I took this photo at Lake Mburo National Park in Uganda, which was the halfway point on my two-day drive between the capital of Kampala and the infamous Impenetrable Forest high in the mountains along the dangerous border with The Congo. This was my first hyena spotting of the day. I was hiking through the park with a private guide—so it was just me and my guide Moses, who was armed with an AK-47. The machine gun wasn’t meant for the hyenas but for the hippos, which are notoriously hostile and which we would encounter later that morning. Still, to me, the hyenas were much more menacing.

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