Lost and Found
Sometimes walking into the rainforest is like walking into a messy garage, there is stuff everywhere and no space to move. Now imagine running, climbing, ducking and stumbling through that garage with lots of equipment strapped to you on all sides, while keeping your eyes fixed on a runaway mouse, and you’ve got an idea of what it feels like to work on the PP team. CRASH, their goes the branch you stepped on, YELP, your being strangled by a vine, Bzzzzz, a bug just flew into your ear, OUCH, a bamboo thorn stuck you through your clothes. One quickly succumbs to the fact that sh$t just happens, no matter how careful you are, but at least these gripes come and go pretty quickly. That is of course, unless you’ve dropped something or put it down, then you’ll really curse the day you entered the rainforest. The little episodes that come next are all instances in which things were lost in the field and then found, to our surprise, hours or days later. How one is ever able to find anything amidst the vast biomass of the rainforest completely escapes us, nevertheless, here are a few amusing examples.
Bee’s and Binoculars
One evening after a trapping had occurred Gideon is in the laboratory cleaning up and preparing equipment for tomorrow’s excursion. Tools were put away, tables wiped clean, electronic gear was returned to the dry box, but Gideon’s pair of binoculars was missing. He searched and searched the lab, the room, the tree place where we had trapped earlier, but to no avail. Upon questioning Mini and Rhea, each was able to locate their own binoculars but had not seen his. That night Gideon asked the director to make an announcement, incase someone had placed them somewhere or mistaken them for their own. Unfortunately, no one had a clue and Gideon was getting more and more frustrated because going into the field would be worthless without a pair of binoculars.
Next morning Gideon is walking around CICRA frustrated, when he spies something black in a patch of tall grass. As he approaches, the item is clearly synthetic and covered with forest detritus and bugs. Upon closer inspection, the item is indeed his binoculars, and all of a sudden things start to make sense. Yesterday afternoon, Gideon was rushing out of lunch to help Mini and Rhea with the trapping when wasps swarmed him and stung him three times. He twisted around, ran, thrashed the air and threw everything on him, including his shirt, to the ground. After regaining his calm, he rushed to help Mini and Rhea, forgetting completely about the 5-pound pair of binoculars that was around his neck.
Bananarama
Most days when we leave into the field we are carrying a big bag of bananas, along with all the other miscellaneous items that we need to follow the tamarins. The bananas are used to bait the various traps and platforms that we’ve placed all over the forest. Right now we have about 11 separate banana sites going. In between visiting each site we are cautiously walking so as to avoid making noise, and keeping all our senses tuned to any sign of tamarins. The real kicker comes in when we’ve walked a kilometer and one person says…
On extra special occasions we wake up in the morning only to realize that we have no banana bag. We search all over camp in the dark to find another plastic bag that no one cares about (which is not easy to come by) and we take off. Eventually we reach our last trapping site and sure enough there are the old bananas, turned mush and covered with a zillion bugs.
We’ve done this so many times that now we’ve acquired a bucket that is safe from bugs, no matter how long it is lost in the jungle.
Three Times and Counting
Our personal favorite lost and found story has taken place on three separate occasions, and is exceptionally hard to imagine once you’ve seen the debris that covers the rainforest floor. All the drama surrounds one pen, but not just any pen. This pen is special because it is a “Rite in the Rain” pen, which means that it can scribble upside down, underwater, in extreme temperatures, even in outer space, and the ink won’t run. Just one of these tiny pens costs upwards of $8, and we could only afford to take 5 with us into the field.
Sometime in late October…
As it turns out, Mini, who has funded the purchase of these highly elite pens and cares for them deeply, possesses an uncanny repulsion to them; or rather they to her. The first time she lost her pen, we took a 2 mile hike to our first official trap site. We arrived at our site in the early morning before the primates woke up, baited the trap, camouflaged our mosquito net with lots of large leaves, and settled down to a breakfast snack of saltine crackers.
Mini says, “Hand me the notes, because I want to record how long it took for us to walk here and set up.” Gideon hands her the notes “CRAPOLA!, where is my pen?”
In the afternoon, we eventually leave our blind and start walking down the trail, slowly so as not miss any pens that might be lying around. After ¾ of a mile, we’ve had no luck and Mini starts to resign herself to the hard truth that it is gone.
“MINI! I’ve got it, it was right here, a mile away from the trap, sitting on the trail.”
We were overwhelmed with relief, and needless to say, thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the night despite having accomplished nothing with our project.
Late November
On another trip into the jungle, Mini, Rhea, and Gideon, had tracked a tamarin group to a thick almost impenetrable patch of tall bamboo grass. Usually we would circumvent this obstacle and meet them on the other side but this time we decided to make a path straight through; this would be preferable for all the subsequent occasions when we would need to follow them through the same area. Gideon unsheathed the machete and startled cutting a little pathway, Rhea and Mini in pursuit and keeping their eyes and ears tuned for the group. When we finally broke free they were moving fast away from us. We had no time to take any notes or observations, and pursued them through yet another thick patch until they relaxed. At this point, we all took a moment to breath, drink water, and prepare for good note taking.
Mini said ,“Guys, does one of you have my pen? I need it back to write notes.” We both reply that we do not. “Oh f%$kidy doo! I can’t believe I’ve lost it again.”
Mini takes Gideon’s pen, and we tramp on for the rest of the day. It turns out to be a great day for note taking, and by 4:30pm we decide to call it quits because the group has gone out of sight. We’re all walking back to camp when Gideon remembers the lost pen.
“Hey guys, I’ll just quickly try to run through the bamboo again and see if the pen is lying around,” declares Gideon. “I doubt it, but at least we can say that we tried.” Mini and Rhea said fine, but had already decided that the pen was lost so why bother?
After 30 minutes Gideon returns to the station and produces one small Rite in the Rain pen. Of all the places it could have dropped and been lost forever, it fell in plain site just on the other side of the first bamboo patch.
The last thing Gideon said was, “Thankfully everything in the forest is green.” And we all stared at the pen utterly amazed.
Early December
Finally, we are on one of our most gruesome hikes to date. Mini had triple checked herself several times to make sure that she had her pen. The tamarin group had taken us wading through swamp, and crawling on all four limbs up several hills only to slide down them on our butts moments later. Rhea, Mini, and Gideon had each fallen in numerous leaf-covered holes,and face planted in the ground more than once.
At one point Mini says, “Guys, I can’t see very well, I’m going to climb a little higher for a clear view.” Rhea and Gideon both gave her the okay sign. CRASH! Mini’s foot slipped out from under her and she landed flat on her back.
Five minutes passes and still no pen.
Seeing little red ants climbing out of her sleeves, Mini had to remove a few garments and shake the ants off. The scene was nothing short of her famous Mougli impression from the Jungle Book.
We all felt the burn for the rest of the night, but at least we had the pen!
Notes can survive rain but can they survive bugs?
Similar to the pen episodes, we’ve lost our notebooks on multiple outings. Usually they fall out of someone’s backside, where they are usually tucked, when we are squeezing through particularly awkward trees or bamboo. Sometimes though, it is just the heat of the moment that does us in. On one classic occasion, Mini, Gideon and Rhea, were walking down the trail known as Ortorongo (Jaguar), looking for new groups of tamarins. Mini has an impeccable ear, and is usually the first one to stop and notice their calls. We all turn around, looking for movement in the trees, and one of us sees them. Quickly we jump into action.
“You go to that side and tell me what you see…I’ll go over here…Someone try and get a group count...Keep the noise level down!”
In all this excitement Gideon says, “Crap! Mini, I’ve turned on the GPS tracking machine but the batteries are low and it will die any second. I need new ones and I think you have them.” Mini drops the notebook in her hand and fishes out two batteries.
Gideon fumbles over, changes the batteries and before we could put everything away the group was off. We all start sprinting after them, ready to do whatever it takes to keep them in our sight. We kept up with the group for another hour or so and then it started to storm. In case you’re not familiar with tropical storms, if they don’t end in 10 minutes, it is best to leave as quickly as possible because tree falls are a dime a dozen. So we said goodbye to our group and high tailed it back to the station.
We arrived just in time for lunch and decided to call off our afternoon hike. For the rest of the day we logged data and cleaned house. Evening came and went, and everything seemed fine.
The next morning we awoke at 4:30am as usual and prepped for our hike out to the traps. We grabbed bait, made our packs, and then noticed that our trapping notebook was missing. All of us just sat their shocked. How could we forget the single most important thing that we bring to the field with us every day. It contains all our data! No time to lose before the sun starts to rise, we grab an empty notebook and head to the field. After a mile into the forest we came across the area that we saw the tamarin group yesterday. We decided to take a look around in case the book was never picked up. After 10 minutes of searching with no luck, we are getting ready to leave when….
“Wait, I see something,” says Gideon. “This is it, this is the book, it’s yellow, what else could it be?”
Sure enough, it was the yellow book, but the entire top border had been eaten away by bugs (keep in mind that this book is at least 30 pages thick!).
“Aww darn, now we need to start putting repellent on our notebooks too!!”
Conclusion
There are plenty of other items that we have lost in the forest, but by now you get the picture. We like to think that after all these experiences of losing things, we’re getting better at minimizing the losses, but sometimes you just can’t help it. The losing part is definitely hard but the finding part is “oh so sweet” and arguably worth it. Of course, the ultimate lost and found stories of this project involve either losing ourselves in the jungle or losing our tamarin groups, but these we save for blog posts unto themselves.
