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Harriet the Hyena story competition

 Harriet. Photo by (?)

Harriet the Hyena story competition

Granny and Grandpa wrote this story. It is incomplete. I would like to launch a family wide competition to complete "Harriet the Hyena". All stories to be published on Xuitlacoche. Friends may participate. The prize will be a meal in a the restaurant of your choice with the other participating entrants and a Hyena tooth. The stories will be compiled into an ebook.

Harriet the Hyena

By Tony and Eve Hall and....

"Harriet the Hyena lived in a hole in the open plains that stretch back from the Crocodile River. A large flat rock made a kind of roof that stopped her hole from collapsing.


She was almost fully grown, large, hairy, spotted, hunched and skulking, almost ready to choose a mate – in the way female hyenas do, not at all shy, but flaunting her sex, and demanding favours from the male.

When Harriet was hungry she usually went out in the early morning, or at sunset, sniffing and searching for signs and smells of dead meat, the way her mother had taught her and her brothers and sisters in the litter. If she was lucky she would see signs of circling vultures in the air, and come upon the remains of a kill, the ribs and bones of a buck or zebra, left behind by a family of lions or leopards, with a few strips of gristly flesh too tough for the vultures or jackals to tear off – but no challenge for Harriet, whose powerful jaws would easily crunch whatever was left,.

Sometimes Harriet and her companions would come upon the big cats with their heads still buried in the meaty carcass, their mouths bloody as they gnawed through the innards, and a whooping, growling fight would ensure, with the hyenas rapidly skulking away, their tails between their legs.

Once in a while the smell would be not of rotten meat, but burnt meat, and they would set off on their hunched loping run to investigate. Harriet’s mother had taught the litter to run towards the line of flame at the edge of burning grass and bush – not away from it. For there they could wait, while all sizes of furry animals, birds and insects may come leaping through, and many more would be lying burnt in the blackened bush, delicious to the young hyena who could walk in and take her pick when the ground cooled.

Came the night when Harriet’s friend took her to a special place where nearly every night arose the smell of burning meat. They came out of the bush and slunk along a path beside a line of hard shiny wire. When they pushed and bit the wire to break through to the burning sources of meaty smells, they were shaken by a sudden pain through their bodies, and they were thrown away from the wire.

Still, they went back, night after night, week after week because, sometimes, every now and then, a burned bone with plenty of flesh on it, or even a piece of wobbluy fatty pure meat, would come flying over the wire, almost straight into their jaws.

To be continued...

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