very time I hear the awful mocking laughter of hyenas, three things happen: my hair stands on end, I picture those awful hyenas in the movie Lion King and then, the very same night, I have nightmares in which their spine chilling laughter chases me wherever I desperately run to escape.

As you will have gathered… I do not like hyenas, which is a bit of a nuisance as a gang of them periodically hang out on the mountainside right above my house!

Striped hyenas are found throughout much of the country and these scruffy, some say ‘dog-like’ carnivores — although I don’t think they resemble dogs at all — are mainly nocturnal scavengers. They eke out an existence from other creatures’ leftovers such as old bones, which they crack to extract marrow from, although, if they are really pushed they can hunt for themselves but, being lazy critters, they tend to opt for easy kills such as sick or injured animals and birds. They have tremendously strong jaws, huge shoulders and sturdy front legs, yet their rear end and rear legs are fairly weak in comparison which makes them look very odd indeed.

Hyenas — called ‘Hyaena hyaena’ in Latin — although why they have a double-barrelled name is quite beyond me as they are certainly not aristocrats by any stretch of the imagination, make their dens in underground burrows or natural caves. Their favourite stomping grounds are in the interior of Sindh, Balochistan and across Khyber Phuktunkhwa, although they have also been seen in and around Chitral. There is no official record of them residing in the Murree hills but they most certainly do and can be a real nuisance when they rev up their laughter volume at night.

A male hyena — these striped hyenas by the way are a dirty tawny colour overlaid with black bars and stripes and their bushy tail is invariably moth-eaten to look at — can measure as much as 76cm at the shoulder and weigh in at a massive 54.5kg; whereas, his female counterpart is usually a little smaller and weighing around 44.5kg or less. The female generally gives birth to two to six young during spring or summer and their mother feeds them herself for up to one full year although she does take them hunting with her at night once they have reached the age of six months.Hyenas are reputed to be cowards and perhaps they are on a one-to-one basis but a gang of hyenas is not something one wants to meet up with as they can be very organised indeed in how they go about catching their prey. These animals, like all wild animals, should be left well alone and avoided at all costs.