Baby Hyena Up For Adoption

Dateline: The Kruger - Baby Hyena in Need of Adoption

Last year, while traveling the roads in The Kruger National Park, his little jasiri, darling in Swahili, loitered on the side of the road every day my friends and I roamed the park in search of animals. At first, we thought, holy cow, look, it’s a baby spotted hyena - an extremely rare sighting. And she (it may have been a he, but it’s was hard to tell, so, she it is) is not fleeing from us in fear. So we took photos and oohed and aahed at our luck. Until we thought about it?

Why was this little female hanging by the side of the road all by itself? In the middle of the day? Where was her mom, her clan? Hyenas run in large groups; we were confused. Why was this baby all alone? Sadness overwhelmed us when we realized that she was on her own without knowing how to fend for herself.

We passed her several times; she was always there, in the same spot. Once, when we slowed down, we were shocked because she approached our vehicle. She sniffed and snuffled fearlessly. We hypothesized that she had resorted to begging from tourists because she didn’t know how to scavenge food from the leftover carcasses of animals that had already fallen prey to predators. And she certainly hadn’t learned to hunt.

Hyenas are complex animals and have a complicated social structure. Supposedly, they are born vicious and ready to fight. A firstborn in a litter will often go after the second-born within moments of birth and kill it. Females are the bigger, heavier, and dominant leaders of the clan; men are secondary. And they know their place! These facts are the tip of the iceberg when learning about hyenas.

What happened to this little jasiri? I don’t know, and I could not unearth any research that might explain why she was alone on the side of the road begging for morsels from humans. I’ll be back in The Kruger in a few weeks. I am conflicted. If she’s still by the side of the road, grown-up, what does that say? If not there, well, that might suggest a good ending, or . . .

#babyhyenas #writing #personalessays #thekruger #jasiri #lastmonthsinsouthafrica #womenwritersoverfifty #spottedhyenas

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