Waraba igi harir inta

In the early hours of Saturday morning, at about 3.30 am, I was filming the hyenas at the sports ground near Thewodros Hotel (read dirt covered, open space used for motorbike practice) when a soldier who was watching me shouted ‘look!’ and pointed behind me to where a hyena was sniffing at my camera bag. I made the usual hissing noise to scare the hyena off but it grabbed the bag in its mouth and high-tailed it for the creek. The soldier and I took off after it and we chased it along the creek bed and into some bushland. After following the rustling noises in the pitch dark, I spotted my bag in the torchlight and went to retrieve it. I couldn’t believe it, the bag was empty. The hyena had rifled through my camera bag! We retraced our steps and found the spare batteries and the memory cards but my telephoto lens was missing. I still haven’t found it and unless the hyena has a Sony A1 series video camera, it’s of no use to the him, and I really would like it back.