Days spent working on manuscript, planning field protocols with researchers, and doing a bit of preliminary field collections. Get out in the field a bit; one day help out setting some rodent traps. Spot a gathering of vultures, but can’t find any carcass. Few heavy clouds in sky that brighten up the sunset. Get a bit of rain, not enough to green up anything, but enough to make super-clay road a slippery mess. Slid around a bit, but 4WD got us out of the ditch just fine.
Play with a li’l bat (Ivan Batski) that a research rescued from a swarm of ant when it fell out of its nest.

Word one day about a dead elephant not too far from station. Story that they found an AK47 bullet in it; may have been poaching attempt in the north. Take an impromptu night drive with some folks, takes a bit to relocate the carcass in the dark, but sounds of hyenas and smell of decomposition aid our efforts. Can hear sounds, familiar to me as dogs chewing on rawhides, emanating from the general direction of the fallen ele. We sweep the area with the spotlight, and see at least a dozen sets of hyena eyes staring back at us. We turn off the engine and listen to their gnawing and squealing; one hyena unleashes a full blown “laugh,” which sounds like a primitive, hysterical yawp, and echoes through the valley. We drive right next to the ele, and eventually one brave hyena returns, and in the moonlight we watch it lay down and grind down the ele’s knee bone.