Trigger warning: The following story contains graphic visuals

Screams filled the air at Leopardâs Bend Bush Lodge in Limpopo province recently when staff discovered a hyena in the kitchen.

Panicked by the chefâs screams, the hyena retreated into a nearby bedroom, where it âlay down quietly, a bit like an Alsatianâ, according to lodge owner Garth Wolff.

Wolff said the injured hyena had been sighted a few days earlier by staff in the 10,000-hectare Blue Canyon Private Game Reserve, about 10km south of Hoedspruit.

Anxious to help the wounded animal, rangers tried to capture the hyena by luring it into a baited trap. But several attempts failed.

Unexpectedly, it appeared later at Leopardâs Bend and section ranger Greg Moran called in a team from the Hoedspruit-based Wildscapes veterinary consultancy for help.

Using a dart gun to tranquillise the animal, still lying calmly in a lodge bedroom, the vets set up a makeshift operating table outside. There, they cut away the cable snare, cleaned the wounds and applied antibiotic gel before reviving the animal.

âHe was very lucky, because the cuts had penetrated very deeply into the skin, almost reaching his organs... Another 24 hours or so and he probably would not have made it,â said Wolff.

âAfter coming around, he lay on the lawn for about 20 minutes as if to say, âOkay, thatâs a bit better. Iâve been sorted out nowâ, and then he wandered off back into the bush.â

âI know it sounds a bit airy-fairy and you can believe what you want, but we think this animal somehow knew we could sort him out. He had travelled about 6km to the lodge from where he was first seen injured, and then managed to bypass the electrified fencing around the lodge or the electrified cattle-grid barrier (at the road entrance).â

Either he trod very carefully across the grid, or he kept going forward when he got zapped, said Wolff.

The incident, which happened on 27 May, came to light earlier this week after former Independent Newspapers editorial executive Leon Marshall visited the lodge and wrote about the encounter in a Facebook post.

âGarth says it was quite amazing how calm, one can almost say grateful, the little guy looked where it was put on a patch of grass before it, after a while, got up and ambled off.

âIt is incidents like these that make you wonder afresh about our attitude to the natural world. We humans can be so brutal in our views and our treatment of so much of it. Snares, for instance, are a particularly cruel manner of killing, yet the use is widespread.

âAnd then along comes an animal, which some see as evil, in the hope somehow of appealing to our better nature. Itâs a strange world,â Marshall mused.

Asked for his views on the incident, veteran KwaZulu-Natal Wildlife vet Dr Dave Cooper recalled a case involving an elephant a few years ago where he got a âstrangeâ feeling that the animal was seeking his help by repeatedly raising its leg to indicate that it had a snare wound on its leg.

âIt could be that we just imagine these things, or maybe it was simply trying to ease the pain by lifting its leg... but it did seem quite strange to me at the time.â

Another possible explanation for the hyenaâs behaviour, Cooper suggested, is that sick or injured animals may deliberately seek out places to find an easy meal, to rest or hide from predators.

âWe had a case in the Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Game Reserve a few years back where a very sick lion took refuge in the menâs toilet at the visitor reception at Nyalazi entrance gate. Unfortunately, the lion was so sick from tuberculosis that we had to put it down.â

Whatever the case may be, the tale ended happily for the Hoedspruit hyena, with Wolff reporting that it has been sighted several times subsequently, seemingly in rude health. DM