Part of the Pride

Part of the Pride by Kevin Richardson

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Authors: Kevin Richardson
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himself, even though he had done his duty with Geena.
    When Geena gave birth to her second litter of cubs she became very protective. When I tried to approach her and the cubs she started giving me low growling calls, which told me not to come any closer, and I respected that. Interestingly, when Bonnie later gave birth to a single cub, it was a different situation. I arrived at the enclosure one morning and the clan was all very excited. All of them, except for Bonnie, rushed up to the fence to greet me, and when I walked in it was like they were all smiling. They had their tails up, which meant they were excited, and it seemed as though they were busting to tell me something. I walked in and found Bonnie in one of the concrete pipes the hyenas used as shelters. Nestled between her front paws was a cute little chocolate brown cub. She was quite relaxed and I was able to walk right up to them, slowly, and check it out. It was a first for me, and a touching moment.
    As the clan became established, the hyenas started changing the way they interacted with people, as well as each other. When the animals were in separate enclosures, there were about five of us humans at the park who could go in with them and interact with them to varying degrees. The hyenas knew us by sight, smell, touch, the sound of our voices, and how we tasted—especially how we tasted. Slowly, the clan started asserting their dominance over us.
    The hyenas were all getting older and stronger by this time, andone by one they started rejecting the people who had worked with them. Keepers who had patted and tickled the hyenas when they were younger started coming in for rough treatment, and one by one they began refusing to go in with the clan. The people who liked to carry sticks around the animals fared no better than the touchy-feely people. Hyenas eat bones, so a stick is nothing to them, and if you hit them with something to teach them a lesson it just makes them crazier. You can’t enforce or reinforce a relationship with a stick. They’d raise their tails and start giggling, getting themselves into an attacking frenzy, and another keeper would call it a day. With the clan already developed and functioning as a unit, if the dominant female decided she wanted to attack a human then the rest of her family would back her up.
    With my lions I try to be part of the pride, although even then there are differing degrees to which I am accepted by individual members of the pride. I am like a brother—sometimes even a father—to some, a friend to others, and an acquaintance to the rest. Not all of my acquaintances like me, but they know me, and we respect each other. I’ve never gone into a lion enclosure thinking I must dominate them, but the situation was different with the hyenas. I needed to assert and maintain my dominance over the clan, but I couldn’t do that with a stick or a shock stick or a can of pepper spray, as that would just infuriate them. I had to be a hyena.
    I was tough with them and I used to rough them up, in the same way one hyena would assert dominance over another. I would tackle them to the ground and roll them around; I would lift them up off the ground under their arms and swing them around, and I would bite them on the ears. I had to do this with all the hyenas, to assert my position in the clan, because they all wanted to challenge me. I also had to be down at their level, and it was a battle of wills as much as teeth.

    If something happens to me there is one guy who could continue to do the work I do with lions and hyenas, in the same way that I do. His name is Rodney Nombekana and he is a fantastic guy.
    Rodney was in his early twenties when he came to the Lion Park several years ago, from his home in Port St. Johns, in the Transkei region of the Eastern Cape. We call that part of South Africa the wild coast, because of its stark, spectacular beauty.
    Rodney was one of several young black African gentlemen

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