I think, apart from the “Big
Five” (Rhino, Elephant, Cape buffalo, Leopard, and Lion) of Africa, one of the
most impressive animals on that continent is the crocodile. Phrases that come
to mind when I think about crocs (the reptile, not the shoes) are: prehistorically
efficient, iconically reptilian, realistically dinosauric… not sure if that
last one was even a word. Oh well. It’s a word now, and it fits doesn’t it? I
mean crocodiles ARE so dinosauric, aren’t they? I can think of no better word
to describe their aura of calm, scaly, cold, crafty, oldness. Ain’t they cool?
Crocs, they know they're cool.
All of the croc pics in this post were taken by Clive, an employee at the park with a really sweet camera and a new friend of ours as of this year.
Apparently crocs were high
on a lot of people’s bucket lists, because when we let the word out that we
were taking a drive to the river to try and see some, everyone wanted to come!
We ended up borrowing the science center’s game drive vehicle, which could
probably seat up to 15. The more the merrier, right? I think so, especially
with an awesome group like this!
Fun fact: in the game drive
vehicles, the person or persons on the very back seat have the biggest gamble
in trusting the driver’s ability to get them “There and Back Again,” because
both the vehicle’s shocks and the park’s roads are bad.
And one big bump with a
driver who’s more Hyde than Jekyll could find you, poor, unprepared backseat
sitter, in a much closer experience with the animals than you signed up for
(i.e. the truck will go up with the bump, and so will you, then the truck will
come down to the road, and so will you… behind the truck… on the road… with a
bump… in a slump…) I’ve been reading a lot of Dr. Seuss lately. Can you tell?
Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because someone “CoughRyanCough!” almost
sent Frederick, a grad student visiting the park from Sweden, flying.
Unfortunately, other than
that lil’ anecdote there’s really not much of a story to this event. We
trundled out there, saw some awesome crocodiles, and trundled back with cool
pictures, which I will now share with you. Enjoy!
He's big, people, but not as big as the surprise we saw on the drive back to the lab!
These guys totally surprised us... and not in a bad way, thankfully. They were so quiet we almost drove right by them. Not sure who noticed them, but I'm glad they did, and I'm glad the elephants didn't mind us doing the tourist thing for a few minutes. Seeing these massive creatures out in the wild will never get old for me. What a great end to a fun trip!
So, I was planning on being all
efficient and everything during the two weeks I’m currently spending at my
parents’ house. I was going to finish off the African blog posts on time/almost
on time and get home with a full blog and an empty To Do list.
Then, when it was far too late to do anything about it, I realized a couple things…
1) Ryan has ALL the Africa
pictures on his computer.
2) Ryan’s computer is in Idaho,
with Ryan.
3) Ryan will not remember or have
time to email me all the pictures I need, ‘cause the semester just started and he's already crazybusy.
(Even though I did ask, people. So you can all blame him for the out of sync
post that follows.)
But it’s not the end of the
world. I mean who says that these blog posts have to be ordered in a perfect,
linear timeline? I can skip around, can’t I? Granted, it would have been NICE
to have everything in order, and reading a steady progression of events is so
much EASIER than reading posts that hop around the calendar. But I don’t
complain. Do you hear me complaining? I DON’T COMPLAIN!
Well, that wasn't awkward at all...
Here we are, in my parents’
town, readjusting to life in the states (driving on the right side of the road, saying "poo-poo" to the mosquitoes instead of "away, foul malaria-infested demon bug!" That kind of stuff.) and having a grand old time strolling around downtown Loveland, CO with the fam. Lots of artsy, bohemian style shops, and lots of good restaurants are to be found there! I have had the best Pho at least three times in the last few weeks.
Had to make up for lost time, didn't I? Been craving this stuff for over three months now.
And I suppose before I get to far into this post I should probably
explain the title, huh?
Well, Mimi and Pops let the
grandkids help them paint inside the garage, which was a fun experience for
all.
Caden has a turn...
Paddy has a turn...
and Joey has a belly! Oh my gosh, you guys! Come look at this belly!
Clean up! Start 'em young so they can get a jumpstart in the job market.
Touch ups. Caden went at it with a will.
Afterwards, they (the
grandparents) wanted to have the handprints of all three grandsons up on the
wall. It’s a really sweet idea, and when done right, could become a very
special personal touch in Pops’ garage … but… well… when you’re remodeling the
house and the only other paint you have is a dark red—which will look great on
the front door, I’m sure—you kind of realize that color and design and
placement can be, in fact, very important in the creation of child-related
craft projects.
Ahem.
It's not what it looks like. I think we all agreed that when it's redone we're gonna go with happier pastel colors. You know, something that doesn't scream Redrum?
As much as I love this place, every
now and again I start to get a little bit of camp fever, which is very much
like cabin fever. It means I’ve been in the routine too long, and I need to get
outside the fence and experience a little bit of the real Africa, see some of
the real reasons we’re here. So, one day recently when Ryan had some time off,
he took me and Caden out on a game drive.
Now, I can understand that it seems
kind of silly to say I need to see some real Africa. I mean, it’s not like life
inside the camp is “fake” Africa after all. It’s true that camp life is camp
life pretty much wherever you go, but how many camps back home have a whole
group of these wandering around thirty feet from the fence line?
But still,
being in a remote location and doing the same thing every day—feeding Caden,
playing with Caden, disciplining Caden—can (shockingly) get a little
monotonous.
I am so glad we went on
this drive. If we had wanted specifically to find elephants, we could not have
picked a better day or time to try. Actually we didn’t have to try at all. Two
separate herds just showed up as we drove along. The first group was crossing
the road ahead of us after we’d barely driven two minutes outside of the gate.
They were very calm and allowed us to stop the truck and take some really cool
pictures!
These guys were less than 25 yards from us. The next group was not so
calm. The older females were shaking their tuskless heads at us, which was
their way of saying, “we don’t like this and we don’t like you.” They were
about 50 yards from us when we drove by, and we didn’t stop to push our luck.
Many
of these old females experienced the civil war that ended back in 1992, or at
least the part of it that spilled over into the national park, and as a general
rule they don’t like humans very much. They didn’t care if we got some
long-distance pics though, which we really wanted to do because their herd was
so big! There were even babies! I have to say, baby elephants are the cutest
little (“little” Ha!) wrinkle-fests I’ve ever seen.
The rest of the drive was
not so eventful, but we still had a lot of fun. We drove through the yellow
fever tree forest. I think fever trees are my favorite kind of tree over here.
The
bark is green and yellow, graded like a topography map, and all dusty and shiny
like butterfly wings in the sunlight. Interesting fact about fever trees: they
photosynthesize through their bark as well as their leaves.
Really bad lighting, but I wanted to share a few pics of this huge old baobab tree, and the very active beehive growing out of it.
My favorite picture of the day. Morbid or artistic? You decide.
Waterbucks on the floodplains. Caden calls them waterbutts, maybe 'cause the "k" sound is hard for him to pronounce, maybe because they have a big white target on their backsides, either way it's fitting and cute. We saw too many to count, but he would say we saw five, since that's his favorite number.
At the floodplains I was reminded once again just how massive this park really is. I'm not sure if you can see it in these pictures, but beneath the clouds and on the edge of the horizon is the base of Mt. Gorongosa. That mountain is the border of the park lands. It is partially within and partially without the edge of the park, and it is universally difficult to get on right now because of Renamo soldiers. They aren't totally thrilled with the peace agreement that was signed last year, and are currently hanging out on the Mountain, and causing stress for anyone with business on the mountain, whether it be legal business or otherwise. Good times.
Another amazing adventure
that happened recently was that we got to go with Ryan on two of his captures. These
ones were both a little unique though, as neither of them was related to Ryan’s project. Both captures involved darting sable from the ground. You might
remember sable from Ryan’s last post, because he included a short video of himself
darting another sable from the helicopter. Just a quick reminder though, sable
are a gorgeous, almost horse-like antelope, and both the males and females have
horns.
In the first of our family
sable adventures, Ryan was darting another female sable because he and Louis
needed to remove an old wire snare that had become wrapped around one of her
ankles.
This sable was a member of the herd that likes to hang out on the
airstrip, which makes them easier to see, but harder to sneak up on. Plus, the helicopter
was no longer around. We took a game drive vehicle, because the animals are
more used to those vehicles than they are to the science trucks, and so there
was plenty of room for Caden and me to come along. We basically stalked them in
plain sight. First Frazer (one of the amazing guides that works in the park
here) drove near to the herd in one direction, then he cut the engine and we
waited a few minutes, then he turned the vehicle slightly and drove a little
closer, then he cut the engine again, and so on until finally we were close
enough for Ryan to dart the poor girl. The herd was pretty nervous, and they
were all on their feet and slowly moving away from us, but Frazer still managed
to get us just where we needed to be. The shot was good, and after about 10
minutes of crazy off-road driving we found her lying in the tall grass. I’ll
tell you what, seeing the damage that a wire snare can do to a beautiful animal
like this is sickening. The cable was deeply embedded in her hugely swollen
ankle, which explained the bad limp we’d been seeing. After removing the snare,
Louis treated the wound with a variety of antibiotics and protective salves,
during which time we were able to get some cool pictures with her.
It was so
amazing to be able to share in an experience like this! And the good news is
that after about a week, Ryan and Louis spotted her with the herd again, and
they could hardly even tell it was her. The swelling was gone and limp was
barely even noticeable. Well done guys!
Our second sable adventure
came when that same herd showed up back on the airstrip again a few days later.
Ryan still had one collar left to deploy for the graduate student in South
Africa, and he’d been asked to put it on a mature female in that particular
herd if possible. So away we went in the game drive vehicle again, this time
with Paul driving! Paul is another guide here who is working as sort of an
intern to Frazer. Things played out similarly to the first time, except that
the herd seemed to know what we were up to, and they were even more nervous. Ryan
had to dart this one as she walked away at about 35 yards, which is the limit
of his range with a transmitter dart. The dart went where it was supposed to
though, and a few minutes later we were once again standing with a beautiful,
sleeping female sable.
Caden absolutely loved
these experiences, which was priceless for us. Last year, when he was only 2,
Ryan brought us out with him once to dart a bushbuck. Caden just wasn’t old
enough to understand much of what was going on at that time, and so he didn’t
really take that much of an interest. Not so this year! He was tuned in to
every aspect of the sable darting experience, and he absolutely loved getting
to see them up close and touch them. Not to mention that he’s spent a lot of
his daily play time every day since “booming” animals with a toy dart gun (a
stick) just like daddy. Instead of making a boom when he shoots though, he now mimics
the “whoosing” sound that the real dart gun makes when daddy uses it. He did
that for the first time completely spontaneously just a few seconds after Ryan
darted the first sable, and it was adorable! I think he’s starting to realize
for the first time that his daddy has a pretty cool job… :-)
Hey everyone! That’s right, it’s me again! I know, I know, I
say that like it’s a positive thing, which is probably a bit presumptuous given
how poorly developed my blogging skills are relative to Kathleen’s. ;-) Oh well. For this
post, you’re stuck with me!
The capture season here is starting to wind down now, and so
I thought I’d go ahead and do a quick post on it and share some stories, pics,
and video. This year I’ll spare you all the details about my research per se,
because most of you are already at least a little bit familiar with it anyway
(and even if you’re not it’s not nearly as exciting as pics and videos). Just
as a brief reminder though, my project year involves capturing and collecting
data from three different species of antelope: bushbuck (the little ones),
nyala (the medium ones), and kudu (the big ones). I typically dart the bushbuck
and nyala from a vehicle because they’re small and like thick cover, and the
kudu from a helicopter.
This year has been full of all of the crazy ups and downs
that always seem to characterize this kind of work, so I thought I’d share just
a few anecdotes with you of situations that started off badly and ended up
working out well. The majority of the time when I dart one of these animals,
things go just fine, but not always!
So, anecdote number 1. When I’m darting the bushbuck and
nyala from the ground I have to use darts that include a small radio-transmitter
inside of them so that I can track them in the bush. After being darted, these
guys typically run off into thick brush, and can go for hundreds of yards
before succumbing to the anesthesia. So, without transmitter darts we’d rarely
ever find them. This year, with one of the first bushbuck I darted, the dart
itself malfunctioned and didn’t inject. It stayed in like it was supposed to
though (because of the barb), which allowed us to keep track of her via the
transmitter dart. So, we spent the next hour slowly following her around trying
to get close enough to get a second dart in her. In addition, because she
already had a transmitter dart attached to her, I chose to use a non-transmitter
dart the second time so that I could shoot farther (the darts are much lighter
and fly much better without the transmitter). After a great deal of careful
pursuit and patience, I finally had another brief chance to dart her on the
move as she walked in front of our vehicle. The good news: the dart hit her
perfectly and injected like it was supposed to. The bad news: as soon as the
second dart hit her, the first one, which contained the transmitter, fell out!
As always, she immediately ran off into the thick bush, and because she no
longer had the transmitter dart in her, we had no way to track her. So begins
the painstaking grid search, which most of the time leads to nothing. About an
hour into our search, a vulture flew by us at top speed, obviously on a
mission. We ran after it, and shortly thereafter noticed an eagle circling
above the area where it looked like the vulture was headed. We searched that
specific area, and after only a few minutes, there she was! Untouched and lying
fast asleep on her side. She was in great shape, and after putting a GPS collar
on her and collecting a variety of other data on her condition, reproductive
status, size, etc., we reversed the anesthesia and she went happily on her way.
Whew! That’s the third time in the past two seasons that either a vulture or an
eagle has led us to an animal that we’d lost track of because the transmitter
dart fell out. Crazy!
A couple of weeks later I had a nyala run across the road in
front of me and stop just within darting range. She was obviously ready to keep
running and I only had a few seconds, so I had to guess the distance instead of
using my range finder. Unfortunately I misjudged and the dart went low. Rather
than simply going beneath her and turning into a missed shot, though, it hit
her in the leg and stuck in the skin there. The dart was a transmitter dart,
and we followed her around for the next half hour, but because it wasn’t a good
muscle hit, she was only partially affected by the drugs and never went down.
Nyala are much more mobile than bushbuck, and eventually we lost track of the
transmitter signal, and her. Rather than give up though, we decided to see if
we might get lucky from the air. The helicopter we’d used for the kudu darting
was still around, and although we’d never successfully darted a nyala from the
air before (not for lack of trying last year!), we had to try; leaving an
animal running around with a dart in its leg is not an option when there’s
still something we might be able to do about it. It was much easier for me to
pick up her signal again from the air, and before long we had her in sight
again. She was obviously affected by the drug, and was running much slower than
normal. She was in and out of the trees a lot, and so it took some patience on
the part of our amazing helicopter pilot Mike Pingo, but eventually Louis Van
Wyck, a game capture specialist who’s here helping out with the capture,
managed to get a second dart into her from the helicopter. The first and only
nyala we’d ever managed to dart from the air!
This is the nyala from the story above. Beautiful animals aren't they?
Just like last year, I’ve also been privileged to see all
sorts of amazing things during the course of my time in the field searching for
animals to dart. Kathleen already posted a few pics of the pride of lions we
came across on the same day that we had the transmitter dart fall out of the
bushbuck. I’ve also been lucky enough to see elephants on at least half of the
days that I’ve been out, so I’ve included a few elephant pics below as well.
The elephants of Gorongosa. I have a graduate student starting in the fall semester who will be spending the next 3 years conducting research on these amazing animals, including putting GPS collars on a bunch of them. Can't wait!
One thing I also did for fun this year was bring a GoPro
camera with me for the aerial darting. As a result, I got some cool
first-person video footage of myself darting kudu from the helicopter, as well as some good footage of one really cool bonus experience I had from the chopper
this year. I darted 9 of the 10 kudu from the air this year, which was a real privilege,
and I’ve included a few pictures and a couple of the better videos for you below.
Getting ready to put a GPS collar on a female kudu on film with Rob Pringle (my collaborator and former post-doc advisor at Princeton) and Corina Tarnita (another professor at Princeton).
Using ultrasonography to measure the depth of the loin muscle on a kudu as one measure of her nutritional condition.
On her way about a minute or so after reversing the anesthesia.
Rob and Corina with a collared kudu, along with a crew from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). HHMI recently provided a major grant to the Gorongosa Restoration Project to fund the construction of an education center.
In this video, we were pursuing a group of about 8 or so kudu that broke up shortly after we saw them. You'll notice early in the video that we focused our attention on one lone female, but when we got close to her I could tell she was in poor condition, so I asked Mike to break off and find the others. Shortly after he was able to push a group of 3 into the open, which set me up perfectly to get a dart in!
In this video you'll get to witness something that was a first for me; two shots at the same kudu, but not because of a miss. If you pay close attention to the first shot, you'll notice that it hits her in the hindquarter and bounces right off! Definitely haven't seen that before. Mike went high to keep an eye on her while Louis got a second dart ready for me, and fortunately the second one did the trick.
Below you'll see a few pictures and a GoPro video of my bonus experience. There's a Mozambican graduate student currently going to school in South Africa who was hoping to collect some data on sable (an amazing species of antelope with long, sweeping horns) as part of their thesis project, and had sent a couple of GPS collars to the park in the hopes of having them deployed this year. Since I was around and Rui (the park vet and head of law enforcement) was super busy with all sorts of other things, he let me do the darting and collaring! Man was this a cool experience. Sable have always been one of my favorite antelope, and getting to have my hands on one was a real privilege.
Me and Mike Pingo's (the helicopter pilot) son Greg with a beautiful female sable. Unlike the species I've been working with, female sable also have horns.
Measuring rump fat depth with the ultrasound. This may well be the first time in history anybody has ever used this approach to quantify condition of a wild sable!
Headed back to the chopper after a successful operation. What a nice sunset eh?
This is the GoPro video I recorded while darting the sable in the above pictures. Rather than truncate it, I've decided to share the full experience with you which, like the kudu video above, required two shots. Unfortunately in this case it was because I missed the first one...
Well, that's it for now. I hope you enjoyed the pics and videos!
