Living in the oven

It is HOT here. I’m talking fry and egg just by thinking of going outside kind of hot. Yesterday it was 35 in the shade at 4pm (that’s about 90 degrees to you Fahrenheit people), which makes me shudder to think of the kind of temperatures I work in on nice exposed (and heat-reflecting) rocks in the heat of the day. Last night I couldn’t sleep because it was too hot, I didn’t even want coffee yesterday (and I REALLY miss my coffee) and the lizards are basically not even bothering to show their cute little faces because they might just fry. Seriously I saw a couple yesterday, all sitting under nice shady overhangs (and not my lizards of course).

Today was better (although hotter according to the thermometer) as there was a slight breeze and I picked a very exposed outcrop to work on so that I would get the full advantage of any wind. It also has some nice overhangs that I could set traps in the shade (the traps in the shade (Me? Clinging desperately to the rock face setting them…). In this heat there’s no way I can set traps in full sun unless I want baked lizard.

And what the heck is going on with the geckos? I thought the ones I keep catching are supposed to be nocturnal! And they bite.

I didn’t know what day it was today. I had to figure it out by counting the lizards I could remember trapping and then adding in a rainy day for Sunday.

There is an epic ant-invasion going on here. HUGE ants, that could carry off small children. They seem to be followed by some rather large but relatively harmless scorpions.

I saw impala today! I know it’s not exactly an aardwolf, but I’ve never seen them here before (not on this farm anyway). There’s a very cool Marshall eagle that I see every day as well, and the fish eagles are making their presence heard (there’s a dam on my next-farm neighbour’s property and I’ve seen them hanging out there).

I had to lie on the rocks to get a trap out that had slipped back too far for me to reach it without my doing some impressive tool-use demonstration with sticks. I wonder if the local baboons will start using sticks while foraging? The rocks were SO hot, I may have given myself a stomach-tan through my shirt… And I didn’t realise the small depression in the rock was full of sand, so I have one brown leg and one khaki leg! I also have a burned ring around m wrist, I think my watch (which is pretty loose) rubs off the sunblock. I’m sure if the farmers didn’t think I was crazy by now…

Before I left CG gave me some music to try out while I was here and it’s been very enlightening! I LOVE listening to other people’s music, it says a lot about them. Or does it? Am I seeing previously hidden depths, or am I reading into music that I may have heard before and associating my own emotions? Either way, while some of it is a bit too screamy-metal for my taste (I like epic-adventure metal, preferably sung by Scandinavians. People don’t seem to get the distinction), there’s some really interesting music as well as some surprisingly gentle stuff that has made me understand a lot of the thoughts I had about her that weren’t connecting properly! Do you think that music reveals a lot about people? It scares me to think of what the music I like might say about me.

As much as I hate Facebook, I’ve been using it a lot here. Maybe staying connected is worth all the manipulative stuff I hate? Either way I’ve been having long conversations with a very special friend back home who isn’t going through an easy time. So I guess I can thank Facebook for helping me to get to know her after all these years where we just didn’t for some or another reason! Plus I LOVE the status updates that complain about traffic! Nothing like a little gloat!

Either way I am officially over the 1/4 mark for lizard collecting, not as many as i would have liked by the end of the day today, but considering the fact that I have to trap puny areas or climb to shade, I think I’ve been doing quite well! 

It’s so hot that my thoughts aren’t connecting properly, so I’m going to stop there.

Oh, and my connection here is REALLY bad and for some reason I can’t comment on blogs without either word verifications never popping up or weird error messages :( I AM reading blogs as much as I can though so thanks for giving me something to read while I’m out here! It’s nice to follow the real world a bit!