A note on safari animals
The leopard is draped over a branch, legs hanging carefree, perfectly balanced. Its vivid colours are a stark contrast to the dusty browns and greys of other African animals. Looking at the sharply defined markings feels like I’ve suddenly switched from VHS to Blu-ray. A string of slaver dangles from its triangular mouth.
Behind us, another leopard trots across the ground into a bushy tree. It moves like liquid, its smooth action another contradiction to its herbivorous neighbours. Antelope hop and dance, elephants lumber, hippos run with determination, but only a leopard flows.
We’ve seen a lot of animals now. It inspires awe every time you see an elephant walking through the bush, or dextrously ripping trees apart with its trunk. Seeing antelope dance around a waterhole at dusk is a unique and beautiful sight. But some animals stand out from the rest. There’s something about the shape, the movements, the gaze of certain carnivores that make them instant favourites.
I read Ernest Hemingway’s Green Hills of Africa before I ever saw a hyena in the wild, but a section of the book stuck in my memory, and was instantly revived when we stumbled across the bizarre creatures. Hemingway’s account is that of a hunter and as such has a gory angle to it, but his description of the hilarity that his jolly guide M’Cola found in hyenas is very apt:
Highly humorous was the hyena obscenely loping, full belly dragging, at daylight on the plain, who, shot from the stern, skittered on into speed to tumble end over end. Mirth provoking was the hyena that stopped out of range by an alkali lake to look back and, hit in the chest, went over on his back, his four feet and his full belly in the air. Nothing could be more jolly than the hyena coming suddenly wedge-headed and stinking out of high grass by a ‘donga’, hit at ten yards, who raced his tail in three narrowing, scampering circles until he died.
It was funny to M’Cola to see a hyena shot at close range. There was that comic slap of the bullet and the hyena’s agitated surprise to find death inside of him. It was funnier to see a hyena shot at a great distance, in the heat shimmer of the plain, to see him go over backwards, to see him start that frantic circle, to see that electric speed that meant that he was racing the little nickeled death inside him. But the great joke of all, the thing M’Cola waved his hands across his face about, and turned away and shook his head and laughed, ashamed even of the hyena, the pinnacle of hyenic humour, was the hyena, that hit too far back while running, would circle madly, snapping and tearing at himself until he pulled his own intestines out, and then stood there, jerking them out and eating them with relish.
“Fisi,” M’Cola would say and shake his head in delighted sorrow at there being such an awful beast. Fisi, the hyena, hermaphroditic, self-eating devourer of the dead, trailer of calving cows, ham-stringer, potential biter-offer of your face at night while you slept, sad yowler, camp-follower, stinking, foul, with jaws that crack the bones the lion leaves, belly dragging, loping away on the brown plain, looking back, mongrel dog-smart in the face; whack from the little Mannlicher and then the horrid circle starting. “Fisi,” M’Cola laughed, ashamed of him, shaking his bald black head. “Fisi. Eats himself. Fisi.”
-From Green Hills of Africa by Ernest Hemingway.
The main thing to take from this — aside from the grotesque — is that the hyena is a hilarious animal. When they run, they oscillate from their forelegs to their short hind legs and back again like a rocking horse.
The first fisi we see up close is on its side in the middle of the dirt road, its belly so swollen with meaty goodness it can’t bring itself to stand and get out of the way of the truck. Its movements aren’t like those of a normal animal: every action is sudden, snappy. It raises its head from the road in one lighting-fast motion, holds it steady for several seconds while considering its audience, then whips it back down to the road to continue sleeping. Occasionally it will snap at an insect, in abrupt, jerky movements. I get the impression there is no gap between a hyena thinking something and then doing that thing. It commits fully to each action, and has no caution.
Around the corner, another hyena sleeps on the brown grass. It also eyeballs us and goes back to sleep, not caring a whit for the truck parked five metres away. Eventually it decides to move on, it clambers to its feet, stretches its front legs in an odd animal yoga, and twitches its absurd little round ears before loping off into the bush.
At night in the camp, we sometimes hear a hyena’s hoot. One night I hear the ludicrously loud laugh they make when settling down to a meal.
I had never heard of genets (pronounced “jenet”) before coming to South Luangwa National Park in Zambia, but they are one of my favourite animals to see. About the same size and shape as an adolescent cat, they hunt nocturnally and can be seen with a spotlight and keen eyes.
I haven’t managed to get a photo of one; they are tiny and timid. But I was content to see them in their natural habitat. Nothing in the bush here is dainty, except for the genet. It hops light-footedly through the long grass, like a precious cat carefully picking where it will place its paws. Its long furry tail trails behind with a mind of its own, often mimicking the actions of the body.
