The Hyena Episode
The other theory is that, after eating its way into the elephant, it started to eat its way out by a different route. When its head emerged the heavy muscles of the elephant's side inclosed about its neck like a vise, entrapping the hyena as effectively as though it had its head in a steel trap. In the animal's despairing efforts to escape it had kicked one leg out through the thick walls of the elephant's side.
Kermit Roosevelt
"Peeling" an elephant
The colonel, in parting, asked us to stop with him for lunch on our way back and he would tell us all about the elephant hunt and show us his pigskin library. In return we promised to photograph the hyena and thus be prepared to render expert testimony in case, some time in the future, he might get into a controversy with the nature fakers as to the truth of the incident.
We then resumed our journey and arrived at the elephant camp at nine-thirty. It was a scene of industry. The skins of the two largest elephants and that of the calf had been removed the afternoon before and were spread out under a cluster of trees. Twenty or thirty porters were squatted around the various ears and strips of hide and massive feet, paring off all the little particles of flesh or tissue that remained. As fast as a section of hide was stripped it was thickly covered with salt and rolled up. This is the preliminary step. Afterwards the skin, in many places an inch in thickness, is pared down to a condition of pliable thinness. This work requires hours or even days of hard labor by many skilful wielders of the paring knife. The skulls and many of the bones are saved when an animal is being preserved for a museum, but when we arrived they had not yet been removed from the carcasses.
Our first object was to visit the hyena, which we found still protruding from the side of his tomb. We photographed him from all angles, after which he was disinterred and exposed to full view. He had certainly died happy. He had literally eaten himself to death, and his body was so distended from gorging that it was as round as a ball. Colonel Roosevelt also photographed it, so that there will be no lack of evidence if the incident ever reaches the controversial stage.