The friaje (a polar blast of cold, wet weather) has finally broken, and all of the researchers at least made it. Yesterday morning, a small hermit (hummingbird) flew by me to get to one of the fancy flowers, and I remember thinking “yay, at least you made it!” There were definitely some times when I had to remind myself that people neither die nor lose digits in 40-50 degree weather, because wet and shivering with no shelter from the rain for days on end kind of feels that way.

The first day it was so bad that we had to cancel all planned research (the wind makes it unsafe to stay in the forest). We grabbed every blanket and warm thing we had between us, including an emergency space blanket, and all 9 of us piled onto the ‘couches’ in the morning and watched 4 hrs of the BBC Sherlock series before the laptops died. The next 2 days were just some VERY chilly follows, and yesterday we resumed trapping. We only had one animal early in the morning, then stayed at the site for another 5 hours after it was released. It was actually very cozy: Amanda and I pushed the lab bench/cot over to the side in the mobile lab/tent and were basically half curled on each other with a pile of thick blankets around us, reading and napping.

Also keep in mind: when you have a corner room with no one in the
rooms beside you, and no roommate, you are the single warmest thing
that all of the cold forest animals can find. There were far too many creatures in my room at nights. Mouse possums are adorable, but I don’t want one keeping my feet warm.

There actually is a significant die-off in the jungle with each
friaje, and many of the animals alter their behavior a lot to deal
with it. The little girl monkey made it through, and we don’t know of any of our monkeys that haven’t. We think that one of the female
dispersing individuals (saddleback tamarin) wound up snuggling up with the titi monkeys.

After I sent my last blog, I noticed that there was unusual rustling at the edge of camp near where I was sitting to get internet. I followed it off to the side, and found 2 tayras (look up a pic!!!) up in a tree, just tearing up this termite mound on the trunk. These giant weaselie things were using claws and teeth to rip it to pieces (slowly, mounds are rather large), one standing over the mound and one half clinging under it as he stuck his entire face into the hole he made. Then a third one found me. He came shuffling up around a bend in the trail, saw me, did a kind of double take and moved up a bit, then he just turned around and trotted back the way he came.

This morning should have been light data and then time off; until one of the monkey groups kind of messed with that. As we were working on the data in the main room, we hear their long calls, and eventually 2 of us went to go and get data while the other 2 continued. What should have been a quick jaunt across the lawn for them got diverted when the female apparently smelled the bananas that we keep for baiting the traps. She and one of the males ran across the lawn, onto the board walk, and the into the lab. From there, they ate the bananas not in the fruit bat-protective mesh, but then they couldn’t figure out how to leave. They eventually made their way into the rafters, where they ran up into the library and through the other labs. I think the plant biochemistry group may actually need to list “small monkeys ran across the lab samples” as a source of error. The monkeys eventually made their way out, then the female went back in to get the banana in the protective mesh!

I found adorable Amazonian dwarf squirrels in a group of miniature cuteness; I don’t even like squirrels much and they were cute.