The Pack

"The Pack" is episode 6 of season 1.

The students of Sunnydale High are on a field trip, this time to the zoo. A group of bullies tease another student, Lance, and are interrupted by Principal Flutie. Lance doesn't rat on them, so they decide to include him in their exploration of the off-limit hyena exhibit. Xander goes to make sure everything is okay, and all of them, except for Lance, get posessed by the evil spirits of hyenas.

Xander and the four bullies adopt the behaviour of the wild animals and begin to act very strangely. Xander snubs Willow, though his attraction to Buffy becomes more intense and aggressive. His friends notice him acting meaner to other students, while Giles brushes it off as teenage boy behaviour.

The posessed students are very possessive, mean, and territorial. They stick together as a pack, hence the name of the episode. They even go so far as to eat the new school mascot, Herbert the pig, raw. At one point, Xander is detained, trying to assault Buffy, while the other four bullies devour Principal Flutie.

Giles eventually believes the girls' concern for Xander and investigates the hyenas with the zookeeper, who has researched the animals. They set a trap for the students but it is almost too late when Giles realizes that the zookeeper had tried to absorb the hyenas' spirits himself. Willow is captured, and the zookeeper uses her to perform a "predatory act" by holding a knife to her throat and draws the spirits out of the students and into himself.

He becomes evil and Buffy, trying to stop him from hurting anybody, accidentally knocks him into the hyena pit, where he is subsequently devoured. Xander claims to have no memory of the posession, though Giles reveals in private that he knows Xander is just pretending. He promises Xander "your secret dies with me."

Quotes and Trivia
"We just saw the zebras mating. Thank you, very exciting." "It was like the Heimlich with stripes!" - Xander and Willow, to Buffy

"I ate a pig? Was it cooked and called bacon?" - Xander