Dec. 23 (afternoon) - Day 7

After stuffing myself like a pig on another specially prepared “Mark Meat Menu”, we headed out on our afternoon game drive.

We came upon a group of elephants. They were irritated by our arrival, indicated by the raising of their trunks over their heads.

I had told Dominic we wanted to see crocodiles, so we drove along the river for a while till we spotted a massive 18’ one sunning himself on the opposite bank.

We headed out onto the vast plains viewed the other day from “lookout point.” Herds of everything grazed about.

We noticed some vultures on the ground and drove over to see what they were chomping on. A large colorful eagle squatted nearby –(not pictured) I’ve never seen an eagle with such lovely coloring. He took off as we approached but the vultures were not disturbed.

That is, until a pair of hyenas galloped up and chased them off.












The carcass was a Thompson gazelle, and the larger of the hyenas, the female, greedily gnaws chunks and crunched bones, chasing the male off whenever it came near.

After watching this for a while, Dominic tried to run the critter off, chasing it with the vehicle.

 The hyena grasped the carcass in its jaws and ran off, the gazelle’s guts spilling out along the way.

We saw some colorful large birds, too, then we drove off toward where Dominic had seen a leopard with pups a few months back, but the grass was so high a hundred leopards could have been hiding there undetected.

So the last hour was totally uneventful. It’s fascinating how there can be so many animals and then empty, empty plains as far as the eye can see. Dominic said it was because of the high grass, that the herbivores prefer low grass so they can spot the predators coming. A few lone elephants, with nothing to fear from anything but man, grazed the grasslands.

Back at camp, we again enjoyed gin and tonics by the campfire as the stars twinkled overhead. Hyena howls mingled with the incessant coughing of the hippos.

One of the Maasai warriors let me examine his spear, showed me the strange, wrist twisting thrust used for slaying lions, then hurled the spear, butt spike first to stand quivering a good 30 yards away.

He had burn marks upon his arm in the shape of a trident. We were told this signifies his rank as a warrior.

He wore his earlobes really low with a huge hole so they appeared like one long spaghetti string. Then he would flip this up over the top of his ear.

This guy was apparently mighty in his tribe. All the competitions they conduct for manhood – he was the best. Fighting other warriors (enemies, they said) and he had to kill a lion with a spear when he was ready to marry so they women would know he was strong. (nowadays, this practice is discouraged,  but this guy was older – like MY age!)