Adventures in animal land

Apologies for the lag in posting. It's harder to figure out what to write when I'm not in a jungle constantly seeing cool things. I promise to pick up the pace once I hit New Zealand.

New Zealand preparations are underway. I have my student visa in hand. And I now officially have my plane ticket booked (February 1st!). I arrive just in time for the Sevens rugby tournament. (That made finding a hotel for the first weekend kind of challenging.) I still do not have the slightest clue where I will be living. My plan is to go on the NZ equivalent of Craigslist and spend the first couple weeks I'm there looking for an apartment. Those of you who know me well (or have lived with me) know that I am not a relaxed person. I'm kind of nervous about this whole "moving to the opposite side of the globe to a place where I don't know anyone nor do I have a place to stay." I'm trying not to think about it. But mostly as the time draws near I'm getting excited. If anyone has any "can't miss" NZ destinations, please tell me.

Work at the veterinary hospital has been a lot of fun. The doctors and my fellow technicians are lovely and incredibly willing to teach me new things. I, in turn, have been teaching them new things somewhat unintentionally, mostly esoteric facts about reptiles. (Not unlike the insights I share on this blog.) At the very least, I keep everyone laughing at what a huge nerd I am. Among my new skills include the ability to draw blood from dogs and cats, insert IVs, monitor patients under anesthesia during surgery and do dental cleanings. I also do a fair amount of cleaning up after the patients and things like nail trims and vaccines. It feels a little like a throwback to when barbers were also the surgeons and the dentists. (Don't worry, they don't actually let me do surgery.)

I unfortunately do not have as many funny stories as I thought I would. Certainly there are funny moments -- trying to lift an obese golden retriever onto an x-ray table with a girl who weighted less than the dog, subduing a dog who wouldn't stop urinating, clients who complain that their dog's toenails "just keep growing," animals whose nails have been polished by well-intentioned little kids, and people who name their pets after their breed, for lack of anything better to do (a bichon frise named "Bichoni", a tortoiseshell cat named "Tortie"). I also am now so scratched up that if I didn't know better, I'd think I was cutting myself in my sleep. Still, it's really wonderful when you see a really sick animal get better. And where else do you get paid to play with puppies and kittens?

Things at the zoo are going well. I've gotten faster at fish prep and yesterday I got to go in with the harbor seals and help the keepers. I pretended to give a seal a vaccine (to get it used to being touched when it actually does get a vaccine) and then I got to pet it. It gave me a huge, wet, fishy "kiss". I was so happy all day. (My roommates are reading this and shaking their heads knowingly.)

Happy holidays to all. I'll post again if anything notable comes up.

Summary:
- New Zealand is coming up fast and things are falling into place. Now if I only had a place to live...
- Vet work is fun and dirty. Sometimes people are the funniest part of working with animals.
- If your best idea for a pet name is adding a vowel to the part of the breed name, you shouldn't have a pet. Or at least you should know that the vet techs are laughing at you behind your back.
- I got kissed by a harbor seal!
- Pasadena, CA = less exciting than a Panamanian jungle. Shocking.

Life continues

Hi all. I've been told that just because I'm back from Panama does not mean that I should stop blogging. So here goes, again:

For those of you who were following my Panama posts religiously, a note on the return trip. My flight to Miami was uneventful and my bag made the trip nicely. :) But while waiting in Miami for my flight to LA, two separate people had heart attacks while waiting at the gate!! As my cousin who's from Fort Lauderdale pointed out, there are a lot of old people in Miami. Still, kinda weird. Aerobic exercise people. It's a good thing. They announced that the second person was fine. Dunno about the first. Also, the flight was late taking off and then a thunderstorm started to approach. They told us if it got within 5 miles of the airport, we couldn't take off. It was 10 miles away at the time of the announcement. I've never seen people board so quickly and efficiently.

So, back to California. I have recently become obsessed with baking. Most of you know that I have not the slightest clue how to cook, or should I say "had." Despite the fact that verbs such as "cream" and "beat" are still somewhat foreign to me and I'm still learning the difference between "softened" and "melted" butter, I have managed to make several successful batches of banana muffins and blueberry muffins. I recently also branched into chocolate chip cookies. My mom is on doctor's orders to gain weight, so I don't feel so bad about introducing so many calories into my house. Sadly, baking is what passes for exciting in my life currently.

When I'm not baking, I've started preparing food every Saturday for the grey seals, harbor seals, sea lions and river otters at the LA Zoo. (I'm becoming a regular Julia Child. ... If Julia Child restricted herself to preparing cookies, muffins and 80+ lbs of frozen capelin, herring and mackerel.) Suffice it to say, were I not already a vegetarian, going through 5 slabs of fish and half a log of "carnivore diet" (meat balls for the otters) would be enough to make me convert. I'll spare you guys the details. On the upside, my dog is always interested in me when I get home from the zoo. I'm going to start working at a vet clinic soon. I'm pretty excited. That may bring some interesting stories.

Other than that, life goes on in the Kim-Frank household. My mother continues to be wonderfully eccentric. Her newest thing is trying to teach our dachshund to "do the robot" aka lie on this back and move his front legs. My father is currently screaming at the tv as he watches the U of Michigan football game. Because if you scream at the screen, the ref has a tendency to change his call.

Summary:
- Don't go to the Miami airport if you have heart disease
- I've started "cooking" for humans and pinnepeds alike
- My parents are nuts, but wonderfully so.

:) again

A few hours after I wrote my last post something really exciting happened. Anthony came back from night herping with some friends. He brought back an Imantodes (a slug eating specialist snake). They have huge eyes and are totally adorable. I spent a good amount of time holding it. They camoflauge by acting like twigs so at a certain point they just stop moving and chill on your hand. It's awesome. But the most exciting thing is I got to hold a caiman! Ok, admittedly it was a baby caiman, not longer than 3 ft from the tip of its nose to the tip of its tail, but still! It was totally adorable, had beautiful eyes and was very soft. It was also quite calm which was nice, although I was still able to keep a firm grip when it struggled. I even held it without tape on its mouth. (Totally safe though.)

Yesterday was somewhat uneventful. I spent a lot of time up at the tower trying to find lizards with Anthony. No luck. The guides from the resort have started recognizing me, which is funny. I wonder what they'll talk to the tourists about when the sweaty herpetologists leave... It was fun though. As Anthony pointed out, even if you can't find the lizards, you're still in a gorgeous forest. This morning was more of the same. Pretty walk; few lizards. My only worry is that I'll still want to eat as much after I stop walking 7 + miles a day.

This may very well be my last post about Panama. Unless something remarkable happens on the trip home. We leave tomorrow morning. (I fly to Miami w/ Anthony at 7am!) I'll be back in CA by 3:30pm Pacific time. It was a lot of fun, exhausting and at times frustrating for a number of reasons. Still, if any of you ever have the chance to do field work, do it. How often do you get a chance to see motmots and black vultures (like the one running across the backyard right now) as you're eating breakfast?

Summary:

- held a snake and a caiman!

- the lizards are gone

- I'm outta here!

throwing things off roofs

Yup. Definitely going to hell.

There's a guy here who's hanging around and taking photos. We have a bunch of gliding species that we've caught over the past few days that we chucked off the roof tonight so Anand could take pictures. I feel sorry for the poor frog (Hyla rosenbergii). He got really tired of jumping by the end. In the beginning though I accidentally gave him too much of a boost and ended up tossing him/ helping him jump into the planter. I really like holding him; he has this cool webbing on his toes and it feels funny when he crawls on my hands. With all the webbing he has a really good grip on my hand. We also tossed a gecko (Tachydactylus) which unfortunately lost its tail.

*potentially gross to certain people alert -- skip if you don't want to read this* I hope you never have the misfortune to assist in the caudal autotomy (aka tail loss) of a lizard. I thankfully did not assist in it this time. Lizards have weak planes in the middle of their tail vertebrae with muscles that end right at the fracture planes of the bone. When the lizard's tail is even slightly caught, it will break off at these planes and the muscles will contract to stop blood loss. It's still not pretty and you always feel terrible for the lizard. Also, the tail wriggles for about a minute after its loss to distract the predator. So not only do you feel terrible, but you have a wriggling piece of a lizard in your hand.

*you can come back now* We also tossed a parrot snake off the roof. These guys aren't actually a gliding species but they do exhibit a kind of cool behavior when they fall. Kris and I (who were doing the tossing) did not know the best way to handle the snake so we didn't do too many trials with it. It's rear-fanged so unless it chewed on us, we'd be fine, but still better safe than sorry. While we're on the subject of dangerous snakes (which parrot snakes are not -- don't worry, Mom), Paul (another field assistant who had the misfortune of being dubbed "Fetus" in Costa Rica since at the time he was under half Anthony's age, even more unfortunately for him, the nickname has stuck and big time) caught and brought back a small coral snake. It's very pretty. And no, I'm not crazy enough to play with it.

Other than that, there was more lizard searching. I was not that successful this morning. That was partially to do with the fact that I was searching by the tower when what I can only assume is every Goodyear employee in the Western hemisphere decided to come by. Ok, I exaggerate but there were at least 50 people on the tower and they just kept coming. Also the hotel people keep asking us if we're with the Smithsonian which makes me think we shouldn't be there. Oh well, only one more field day left anyway. This afternoon was pretty exciting -- we found another pentaprion! We couldn't catch it but we did get good film. :)

So that's it. Tomorrow is our last day in the field. Kind of sad, kind of welcome. I'm happy to be getting back home. These mosquitoes are merciless. 3 bites on my toes and one on the ball of my foot during last night's dinner alone!

Summary:
- we threw a snake, a frog and a lizard off the balcony -- no herp is safe from the curiosity of the photographer and herpetologists
- lizard tails come off -- see body for details
- I'm not crazy enough to play with coral snakes
- tourists are not conductive to finding lizards

grr...

Not finding anoles is frustrating. We walked to the very far stream again this morning. 10 miles round trip and we found one lizard. And it's not clear that the cameras were working anyway. It's ok, though, because Anthony came to the stream a little before us and found 25. I feel like a failure. Oh well.

Other than that, it's been a lot of walking and a lot of lizard watching. We went to the other stream yesterday and had more luck (although if the cameras aren't working -- water damage -- we lost that data too). The guy gave us a ride again, though, so it made it a lot better. We continue to climb the Mayan stairs to the tower in search of lizards that I don't think exist. Except that Anthony keeps finding them. The man is a machine.

On the upside, I've been getting a lot of reading done. I think I've read more novels in these 3 weeks than I did in my senior year. This has been a lot of fun but I think we're all ready to go home. Which is good because I go home Saturday.

Anyway, animal list: tamarins :), black vultures, the cutest baby flycatchers, hummingbirds, a mot mot! (these cool tropical birds that make their own tail rackets -- they pluck out part of their tail feathers near the end so that it looks like it bulges at the end), beetles, butterflies and monkeys!

Summary:
- getting ready to go home; the lizards sense this and have gone away
- Anthony = a beast
- at least I'm reading!

bug bites = the worst; pina coladas = the best

The grass models: because I know you guys were waiting with bated breath. We found 60% of them. In the torrential rains in the 48 hour period they were out, I'd say 90% fell from their original position. It was very annoying. We spent the morning in the blazing sun sifting through saw grass. My skin loves me. We did see a little bird jumping up and down in the grass, though, which was cute.

The afternoon, however, was much better. We were set to do one of our 4 mile each way hikes in the middle of a huge rainstorm and the guy who runs the house we're staying at gave us a ride! It was awesome! We spent the next few hours tromping around in the stream which was a lot of fun. Thankfully I did not slip and break anything. :)

Today, the exciting news is it was our (one and only) day off! Of course we couldn't get our act together to figure out what to do. We ended up sleeping in (7am never felt so late!) and hanging out at the bar in the resort next door. I'm not complaining. :) It was nice to have the day to just relax. Agatha Christie + a nice drink = not bad. While some of us were lounging, a few other people were throwing the pentaprion off the roof. Apparently they glide. There are some really really cool shots. I'm pretty stoked to see them do it again. They spread out their limbs and the hyoid bone (which anchors the tongue) and they can actually glide and maneuver. It's so cool.

Summary:
- day off! hanging at the resort and relaxing!
- pentaprion can glide!
- grass models suck

I'm out of cute titles

So the exciting news today is that yesterday we did laundry! Clean clothes!!!! Of course, it proceeded to POUR yesterday and today. I've gotten quite soaked and have kissed goodbye the possibility of wearing dry shoes. Oh well. The only bad part about the rain (which for the most part is beautiful and really cool) is that it likely knocked all 50 models off the grass blades we put them on yesterday morning. My notes as to how to find them are all the same (usually, "on the grass blade, next to the other blade of grass"). Imagine a dense patch of sawgrass that goes up to 1.5m and runs for a km. That's where we put 50 small lizard sized clay models. In other words, we're screwed. I'll let you all know tomorrow how it turned out.

I kind of feel more sciencey when I'm doing the models and random habitat measurements (basically, walk into a patch and measure everything that hits a 1m line at 1m and 2m heights). I certainly look more dorky though. I have taken to draping my tape measure around my neck, keeping a rite in the rain notebook in my pocket and usually some flagging tape hanging out. I look like at any point I might get the urge to fit a suit or tie bright pink bows on everything. Add the sharpie and pencil I keep in my bun and I suddenly understand all the weird looks I got from people driving by.

The other exciting thing, and probably more exciting in an absolute sense is that we found an Anolis pentaprion!!!! This is a very cryptic anole that we searched for for 6 weeks in Costa Rica and every day and night in Panama. And we found it and we caught it!!! (And by "we" I mean "Anthony" but I was there... ) Anthony even got another one last night!!! It was so exciting. We also got to watch an awesome lighting storm from the observation tower. (We then realized that sitting on a metal tower that reaches above the forest canopy, on top of a hill, during a lighting storm was probably a bad idea.) Combine the pentaprion with two other Losos lab teams finding rare anoles (including two individuals of a species that hadn't been seen in 30 years) yesterday and I'd say yesterday was a great day for lizard people.

Other than that, we saw some really awesome capuchins up close yesterday. We also saw parrots, heard howlers and saw tons of frogs. They're all over the place after the rain. I still haven't seen a sloth but a bunch of people have. Maybe soon. :)

Summary:
- we found a pentaprion! (aka the anole we've been searching for for 8 weeks in the field now)
- we did laundry!
- I look like a total dork when I'm decked out for the field, and it's not just the mud and the field pants.
- I'm in for a bad morning tomorrow as I search for 50 needles in a 1.5m high, 1km long haystack.
- I'm apparently converting to metric.