Hopefully, she will emerge soon with Mrs. Butterworth or Aunt Jemima (or both)!
Sunday, November 10, 2013
Waffles and her cave
Waffles, the matriarch of our Serena North Clan, has recently found what seems to be the deepest hole in the territory to make her natal den (we think, we haven't actually seen the cubs yet). We would have never found her if it wasn't for her collar, thank you GPS points!
Hopefully, she will emerge soon with Mrs. Butterworth or Aunt Jemima (or both)!
Hopefully, she will emerge soon with Mrs. Butterworth or Aunt Jemima (or both)!
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Michigan State University | College of Natural Science
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3 comments:
I can't help it—I want to say: Good for you, Waffles! You deserve the deepest, most spacious cave—not only are you the matriarch now, you raised two enormous cubs when you almost at the very bottom of your clan, and that must have taken some extra effort to feed them so well.
I remember when Waffles won Hyena Mom of the Year for her defense of her previous cubs, Log Cabin and Hungry Jack. I'm very happy (obviously!) that she has moved from being one of the lowest ranking hyenas to being the matriarch, and also very happy that Log Cabin has a cub of her own now, George Costanza (why did he acquire this Seinfeld-esque name?) However, I wonder what became of her other cub, Hungry Jack. Search doesn't turn up any mentions of Hungry Jack after a post dated 10/23/2010, shortly after Waffles was named Hyena Mom of the Year—but then there's a photo of Waffles in the post from 9/10 of this year entitled "The Serena Matriarchs," labeled "Waffles with her son Torani sleeping." Most annoyingly, search finds no mentions of "Torani," not even "The Serena Matriarchs" post! Was Torani an only cub born after Log Cabin and Hungry Jack, or is he Hungry Jack, renamed for some reason? If Torani is not Hungry Jack renamed, what became of Hungry Jack?
I understand that you have many animals to keep track of, numerous tasks to pursue for various research projects, and the daily maintenance of your outpost and yourselves to attend to, and a query from a blog visitor about a particular hyena must fall below all of those things, so I understand if the answer is that you can't look into this, or even if there is no answer at all. But through your writings and photographs I've become attached to some of these creatures and I just had to ask.
Thank you for sharing the lives of these wonderful animals with us. I hope more people come to know the hyena as it is: a wonderful and intelligent animal, whose lives are full of courage, drama, and tenderness.
Thank you for your comment! Waffles was very successful raising her first litter of cubs (Hungry Jack and Log Cabin). Many hyena moms lose their first littler or only have one surviving cub. Log Cabin is doing extremely well and Log Cabin's son George Constanza is a super cute cub. Hungry Jack was last seen on March 22nd, 2012 when he was almost 2 years old. There is a chance that Hungry Jack dispersed but he was still pretty young so he probably did not make it. I'm sorry to deliver that sad news but Waffles went on to have another son later named Torani that is now a sub-adult and doing well.
I agree she deserves her cave! Just this afternoon we saw that her GPS points have her at Pancake Den and tonight we are going to go check it out and see if we can get a glance at the new prince(s) or princess(es) of Serena North clan. I will post some pictures when we finally see them!
I have to admit one of my favorite things about this blog is all the fun names the hyenas have. Waffles is such a funny name for a hyena!
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