| About 1 ˝ years ago an old, female brown hyena got lost at one of Luderitz’ fish factories. We captured her, fitted her with a radio collar and released her north of Luderitz (see newsletter December 2007). Over the past few weeks, we got a few reports from Namdeb personnel that had seen her in the area between Elizabeth Bay and Kolmanskop, apparently in a bad condition. She was seen yesterday morning again and I went to investigate. She was in a very, very poor condition. Extremely thin and she had lots of bite wounds inflicted by other hyenas and was bleeding badly. She was completely disorientated and finally lay down in a resting site at about 10:00 h in the morning. I was sure that she would not survive that day and when I went back to search for her this morning, I found her dead at exactly the same spot where I had left her yesterday. At least she had a long life and died of natural causes, unlike many other of our study animals that get killed on the roads. |