2/27/2023 0 Comments Wild dogs vs.hyenas![]() ![]() Small in the presence of survival, privileged to watch the encounter between two species whose existence runs parallel to mine. As I watch their prone forms, ears twitching at the occasional fly, their thick tan coats daubed with patches of sooty black and grey, eyes shining amber, I feel humbled. We symbolise neither predator nor food, and couldn’t be less interesting. But they’re utterly unfazed by us on our horses. I’m able to move slowly closer, snapping my camera from Daenery’s back, her ears flicking back and forth at the pack, coiled like a spring should they make a sudden move. Finally, they find a patch of sunshine and flop down, uncannily similar to their domestic cousins, their heads familiarly resting on each other’s bulk. We follow a stone’s throw from the pack, who slide through the grass like a hot knife through butter. ![]() But to my relief it’s not forced upon me with a final nip and growl the flurry of dogs grow bored and trot away, the shadows of the hyenas hunched and bobbing through the grass as they move in the opposite direction. It’s the cross to bear for any safari goer, or wildlife documenter – to not interfere and let nature take its course. I feel a small squirm at the thought of watching an animal ripped to shreds before me. “If they’re not quick, the dogs will disembowel them,” Chief shrugs as he watches. The sounds of the showdown grow the hyenas forced out of their central spot and running from their pursuers with their odd seesawing gait. It watches the show, its screwed-up face lopsided and bizarre, showing none of the hyena’s usual malcontent. There must be a hyena den nearby see there, a young one.” He points his long riding whip to the right there hunched in the long yellow grass, hardly visible, a hyena barely more than year old, with the soft furred hide of a youngster. “If they come across each other’s pups they will kill them. “They’re mortal enemies,” Chief says to us as we watch the spectacle, Montagues v the Capulets. ![]() We watch as the wily wolves duck in to snap and snatch at their quarry’s haunches the hyenas sitting down to protect their precious tendons, lashing out at the dogs with powerful jaws. There, hardly 10-metres away, two large Spotted Hyenas stand back to back as the pack of dogs run rings around them, like swirling black rice in the wind, ducking and weaving and snarling their high-pitched chorus. We canter down the track, our horses keen and straining at the bits, jumping at shadows as the racket continued. “Quickly, come, it’s hyenas fighting wild dogs!” Chief said, his voice carried by the whistling wind. ![]() It sounded like a death cry of a baited bear, cornered. And another low baying beneath it, a yowling that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand stiff in the chill. As the scrub clears a high-pitched yipping is carried to us on the wind the eerie ‘twitter’ of the dog, their rousing cry of excitement normally reserved for spilt blood. My homebred Deanerys snatches a mouthful of the sweet green grass poking its head out of the molapos, before trotting to catch up. Chief, our guide with his tasselled leather boots and beaten up cowboy hat, shrugs at the inevitable and took another sandy path, eked out of the thorn scrub by something far bigger than us. We canter after them but they have disappeared like mist in the face of sunshine, the ultimate bush babies. They’re remarkably fast swimmers, moving jerky quick like fleas, forging the opposite bank and melting into the bush. They pause and sniff in our direction before bounding through the flooded pan before them, at least 15 of them, leaping so the water splashes stiff white around them before finally swimming, black heads like a pod of furred, fanged dolphins. Painted Wolves, with their sleek bodies and rounded Mickey Mouse ears. Rounding a bend in the ribboned elephant track we’ve been travelling on and there, a pack of Wild Dogs, on the trail of their first light hunt. We’ve barely been riding 20-minutes when the first sighting occurs. A rare contrast to the torridity of the previous week. Today he sports his quilted snow jacket, the hood pulled up and over his helmet. Ahead of me trots the black domed head of guest Chuck 86-years-old and in the saddle hard every day, a remarkable feat. I’m rugged up a silk scarf around my throat and layers that can be peeled off one at a time like an onion skin as the day heats up. They say it has snowed in South Africa, and its frosted breath has travelled creeping blue down south to us tickling the Delta’s underbelly and slicing the temperatures in half. ![]()
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