Hyena

How it fights

A predator fights like something that has done this before and expects to again. It opens carefully, watches what you do with the first exchange, and commits only when the answer suits it. Nothing about it is overwhelming and nothing about it is forgiving either: it will take any opening you leave, and it is patient enough to wait for one rather than make its own.

Field notes

The clan hunts and it scavenges and it does not much care which, and it laughs about both. It follows the bigger hunters at a distance and takes the kill when they are done, and it follows a party the same way. The jaws are for bone; there is nothing on a carcass a hyena leaves. They den in old burrows and under rock, with the pups deep, and a den that has been quiet a while smells worse than one in use.