i have discovered a fear of mine while doing research: the dark. you laugh, but you would be afraid of the dark too if you saw snakes like this at 5am.
juvenile boa constrictor
there are so many bad things that could happen to me in the dark dark forest. i could trip and break my leg (which i almost did-- proven by a contusion to the shin).. i could get eaten by a jaguar.. get mauled by vampire bats.. or be struck down by the branches that capuchins break. mousse hit me with an Anona purperea fruit (huge spiky fruit about the size of a pineapple) on friday.
mousse
A.pur.
anyways so the point is that my fear is legitimate. so before you start cackling relentlessly, bite your tongue and think about how much more legitimate my fear is than yours.
there are two frogs that live in my shower. shower #3. i've named them puppy and perrito. but today there were not two but THREE frogs in my shower! we had some fun sexy shower time together (they like to watch me while i shower, i like to watch them watch me when i shower.. so it works out.) who knew frogs were such peeping toms?
anyways.. i have had a rough couple of weeks here in santa rosa national park. the rainy season is in full force. i have even had thoughts of quitting.. but then i thought about the frogs. and i CANNOT afford to leave those little puppies behind.
LV enjoys hanging around the sendero natural, which is the tourist trail. often times i will be in the bush following a monkey and i will hear tourists walk by exclaiming ah! mira! monos! hay monos!! i get a tad bit anxious when this happens because i know what's coming next. the inevitable. so i plug my ears and cringe to hear them scream as i tromp my way out of the bush. i feel like the swamp thing with vines, leaves, and dirt oozing out of every crevice... emerging from the scary green forest to steal the tourist tico children. i suppose that it can be healthy to understand how it feels to be a monster. hard life i say.
...or sometimes i feel like the arrested development character buster bluth when he attends milford academy. "i shall neither be seen nor heard." i try to live by this quote and hide behind trees until they pass.
often times i cannot hide because i am collecting a fecal sample or doing a focal follow. school children will laugh at me and call me gringO. which translates to "white boy." this tourist trail is giving me a complex.
the sendero natural is also giving my bladder a complex. one of the comforting things about working in the field is that the forest is your restroom. you can go anywhere anytime. except when you are on the tourist trail. when i am peeing on the tourist trail i feel like a bit of an exhibitionist. i nervously flit my eyes around the area while i .. you know... urinate.. worrying that i will hear a tourist scream because they have found my round. white.. rump. oh well.. i suppose there is nothing better than a little nervous excitement to get your bladder goin'.
so a couple of weeks ago the married folk and i went to granada to renew our visas.. i LOVE nicaragua. hay buena gente en nicaragua. here's a list of the many things that we got to do...
1. sleep in (i even got 8 hours some nights!) 2. eat good food (the pizza at mona lisa's was mouthwatering, mindblowing, earthshattering-- can you tell i am tired of cooking?) 3. meet good people (i met a friendly man named mauricio on the top of a bell tower who is going to be my new email penpal so that i can practice my spanish-- he got a degree from some californian college) 4. go on a private boat tour (tourism is really dead in the wet season) 5. go to art exhibits, old churches, markets, cultural centers (there are neat petroglyphs in granada transported from ometepe-- my favorites were el diablo and hunchback. i also found out that people used to worship these deities by hanging from tall log things.. it looked like they were just playing see-saw though.) 6. ride the public transportation system (nicaraguan buses are just old blue birds from the states.. one lady got on with a giant bowl of flan that was filled to the brim! everbody was eyeing it nervously yet hungrily..)
also! the dogs there were so cyute and scraggly. there was one particular dog with sticky-outy, lopsided ears that i couldn't resist. so i petted him and called him my little perrito (people in central america usually don't pet dogs- so gringos who do it are a bit of a joke).. well after that.. one thing led to another... and i was deskirted... in front of some fruit stand ladies. they loved it.. i loved it. the dog loved it. fun sexy times for everyone!
here is my favorite picture from the trip courtesy of jeffrey rinderkinecht.
rescued spider monkey on one of the isletas from our private boat tour (courtesy of jr).
ain't nothin't but a horse and carriage! (courtesy of jr)
tamara and me in our very own panOrama! (courtesy of jr)
1. dancing naked to tainted love. 2. singing songs like a moose would. 3. singing songs like the grinch would. schmmooosshhyy schmoooshshy rreee merrr... 4. hip circles and thrusts. 5. brass monkeys, greyhounds, beer, chocolate, screwdrivers... 6. naps. 7. screaming in the shower. 8. talking to geckos. 9. narrating your actions in a british accent. 10. tv on dvd.
so it rains quite a lot here. lately, i have been trying to convince myself that i have an impermeable superpower. that i have the preternatural ability to repel water. searching for monkeys through water up to your shins, in the pouring rain for hours on end, one often wonders what the hell they are doing out there. i try to play mind games- like the superpower bit, and sometimes i try to think about how happy the frogs must be.. and the leeches and maybe the worms if they haven't drowned already. the other day i thought that maybe the rain is just a way of the sky hugging me. or punching me in the face. pounding me to the ground, until i have no willpower left to play these mind games. you might say, well suzie, don't you have a poncho? a poncho? heh. ponchos, in the rainy season, are about as useful as pasties. which are not useful.. unless you are going for arousing lingerie. and you can't use ponchos for lingerie...
i received an email stating that today, rain levels broke records in santa rosa national park. the station reported 405.9 mm from yesterday morning (7am) to today (7am). this satellite image of central america was taken today at 6:30am.
also-- it is so humid here that the nerds that fell onto my desk last night turned into little nerd puddles by the morning. i guess 100% humidity will do that.
in the bbc show series planet earth, david attenborough states that "capuchins are the bully boys of the forest." i never gave that statement much thought until the other day. in a single morning LV ate bird eggs, chased howler monkeys, tried to eat a baby coati, and lunged at a tamandua. the coati episode was particularly disturbing. LV reminded me of chimpanzees, seemingly cooperating, screaming as they encircled, jabbed, and yanked the poor baby's tail. in one moment, the coati looked at me with panicked eyes, almost urging me to help. i had to fight every impulse in my body pushing me to scream like a bag lady, flap my arms about, and scare them away.
i have also seen LV eat birds, pounce on iguanas, throw sticks at boas, and break branches on my head (cayenne did that on purpose, that jerk). mark wainright, author of the natural history of costa rican mammals, proves planet earth right writing that one captive capuchin used a squirrel monkey as a projectile, hurling it at a human observer. yep. bullies through and through.
so there's something disconcerting about eating your lunch while waiting for a monkey to defecate. what's even more unsettling is interrupting your lunch because a monkey has defecated. you see, we need to collect female fecal samples every three days and male fecal samples every week for our hormonal research (checking periovulatory cycles of females and the cortisol levels of males.) ahh, what glamorous lives field assistants live!
mirjam, martina (two bat researchers from germany that i have taken a liking to), mike, tamara, and i went on a bat catching date the other night. bow bow bow bow bow bow bow bow bow bow bow bow bow FIVESOME!. we caught a lot of bats and told stories in the dark while watching the sky illuminate with lightning. que romantico!
mirjam and an insectivorous bat.
mike, mirjam and martina with an insectivorous bat.
gleeful bat.
martina and i-- bat researchers or polish cleaning ladies?
martina checking the nets.
mike overcoming his fears and kissing a bat.
she's got that nose that you can deal with.
huge tarantula we saw on the way back.. i would say it was the size of my hand. maybe larger?
i often enjoy using the public transportation system in costa rica. it makes me feel adventurous and independent. it also gives me the chance to see how most people in costa rica live. every time i am waiting hours upon hours for a bus, i try to remind myself that this is how the people do it. this is how they have to do it. which brings me to chagas disease. i got stung by an assassin bug the other week (an insect vector of chagas- it feels kind of like a wasp or scorpion sting.) Apparently people who get chagas disease don't realize they have it because the assassin bug bites them at night (defecating in the wound spurring the victim to unknowingly scratch the irritated skin, further rubbing the fecal matter into the wound.) so my point is that the cdc estimates that 8-11 million latin americans have chagas disease (most of whom do not know they are infected; if untreated, infection is lifelong and can be life threatening.) so in 30 years, if i realize i have chagas disease, i'll know that the outkast lyrics "i stay down with these streets 'cause these streets is where my folks at" ring true... chagas affects the people. and i could be one of those people.
assassin bug that mirjam and martina found around the albergue. apparently assassin bugs hang around filth... which means that the mosquito net at night is necessary.
EXTREME CLOSE-UP!! be afraid. they come in the thick of the night.
this is what 13 hours of following monkeys through swamps will do to your feet. the other foot model is mike lemmon, fellow capuchin researcher. for those of you who like feet, scroll and be cured of your sordid ways.
so today, i caught myself saying, "waking up at 5 isn't so bad," excited that i didn't have to get up at 3:30 the next morning to wake up monkeys. i never thought those words would have ever come out of this mouth. i suppose it's all relative.
some highlights from the past couple of days are-- that i saw a juvenile tapir and that cayenne ate an adult magpie-jay. how about THAT for bloodsport2008.
cayenne (alpha male pretty boy)
cayenne eating the jay and refusing mostaza and nutella's advances
picture of the jay corpse after cayenne picked its bones.
plus nutella (who i now refer to as nutjob) keeps eating soil. he also won't let me focal follow him. i now can id all adult males and females within seconds of looking at them. i mean i guess you get to know your monkeys pretty fast when you spend 13 hours a day with them.
lately i have been playing the game called tick or scab? it usually ends up being a tick though, so its amusement has faded a little bit. **edit.. so mike, another capuchin field assistant from another team, found a tick UNDERNEATH a scab. apparently the tick was on there so long that it scabbed over. things just got interesting again.
i have been assigned my troop-- los valles, the food group. their name is intuitive because their range is a massive area overridden with hills. lately, lv and i have been playing a tiring game of hide and seek. jeffrey (a fellow field assistant) told me that i should have shouted ollyollyoxenfree on day two. i'm too stubborn to let the monkeys haze me like that. but today, on this epic day, amanda found the monkeys on the main road. when i heard the news i put my field clothes on in an exuberant rush to meet them. nutella was so awesome today-- even though it was pouring down rain he came down to the ground to say hello and eat some soil. which is a very rare behavior! also.. i am pretty sure that blanquita is pregnant..
so start thinking of food names (preferably spices, condiments, or sauces says the pretentious doctorate person who habituated the group) for the infant. my favorites so far are beef cake, garbanzo, noodle, aunt jemima, and heinz.
here are two monkeys from los valles that i have taken a liking to-- nutella and weirdo. nutella has a snaggle tooth that makes him look like a half vampire.
and weirdo has this funny spaced-out face on all the time. he kind of reminds me of that slightly dumb jock basketball player.
mostaza (i like to call him mustard or frankenmonkey)is a model, apparently.
here are some FUNgus pictures that i took when i was finding and not finding monkeys.
yesterday, upon returning from coco beach, where i completed an open water scuba course (a green sea turtle came to check us out,) i was taking a snooze on a bus heading towards liberia. i woke up after drooling a little on my shirt and noticed a tico getting on the bus with an enormous hand saw (which had a safety cover on only PART of it). immediately visions of dying by way of saw to the stomach came to mind, slicing and eviscerating my internal organs. then, nightmare became reality when the bus hit a giant pothole when said tico was seconds away from my seat, after which he started doing the whole WHUuP-whuup-woooahhh-trip thing bobbling the saw around inches away from my flesh. it reminded me of some kind of twisted, gory cartoon like celebrity death match or something. what a way to die huh? huh.
i'm fairly sure that a little part of my psyche died today. i woke up monkeys today after about 9 hours in the field yesterday and about 7 the day before. waking up monkeys entails rising at about ohh 3:30am and hiking at a fast pace to their sleeping tree. we found them drinking coffee and reading the new york times in a guanacaste tree at around 5:00am.
guanacaste is a neat troop because the juveniles have massive play bouts that are pretty entertaining to watch. here is a video i took of them playing near the ground.
i am pretty sure that maxine hates me because yesterday she scared the wits out of me about 8 times. i would be trying to id another monkey, or watching a play session, or having sexy time with malfoy and all of a sudden i would look to my left and about an armlength away would be maxy, threatfacing me. it reminded me of a cheesy horror film where they show really close up shots of the disfigured killer (maybe with psycho music in the background?)... here's a picture i took of her threat facing with a subadult male.
she usually threat faces with the alpha male babaganouj (who transferred from Los Valles aka the food group.) when he came into the group he killed all of the infants (infanticide) so that the nursing females would go into estrus quicker and he could sire the new infants (hypothesis). he's a bruiser. i want to make a tshirt with a picture of him that reads "this is NOT what a feminist looks like." muah muuuaah.
yesterday was also the first time that i navigated the forest by myself. we all split up (and i didn't even have a gps) and walked trails separately to cover more ground. it was alone time that i desperately needed.. and i also got to enjoy the forest, hearing and seeing more than i can with another hiker. here are some picture s that i took during my hike.
this is monkey comb. according to the natural history of costa rican mammals, capuchins have been seen to rub themselves with monkey comb.
an acacia tree (which has ants that live in its thorns in a symbiotic relationship... and their bite hurts like crazy-- DOUBLE THREAT!!).
penguin bromeliads (Bromelia pinguin) have thorns all along their leaves and are all over! the capuchins like to eat their fruit.
this is what we would call a "trail." see the two flags? yeah i don't either.
and here is a portrait of me with the monkeys...
oh yeah! and i did a practice focal follow (where you follow an individual for 10 minutes and record everything they do) of maxine and she ate three baby birds. and they were still alive as she bit into their naked flesh flitting and flapping about. alright. i'll leave you with that image.
