Dumpster Party

The easiest way to find hyenas in Harar is to locate one of these big orange dumpsters, and there are plenty of them. I’m sure orange must be the hyenas’ favourite colour because they really love these dumpsters and are not easily persuaded to leave. The benefit for people is that the hyenas eat most of the really bad smelling garbage such as meat scraps and so forth, so that the garbage in Harar smells more earthy and compost-like compared to the rank smell of the garbage in Australia.
Note the dog in the background. The local dogs get incredibly irate at the hyenas and bark like crazy, so much so that you can tell where the hyenas are in town just by listening to where the dogs are barking. The funny thing is that the hyenas seem unfazed by the attention of the dogs and just wander up to where the dogs are, without flinching. In fact I’ve seen one hyena change course and deliberately go across to where a dog was barking madly at another hyena almost as if to incite it.