Into the Wild

It's amazing that another week has already passed, and as usual, lots has happened. I went to the field again on Tuesday morning, to collect lizards at the Botanical Garden research plots and the IBGE, which is another ecological reserve near Brasilia. Both sites are in gallery forests, not the actual cerrado, which is the savanna-like area we drive safari-style through to reach the forests.












I found the only lizard in the forty traps, but we also discovered a little mammal stuck in one as well! It's so cute!





When one of the other student's got a look, he said it was actually a marsupial! Even cooler.










Wednesday was full of classes (Ecology of Fire in the Cerrado, Ethnobotany of the Cerrado, and Biology of Reptiles), but I had a long conversation with one of the students in my last class and ended up getting a ride to the bus station--which saved me at least a half hour of bus waiting. Thursday I only had one class in the morning (Phonetics and Phonology of Portuguese), so I had lots of time to do. . . not much! On campus there is only one computer lab and no where to print besides the Xerox businesses, so that'll be a bit of a problem for classes and other documents. And no Microsoft programs either. Very strange for such a large university with over 20,000 students.

But I stuck around late on Thursday at UnB because some more herp students were headed to the field that night to collect toads. I grabbed a 'pizza bread' from one of the food kiosks on campus before heading to the lab to meet the other girls. The waders I used on Monday had a hole in them, so I only had some taller boots to wear out to the field. Normally we take a driver and a university vehicle, but this Thursday one of the students drove her car. (Riding in any vehicle in Brasilia is so nerve-wracking, I don't know how Brazilians can drive here without constantly having accidents. Today I was sure the bus driver was going to run over a few people that were a little close to the road because he was not going to slow down on the turn . . .)

It took about 40min to arrive at Aguas Emendadas, a biological research reserve that has no public access. Though if the guards were to ask for our passes I was supposed to say my name was Livia, since they had an extra pass of hers. . . Fortunately the guards were lax, and we got into the park without a problem. Lots of burrowing owls were flying around the road on our way to the collecting site. Nights in Brasilia are also pretty cold, so we wore lots of layers and the girls taped up my boots and shirt to help prevent ticks when we arrived at the lakes. The ticks here are so tiny!! I mistook one I had yesterday for a mole on my ankle. Apparently they do carry a disease, but it has never been reported in Brasilia. But I'm going to buy some tick-killing soap tomorrow at the pharmacy considering how much time I spend outdoors.

Anyway, just after attaching our head-lamps, I saw something larger moving near the car-- which turned out to be a capybara!! The world's largest rodent! It was sooo neat because it just sat near the car for a bit, looking around. Then we started walking to the different lakes, and every few minutes I would learn a bit more about the area-- like the wolves that live there and crocodiles---but the girls assured me they'd never seen a croc in the 13 small lakes (actually old man-made fishing spots) we were searching.

There are two species of toads that stay around during the winter here, and we saw tadpoles for one of them in a lake. We look for the toads by shining the flashlights around the water and looking for big red eyes, and I was actually the only one who saw any last night (just one). But it wasn't the species we were collecting, unfortunately. A few lakes later another girl said she saw a red eye in the water and tried to direct the other girls to it at the other end of the lake. After shouting back and forth for a bit ("I see it, just a little more forward. . .back, to the left. . .") the other two girls started shouting that it was actually a crocodile! So we rushed over to check it out. It was actually just under a meter long and I poked at it with a stick to try to see it better. Super awesome! But it was the joke for the rest of the night to send Mariana (the one who saw the eye) into the water the next time for another 'toad.'

The girls were so nice and I had a great time conversing with them. I even got a ride back home, around 11pm, and they said that was early; normally we wouldn't arrive at the university until 1 or 2am!! But since there weren't any toads in the first lakes we didn't have to spend as much time. I'm definitely going out again with them, though maybe not every week because I have an 8am class on Friday morning (Tropical Ecology), and we have in-class presentations every other week. Today we collected data in the field (IBGE again) from the fire project, comparing the herbaceous vs. tree cover in areas of cerrado that were burned 50 years ago (control), every 4 years, and every 2 years. It was interesting, but the professor is really absent-minded and we went around in circles more than anything. But the other two (only two!!) students were pretty nice at least.

Now I shall head to bed, and get to sleep in past 6am tomorrow!! Saturday is the best morning of the week. . . Sunday we hope to go on a trip to some waterfalls with an adventure tour group in Brasilia, where we can rapel 40m down the falls! Cool! Entao, boa noite!