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.

"Bear Necessities"

Of the 7 trappings that have been done this season, I have been present for 6. I’ve trained people at trapping. The people I trained are training people. I have never been at a trapping when there is an assistant more experienced than me. It’s a really weird feeling. I have even altered some of the trapping protocol. I’ve also been assigned to head up a side project on the pathologies and injuries with the collaborating vet student from the UK, but we’ll see how that pans out.

However, my following skills “have room for improvement." I’m having trouble focusing on the behaviors and actions of the individuals which requires binoculars), while knowing what the rest of the group is doing and moving along relatively silently and safely through the forest (/bamboo/swamp/jumping down the edge of another ravine) fast enough to keep up with the squirrel-sized monkeys without looking where you are going. Which may be why I keep getting assigned to trappings, haha. A few days ago, my team actually had a long and relatively successful follow, only to have so much trouble after it.

 

Two teammates got stuck in a dense glade of spiky bamboo surrounded by tree falls (also know as ‘the inferno’), while I crawled under the tree falls and got separated from them as night fell. It was so frustrating; I could hear them but couldn’t explain to them how to get out, and the GPS said I was 34 M from the trail, but I just couldn’t get there! It was one of those days where you practically collapse with relief at the sight of a simple 2 foot wide half cleared dirt trail.

Haven’t had any more encounters with predators while following the tamarins. One of the little juvenile girl monkeys still seems to be getting her act together, though. Whenever her mom finds a fungus(emperor tamarins LOVE fungus),she snatches it from her mom, even when the fungus is closer to her. Later that day, two of us were counting individuals as the group jumped between two trees above us.

“One, two” the girl makes a running leap for a different branch, falls about ridiculously short, then lands on the ground between us with a massive crash in the leave“…three." And then later in the day, we were following this group to their sleep tree, but they turn on what is actually officially know as ‘ninja mode,' where they suddenly stop calling, change their elevations in the canopy, and double back on their trail to confuse predators as they silently go single file. In the logbook, someone actually wrote “group got away, because it is a group of sneaky tree cats."

Well, I managed to escape unscathed by the ‘dread disease’ going around. Think about it for a moment: an illness that includes vomiting,  fever, and leaves you mostly unable to eat for a few days, with no Gatorade, and no food options besides what is being made for everyone else (although the food did get pretty bland once even the cooks got sick). Only 2 of us were left standing for a while, which meant that 2 of us were doing all of the necessary things for a few days. On the plus side, even our supervisor got hit pretty bad, so we didn’t have a rigorous follow schedule for a while.

Immediately after that, the gold miners (the primary income in this area) went on strike. Instead of a strike of typical workers, the gold miners basically shut down the infrastructure of whatever they could, until the people living there are so inconvenienced that they appeal to the government. It has little effect on us out here, but it does mean that the people coming into the project got delayed a few days because they stopped the road from Puerto Maldonado to Laberinto, so they couldn’t get to the boat. They also block off the large gas stations outside of Laberinto, so that the boat drivers are unable to get gasoline. It was kind of impressive how quickly things dissolved when we realized that our supply boat was unable to come for a few days. I mean, once we ran out of crackers along with meat and produce, people started trying to reason if the high mercury pollution would really make the fish inedible or not (we need another specialist to come here, haha). The boat came a day and a half late, and had almost the normal amount of food, so nothing too drastic happened. Although, it didn’t have crackers, so we trapped from 4 Am-3 PM the next day without snacks.

 

Daily life here isn’t actually all that challenging Yes, it’s kind of like camping. But camping in very mild weather (relative to Florida), with a cook and food, trash service, no beer, power 3 hours a day, and running water. Although the floor of one of the shower stalls fell through yesterday, so we’re all sharing 2 now. And larger interesting things get into the cabin. Cold showers were less appealing last week when we were having a mini-friaje (cold front coming off the Andes) anyway. Oh, and I have a favorite night beverage to make up for not eating sweets: hot anis tea, with some powdered milk, a small amount of partially-refined sugar, and a touch of cocoa powder.

Between work, everyone being ill, and the lack of supplies with the strike, We celebrated by staying up late (almost 10!) to watch No Strings Attached. Because we are the wild and crazy monkey team.

As a note, there are leafcutter ants chewing bits of my notebook off as I’m writing a draft of this.

As another note, as I’m typing a draft of this, a bamboo rat is running around the lab with about a half dozen babies on her back. Yay.

 

So with some of the ‘free’ time that I have finagled through people being sick and putting off some of my data, I’ve finally been able to see a few of the places that I wanted to around camp. Didn’t see any giant otters or caimans at the lake, but there were hoatzins (prehistoric-looking birds)everywhere! And you don’t exactly have to look hard for them; they hang out in family groups at the edge of the lake, and grunt across the lake to other groups. The boat was stuck in the mud when we got there, so my roommate and I paddled the small floating dock around (at least we didn’t have to bail it out), and we saw another paca on our way back after nightfall. Yesterday another teammate and I went to another lake to look for the anaconda that lives there (he wasn’t home, which is somehow more upsetting when you thing of a snake that size just on a jaunt through the jungle). Emily did have to stick her leg in the water when we got stuck on a sunken log, so maybe it’s good that he wasn’t home. We then climbed up the tower, which is like, well, a small cellphone tower. We saw spider monkeys at eye level, and looked down on a flock of bright blue macaws, and an amazing colony of olive oropendula nests (colorful birds that weave these handing teardrop shaped nests that hang from high branches). And we found the largest spider I think I have ever seen. I don’t know the size, but after I realized that I was calling 3 inch spiders ‘cute little things’.