And finally: the leafblower lady

I have many more stories to tell, but this one has been on my mind lately and knowing my tendency to forget things after i promise to write about them, I thought I’d better put you all out of your misery and post this! Be warned, it’s a long one!

On the Western side (amongst all the beautiful, BEAUTIFUL rocks) is a tiny little guest house. I’m not sure why we turned in there, but as I drove up to the house my jaw literally dropped. There, nestled in some of the most amazing outcrops I’ve ever seen (I get quite nerdy about lizard habitat) was a lovely house, surrounded by trees and a swimming pool which  giant covered stoep in front. The whole place looked like some kind of oasis and I could almost imagine the clouds (there weren’t any that day, it was flipping hot, but you know what I mean) parting and angles popping out going ‘AAAAAAhhhhhh…” Monty Python style! The rains this year have been good, last year they were almost two months late – take the pictures I posted  while ago and convert them to sepia and add a dust haze and you’ve got a pretty good idea of what this place looked like then!

The amazingness continued: the owner was more than happy to help, spoke to me in English (by then I’d spoken so much Afrikaans in the last few weeks I actually battled slightly and kept answering him in Afrikaans) and asked me how many lizards I needed.

“forty more? Ag, you’ll get that in two days here!”

The next day I went back with my traps and all the other trapping paraphernalia to find the gate closed, so I left the bakkie outside and walked up the driveway (the gate was closed but they didn’t have a wall yet) where i was greeted by the owner who was quite upset that I hadn’t told him I was coming that day as he and his wife were going into town.

“I’ll be fine! Really, I just need to go on the rocks for a few hours and I promise I won’t damage anything you don’t have to watch me!”

“I wish I’d known. LIEFIE! Lizard-girl is here!” his wife emerged from the house.

“Oh! Lizard-girl! I wish I’d known you were coming, we’re going to town...”

“I’m sorry if it’s a problem I can come back tomorrow?”

“No no no, that’s alright, come let me introduce you to the people we have working for us, if you need anything, anything at all they’ll help you!”

I was whisked off and introduced to three guys who were building or something in the grounds as well as a lady working in the house. They were told in no uncertain terms that anything I wished for had to be done as long as the owners were away. Bear in mind I usually get told to stay out the way and climb the fence if I had to rather than bothering the farmers.

Before they left the owners tried very hard to offer me tea or coffee (by now I’m totally confused and twitching to get out to the rocks before it gets too hot) and then freaked at the idea of me walking to get the bakkie and insisted on driving me all 200m to the gate. They also kept worrying about not being there and finally forced me to take their dogs with me, just in case.

The dogs turned out to be a mixed blessing. By this stage I’d been away from home for three months and I was missing my pets like crazy so it was nice to have four-legged non-reptilian company. On the other hand they tended to run after my lizards. Pretty soon though we had an understanding and they stayed back when i told them to and came when I called (I thought they were exceptionally well trained, which was quite funny as the owner claimed that they were untrained and never came when he called!) and at one stage even chased a lizard onto a trap for me!

At some stage one of the workers came and asked what I was doing and I showed him, he seemed quite interested and obviously thought I was crazy and then went off to work again.

I caught a lot of lizards and a few hours after the return of the owners from their expedition into town I went to thank them and be on my way. The owner came rushing over to see how I’d done, scoffed at the mere thirteen lizards I’d caught (‘You can do better than THAT here!’) got me to show him a lizard which made him very excited and had me showing it to everyone around.

He also refused to let me leave without giving me something to drink and invited me in for some lovely cold Coke or something and told me to take a seat.

What kind of farmer keeps white couches? I dress relatively nicely when I’m on other farms as I don’t really want to expose the world to the horrors that are my standard torn, sewed-up, dirt-stained, oil-stained, blood stained, glue stained field clothes, but still I’d been out all day, for all I know I’d sat in a mud puddle or something. Anyway we sat and I perched as little of me on the seat as possible while juggling a lapful of cat and a glass of juice. the owner (I hesitate to call him farmer, but owner sounds so… formal, I’ll call him Bob.) Anyway Bob immediately started interrogating me on what I’d seen.

So I told him about the birds and the insects and when that didn’t get the desired response I mentioned a few bokkies I’d seen. he got very excited and started writing all of the names down. At one stage there was something he hadn’t seen before and he rushed off and found a field guide and showed me the pictures so I could confirm that yes, I’d seen a… I don’t remember, I think it was just a reedbuck or something. finally he sent me on my way with a reminder to “Look after my lizards!”

Over the next few weeks I went there at least twice a week and got the majority of the rest of my lizards. Bob was really nice and even showed me some other sites and how to get to them (for the record, rock-climbing up a sheer rock face turned out to be safer than his route, but moving on) and got to know them quite well. They were actually new to the area, and originally came from Joburg, but had bought a little farm to retire on once their kids had grown up. Bob had grown up on a farm near Bulawayo and loved that this area reminded him of home, while I’m pretty sure his wife put up with it for his sake – she reminded me of my mom a lot: loving nature as long as it didn’t ever get too close. Bob had actually built paths around their land so that he could get to the pretty places without too much effort (I took them once. Turns out a recently cleared bush-path that hasn’t been at least driven over to compact it is a surefire way to learn dune-boarding – minus the board).

One day I packed up to go home, thanked Bob’s wife, refused the offer of lunch (farmer’s wives like to feed me) and stayed to chat to her and have something to drink as usual. It was the first time I’d spoken to her alone as Bob was always bouncing around, showing me plants and tree agamas and they way he’d decorated the guest house and where he saw some or other animal. So I stood in her kitchen, trying not to touch anything and chatting about the weather and how I wasn’t trapping very many lizards as the drought had hit the local population hard.

I think it was a combination of heat, frustration, having someone to talk to and the fact that she reminded me of my mother, but out of nowhere I burst into tears and said something along the lines of “I just want to go home now.”

Next thing I knew she’d whisked the glass out of my hand, made me take out my traps again and lead me around the house, showing me all the places she often saw lizards. I ended up staying for another few hours and catching quite a few lizards while she rand around pointing out areas. At some stage I heard a terrible noise and rushed over to see what had happened: Bob’s wife was absolutely terrified of lizards, but she’d been watching me chasing them onto traps, and so she’d seen a lizards near one and tried to help me. As she didn’t want to get too close, she had grabbed the nearest tool (leafblower) turned it on and tried to use it to herd lizards. It didn’t really work, but I was very touched by the fact that she was trying so hard to help me!

And that is the saga of Bob and the Leafblower Lady, probably the closest I’ve had to family out here!

Oh and Kath, rather than the banjos, here are two songs I’ve herd quite often around here, so you might want to listen to them instead. I take no responsibility for any side effects!

 

Funny story to this one, I was at a party before I left and was feeling sick and so I went home. Next thing I get a million messages from people saying I’d missed it… Strange people back home…

The bushpig guy

I’ve been working on writing about one of my encounters with some of the children who live here, but it got long and depressing, so I figured I’d finally tell you the story of the Bushpig Guy.

Last year the other student as here for two weeks while I was working very hard and not catching lizards due to the horrible drought. I had told her about the other side of the conservancy where I’d taken a detour once for some reason (might have been a geocache but I’m not sure) and wound up trying to drive along while taking pictures of some of the most beautiful rocks ever (I managed to do this without incident, although the pictures didn’t come out too well).

As it was cold and threatening to rain (it was actually another month before we saw any real rain) I figured I’d show her the rocks I’d seen while chatting to the farmers about trapping there (I was desperate) and acting as translator for her (she needed a ton of sites across a large area).

It wasn’t long before we started to notice differences between the western and eastern sides. Our side has large-ish properties with several generations of farmers in one place, while that side has small properties that are usually converted into guest houses, school camp locations or hunting lodges.

The people were very different too, although not any friendlier than the farmers we knew already. These were keen to help (we found out later that the head of the governing body had sent out an email warning the landowners of our impending arrival) but often barely knew their own land. They generally sort of knew where there might be rocks, but they weren’t always sure.

On top of that the properties were so small that there was no way of sneaking in and out unobserved. Usually the farmers on the Eastern side would let me trap on their land, if I could figure out a way over the fences. They would never leave a gate open or anything.

The people on the Western side asked a lot more questions about what we were doing and why and also gave us phone numbers so they could let us in, and occasionally showed us around. Some of them, one we got deeper into the conservancy were far more what I was used to, but rather than being a bit brusque and formal they would tease me by pretending that they didn’t understand or by asking question after question until my Afrikaans ran out. As it was, although I’m more than sued to explaining my project, hers required vocabulary that i didn’t have, so I was working around words I didn’t know by describing things rather than naming them – so anything fancy was out of the question!

One guy (his staff still called him ‘baas’ which upset me) was convinced that we wanted to steal his giant garden gnome collection which he had cemented across the outcrop in his front garden. We found out later that he’d actually filled all the cracks in the rock with concrete as well so it had been a bit of a waste of time. He also threatened to get his shotgun and kept trying to interrogate the other student, even though she wasn’t south african and spoke no Afrikaans beyond ‘north’ ‘south’ ‘bathroom’ and that sort of thing. Eventually he told me to stop trying and speak English and so I made her speak for herself.

There was also the guy who was convinced that we wanted his bull, which was kind of creepy and rather grouchy looking (a bit like the owner) as well as the motel right at the entrance that defies description. All i can say is… nope, can’t. Except that I had to have my foot stamped on before i could stop giggling at the dodgy silhouettes on the walls, the animal skins stuck to the ceiling and the photographs of drunk people all over one wall. One day i will get up the courage to get photographs because nobody will ever believe me!

Anyway ne of the last places we stopped at was way off the main road, I’m not actually sure how we found it. We could see some rocks so we drove up about three little roads and found a house so we stopped to see if the owner was home. After much debate we found the front door (remarkably difficult sometimes) and knocked but nobody answered.

This isn’t too unusual, people are often not around, nobody really locks their doors and i hate poking around to find them, so we went to the back of the house to see if there was someone there.

Halfway there we found a giant bathtub, painted green, surrounded by ferns and agapanthas and funny hanging plant baskets. The pipes all connected to the house, so there’s no reason to suspect that it wasn’t a fully functioning bath, just next to the house rather than in it. I’ve used outdoor showers before, and they’re amazing, but usually they also involve some kind of privacy screen or thick clump of trees or something, this was out in the open and the guy didn’t even have a gate.

We decided against exploring further and went and knocked on the front door again. This time I looked down and saw a blood-covered chunk of bone on the doorstep. I turned to the other student

“The-ah-bone-ah-weird! We have to go now!”

Before she could answer the door opened to reveal a small guy in a really dodgy tracksuit and a maltese poodle which grabbed the bone and ran off. After some spluttering I went through the usual dialogue and he was very nice, gave us directions for the easiest way to the rocks and went back into the house.

As we walked back, giggling and discussing the strangeness of it all, he reappeared behind us.

“Hey, do you girls want to see something?” My mind was screaming NO!!! but he’d spoken in English and the other girl agreed immediately so we followed him back to the house where he vanished and re-emerged with a baby bushpig!

It was the cutest thing I’ve ever ever seen, tiny with little baby bushpig patterns and hardly squealing at all! He let me hold it, but it didn’t like me much and I gave her back to him where she settled down and went to sleep. Apparently her mother had died and so he took her in as she was too young to survive. Having encountered a few in the field I shudder to think of having her as an adult, but she was really really cute!

I didn’t get a picture as I didn’t have my camera that day, although I went and knocked on the door whenever I went back there to trap lizards. I never saw him again.

And I lived in terror of arriving in time to catch him taking a bath.

This should keep you busy!

I’m working on an epic adventures-of post, but it’s late and I’m tired and I figured i should post something today to remind people that I’m not actually all that crazy…

So the other day I took a few photos (to celebrate the single non-rainy day this week) so I’ll try to post them as well.

My apologies for the quality, my connection isn’t the best so I have to shrink them a lot, plus I used a little camera rather than my big scary one!

Meet my kudu (or is it kudus?) This little guy was born while I was here about two years ago and they like to hang out in the garden. Not the best photo but I had to stalk them through the bushes to get it!

Nope, no funny camera angles, this is the gentle type of slope I’ve been working on. Quite far removed from the nasty cliffs I have to climb when trapping doesn’t go well, but this site has some fun boulders to climb over at the top! And don’t be deceived, the slop may be gentle, but it’s slippery, without decent shoes and careful route planning you can slide a long long way down!

This is the view out North from the top of one of the hills. The hill in the distance is the one with the first outcrop that i discovered. The road there is the one that I run on sometimes.

 

This is the north-eastish view from a bit lower down. The house I stay in is about a third of the way diagonally down from the top left corner, if you’re lucky you can spot it!

It stopped raining the other morning to let the fog have a turn. This was taken at around midday. When the weather gets miserable here it really goes all-out! This is the view from my front door, just by the way.

Depressing much? I think I need a hot cup of tea after remembering this day!

The rocks on the right are one of the first in a string of outcrops, all in easy walking distance from the house. These guys really hate me and they freak out and run whenever they see me. There’s a baby next to the one in the middle but it’s hard to see at this resolution. He’s very cute, just for the record!

The zebra also like to ‘guard’ the study sites from evil scientists like me.

And in case you were wondering, there’s the house! Actually that’s the bathroom, the house is behind it. The rocks on the back right are where I took the first few photos!

So that’s Home. Hope you guys enjoyed the whirlwind tour!

The return of the mood-yoyo

This has been a tough week, hence the lack of blog posts. I have tons to write about so I hope to get back into the swing of things soon!

I’ve been swinging wildly from euphoria to misery all week, and its getting a bit unnerving. It all started on Sunday night when I got sick. But SICK. As in not even able to keep water down kind of sick. I had some paperwork to sort out in town, and fortunately it rained so I didn’t have to feel guilty for not trapping as I sat and somehow typed up progress reports for the permits office among other things and Leia yelled at me over G-talk because I hadn’t gone to the pharmacy yet.

Anyway, to cut a loOOng story short, I give you:

Happiness:

• My permits are officially in order. It turns out that the guy in charge is amazingly nice if you call him ‘Ludwig’ rather than by his nickname (‘Blackie’)
• Feeling much better and the weird medication-related dreams have stopped
• I’m almost done catching lizards. I need a few more and then i can stop trapping and get started on Phase 2.
• i thought some of my lizards were sick, but they seem to be OK (fingers crossed!), they’re certainly biting hard enough.
• It’s been pouring with rain (I thought the house was going to flood) for he past 24 hours, and the power didn’t go off much. normally rain like this is a guarantee of at least a day without electricity.
• This place is so beautiful. I was climbing yesterday and as I reached to top of the outcrop and I saw the panorama (that I’ve seen a million times and mostly ignore), the absolute hugeness of nothing hit me like it hasn’t ever before. I was listening to Keane at the time, which may explain it.

and Sadness:

• I was sick…  which means I lost a day’s work which meant sitting up until 1am for two nights in a row catching up (the work isn’t that bad, it’s the procrastination between that’s the killer).
• I’m missing Halloween AGAIN. I’ve never celebrated Halloween as I’m always busy or just not had plans. And now I get to hear about everyone else’s plans and it makes me sad.
• I thought some of my lizards were sick. which led to a frantic checking of all of them at two in the morning followed by a sleepless night. They seem to be ok, but it wasn’t fun.
• It’s been pouring with rain – hence no trapping even though the finish line is basically in sight. I have to finish this week to get back in time for my cousin’s wedding and the Killers! I also got to take measurements with flickering power – you have no idea how much fun it is to have a lizard on a treadmill when the power keeps going on and off.
• An armed response guy got VERY lost and wound up here tonight. He then left and got his bakkie stuck and came to me for help. He also greeted me with “Waar’s jou man?” (i.e. where’s your husband?). I was annoyed and therefore refused to speak in Afrikaans. So he said “Can I speak to your husband?” I told him that my husband is a mercenary and I think he went to poach a rhino. Then I phoned one of the farmers next door and told them to sort this guy out, and sent him back to his bakkie to wait for the tractor. I feel bad for being so rude, but he started it!
• This place is Just. So. Beautiful. And I can’t shake the feeling that once I leave there’ no coming back. It’ll never be Home again, even if I come to visit.

To finish it all off, I decided to wait out the worst of the storm by watching a movie, and as I’ve been a bit down I figured a kids movie might do the trick (I’m going to ignore how emotional “Meet the Robinsons” made me last time I tried this).

I should also know by now that any movie involving animals is a bad idea. and now I have the unfortunate distinction of having cried while watching ‘Beverly Hills Chihuahua’ – I’m sorry but when the big German Shepherd get invited back to the police force…

So ja, the random stories will continue, maybe when it stops raining I’ll be back in storyteller mode!

Crispy around the edges

I know, I know, I promised to keep blogging… (I’m hanging my head sheepishly, just in case you were wondering). And it’s not even like I’ve been swamped here, I’ve been busy, but no more than usual!

Anyway, I drove down on Saturday, and it was the weirdest thing: About halfway to Nelspruit and I got this weird feeling of going-homeness. I suddenly noticed the amazing beauty around me and the weird people driving around me (my personal favourite being the car with the “it’s not PMS, I’m just a bitch” bumper sticker – driven by an ancient man who might have been smoking a pipe – the huge sky, the open fields.

I also had a weird flashback to childhood – my dad used to like annoying me (still does), in my family teasing is the common way to show affection for some reason, and one thing he’d do was to call animals by the wrong names. Maybe it was just the zoologist in me getting started early but it drove me NUTS! Once I got used to it I decided it was ok, as long as we were consistent – so giraffe were always raffe-gee, Kudu were called lions, and so on. And of course whenever we drove past a cow field (which you do a lot in South Africa) we’d have to yell “Elephants!” So when I drove past the Oilfants river and saw a field of cows… it totally made my day!

Randomness aside, I kept driving, through several torrential downpours, and ended up doing some grocery shopping in town on my way through. I knew I was back when I got stuck behind two men in their two-tone khaki and kortbroek (no crocs, apparently rainy days call for veldskoen) having a discussion on ruck-bee in the middle of the canned-food aisle.

I made it to the farmhouse by just after 5 to find that despite the rain, the student and her team who had gone down a day before were nowhere to be seen. They emerged about an hour later triumphantly carrying about 6 lizards – it seems that it had cleared for about half an hour and they were admirably tenacious about catching the lizards that they saw. Two of them were my lizards so I got a nice headstart!

It was weird being there with people when I hadn’t adjusted to being there, and I kind of flitted between wanting to get rid of them and asking them to stay an extra night. Wither way when we woke up the next morning it was raining and so they left and I took a nap. Which lasted for about 6 hours. What can I say, it’s like I’m sleeping in my own bed at last! The insomnia is still there, but it’s down to a ‘it’s 3am, why am I awake? I must sleep… this is so annoying, I need my sle-' and then I’m out until morning stage.

Yesterday was lovely and sunny but not too hot, and I got back into the swing of things until a freak rainstorm chased me off the rocks at lunchtime. I was greeted by a huge eagle on the outcrop when I arrived (it was so close to me!) as well as a black mamba which I think may have been as scared as me. It decided to go under a rock AS I removed my traps, meaning that I looked to see what ‘that weird noise’ was to see it slithering past (about 10 cm from me). I had no idea my heart rate could shoot up so fast! I’ve been a bit jumpy since then, but at least everything is ok.

And today was hot. blisteringly like-being-in-an-oven hot! The worst part is that I know it’s going to get MUCH hotter soon! It was a beautiful day, the sky was that amazing blue that you don’t find anywhere else (other countries have blue skies, but not like ours, kind of like how our oceans are pretty, but in Jersey the sea really sparkled), I saw zebra and kudu on my way to the site, ran into a friendly farmer who (get this) spoke English! and had a pretty successful trapping day.

I got to relearn my climbing a little bit, which was fun! I’m enjoying the new flexibility that I think comes from tai chi and stretching although my endurance is lousy as always. I found a bunch of lizards in an area where I’ve never seen more than one or two, so I’m quite excited – maybe the rains have been as good for the lizards as I’d hoped! There are certainly enough insects around – I’m starting to get a bit offended by the dungbeetles flying into my head! So I’m just hoping that the weather holds out, that the lizards are plentiful (and stupid) and that I stay in the (strange) wonderfully happy mood I’ve been in for the last few days!

Here’s hoping!

Oh and the title refers to my sunburnedness. SPF40 has worked like a charm, but there are a few crispy-fried bits that are going to tan permanently (because they always do!), like my lower back, a small patch on my left wrist my upper lip and tip of nose, a patch just below my right ear and so on.

Some more randomness

So as I don't really want to talk about my life at the moment (maybe tomorrow) I thought I would point you guys in the direction of a really adorable story about what those supermodel barbie-dogs SHOULD be doing!

The link is here, and here's the basic gist of the story:

In a small town in Germany, people kept losing shoes. A lot of shoes. Like over a hundred (in the town, not per person. Do you have 100 shoes? I don't!). One day a forest worker stumbled across some in the forest and went to investigate. He found more shoes, and, upon closer inspection, realised that they were basically strewn around a fox den.

The authorities got involved and tracked down the shoe owners and returned them, mostly in good condition, but a few missing laces. Apparently, there was a fox who stole shoes for her cubs to play with.

Isn't that the cutest thing ever! Although I wonder what they've been doing with the laces, playing 'England-Ireland-Scotland-Wales'?

*Picture from here

Better than FTV

" I'm not a puppet!"

Anyone able to figure out what the heck that outfit is supposed to be?

The one on the left is thinking happy thoughts in the hope that it'll all be over soon...

So there was a pet fashion show in Moscow! I don't think they painted their cats, but they dressed them up in insane outfits! There must be some really calm pets out there to put up with this!

(pictures from here and here)

I don't know, I guess as long as there are crazy pet-lovers there will be pet-couture. I remember working at the pet-shop when someone threw a tantrum because the (designer branded) dog jackets didn't match her Yorkie's accessories.

At the same time, I spent yesterday trying to stop my dogs from tracking mud all over the floor, while one of them snuck off with all their toys and buried them. I think that would be a lot more fun. At the same time, the people who dress their cats and dogs up really do care about them (a bit excessively at times) and I guess I should be happy that they look after their pets.

Except those silly people who buy tracksuits for their dogs so they can go running in matching outfits, and then the dog gets heat-exhaustion.

I just don't know.

Just my luck!

So today, as my last official day in the field (until August/Septembers bumper 3-month session) was the day to tie up all the loose ends. I went off to the rocks to take some measurements, and was completely weirded out by having my laptop on the rocks... I went to one that's really close and I was super-careful, but it was still a strange feeling to have the sun beating down on me while I typed in calibration coefficients and other things that I really don't understand!

After that I headed off to release my second-last batch of lizards, taking my camera along to get some photos of them. I needed a couple of samples from females for some lab work when I get back, so I took some traps along with me. I also figured I'd do some trapping for the masters student who was visiting not so long ago. Shes very new to the whole trapping thing and not wildly successful, and while she was here I helped as much as possible, but I was essentially chasing a different species and as it happened they weren't overlapping too much at the time.

So I caught a few females for me, and a few of her males, when the wind picked up and I decided to let my lizards go (they'd been safely kept in a bucket under a tree, because otherwise you end up re-trapping them which is super-stressful for all concerned) and so I went to pick up traps.

One of the traps I had wedged under the back of a rock, between smaller rocks and a clump of really thick grass. It's a small access point, but I lost a lot of potential data to it so i usually shove a trap under there just in case. I pushed the grass back to grab it, and thought:

what a weird looking lizard!
That's not a lizard is it?
Holy crap it's a snake!
Oh no, it's a snake's TAIL which means the HEAD with the pointy scary bits is free under the rock and if I reach in and grab the trap it could swing around and attack me!

I would like to mention here, that I have no problem with snakes. In the right setting, I think they're awesome. I had a snake living behind a cupboard in the house here for months (ok, I did freak out a bit when I saw that one). Once, when we had an exhibition at university and there was a snake on display and he was cold I walked around campus with him around my neck all day (really does wonders for getting through crowds). I just have a slight problem when I have no idea what the snake might be, and I'm a good hours drive from the nearest hospital.

So I did what any self-respecting zoologist would do. I got a stick. No, not to hurt the poor little guy! I tried to drag the trap out from under the rock with said stick. The snake swung around and managed to get his chin stuck on the trap. And he hissed and I may have got a bit of a fright and jumped back slightly.

And then I was stuck. Basically, when trapping lizards, you put out long lines of traps, and if there's even a tiny gap under or between traps, the lizards skip over or under or through the gaps and don't get caught. Turns out I'm pretty good at getting them flat, because this one was wedged. I needed a stick with an opposable thumb. Of course, by now the snake was beginning to freak out at not being able to move, and probably the crazy human waving sticks around, and he started hissing and opening his mouth very very wide for me to see his little fangs (which, in hindsight were pretty cute). I was scared to pick the trap up by hand because I had no idea how stuck he was and if he was to freak and jerk free...

So I got a second stick and somehow managed to manoeuvre the trap out and on top of the rock. And then I realised that I had no idea how to proceed. No freaking clue. So I did what any self-respecting young scientist would do. I got a longer stick. Somehow I managed to use it to work his head and front part of his body free.

Well that was brainy.

He carried on gaping at me, and I tried to free the rest of him, which resulted in him swinging around to attack the stick, and getting his head stuck again.

So I got another stick, and managed to get the end into a sort of fork, and pinned his head over the rock away from the trap. He didn't like it, and then I was stuck again because the hand holding the stick holding his head meant that there was no hand to hold a stick to hold the trap down while I freed the rest of him.

So I had to work the stick between him and the trap, holding his head away from it, while I used the point to hold the trap down, and the other hand to move a different stick to get him off. It took a while.

Around then I heard a car nearby. Nearby being the road, which is about a fifteen minute walk from where I was, but close enough for me to start worrying that I was going to get unexpected visitors at the house - with the long hours trapping and measuring and being a bit sick, the house is a huge mess at the moment, and I started freaking that they might go there and I hadn't washed the dishes...

Anyway, I finally got him off the trap, much to my relief, and then realised that I was faced with a sticky snake (no pun intended). He wasn't too bad, but I couldn't just leave him! For my lizards I use cooking oil which dissolves the glue if you rub it on them, but there was no way I was going to manage that the conventional way. I keep two small bottled of oil in a pocket for when I'm trapping, so at least I was well stocked! I held the snake away from me with on stick, and hurled the contents of a bottle onto him. He was not impressed 9to say the least) and then I poured the other bottle in front of him and chased him over the resulting puddle.

He seemed to get away well enough, although that section of rock is going to be hazardous for a while! And he went into grass, so I'm hoping the worst of the oil-glue solution will rub off on that.

The moral of the story: if you want to do something nice for someone, trapping reptiles for them is probably not the best plan!

Oh, and I didn't have visitors after all.
And I looked the snake up, and it was venemous, although not one of the really bad ones. I feel a bit justified in keeping it as far away from me as possible!

The weirdest ideas

So I had a pretty normal day, went trapping, caught lizards came home, took a nap, measured lizards... what on earth is there for me to blog about?

WAIT! I know! I went to this giant crevice network today, its usually good for a few lizards, but it's massive and you have to trap metres and metres of it to catch anything, so I usually plan a windy day (it;s quite sheltered) and then spend a morning there. So I went rushing off there today, saw a ton of lizards all running into the middle section and I went to set traps.

I decided to start from the left, so I scrambled up to the crevice, put the first trap in and then started thumping it around and adjusting it. The traps have to lie flat, otherwise the little buggers just crawl underneath, so there's always some scraping around to find the best spot. Then I saw something moving. "Hmm, that's odd!" I thought. "Maybe a skink is trying to hide but it's too small or something" so I looked closer.

Whatever it was came a bit closer too. Its tongue started flicking, and then it came even closer. Yip, there I was, messed-up knee, traps in hand, clinging rather precariously to a rather steep bunch of rocks, with my head halfway into a crevice having a staring match with a rather large snake. I felt like I levitated back about 5 metres, until I realised I'd just taken a step back, and so I rather quickly packed my things up and went somewhere else.

Something made a noise a bit later and I really did levitate - vertically!

In other news, my jackal friend is back! wow I should write children's books "Jackal said 'yip!yip!' Helen said 'Yay!'" I've missed having him around to watch or listen to in the evenings.

So anyway I was thinking today, while trapping, about whether or not the colour of nail-polish you have on your fingernails and toenails says anything about your personality. Toenails are covered more often than not by shoes, and so I would think that they might be a slightly more reliable reflection of a person's character, whereas fingernails are something of a statement.

Any thoughts?

Scary stuff!

So last night it poured with rain, which is quite weird for winter here, but the weather has been a bit strange on this trip. I was sitting at my laptop at around midnight (don't judge me! I get distracted and then I realise that it's 2am and I haven't slept...) when amidst the noise of rain hitting the roof, i her a weird thudding noise, like something was crawling around on top of the house.

I was very brave and took the supa-awesome spotlight that my folks got me for my birthday and went looking. I didn't see anything, but it was really dark and I didn't get much further than the verandah - the steps down were wet and my knee was really sore and swollen from falling earlier- couldn't bend it at all - so I didn't want to get hurt.

A little bit later I heard it next to the house - the sort of almost-grunting/snoring/rasping noise. Yip, I was visited by the leopard last night! I know there are rumours of a few in the conservancy where I'm living at the moment, and a few people ave seen them. I hear them quite often and I've found kills up trees before, but this was the first time one has come near the house. I think he may have been trying to snack on the vervets and monkeys that shelter near the house when it gets rainy.

This afternoon I heard it again, really near the house, but just beyond the tree-line so I couldn't see it, but I think one of my kudu might have had a nasty shock. If he's been around the house it explains why there has been a distinct lack of game in the area for the last two weeks!

On the plus side it was freezing and cloudy today so I couldn't go lizard-hunting, and think my body decided that it was time to force e to get some sleep so I could recover from my fall. I got up ridiculously late, pottered around for a few hours, went back to lie down for an hour and woke up at 5! It seems to have worked, considering that I've taken a grand total of 4 disprin over the last 24 hours, I can bend my knee again, and as long as I don't push myself I can sort of walk around! The bruise isn't as impressive as i would have hoped, there's something about pain being reflected on the surface that's very satisfying (don't I sound emo? It's not like there's anyone here to sympathise!), but if the weather report is correct, and the fact that I can see a few stars is anything to go by I should be back on the lizard-hunt first thing tomorrow!

More monkeys and sunshine than I can handle in one weekend

So I decided to spend a few hours at the zoo on Friday and ended up spending most of my day there. It started when I went in to feed the monkeys and my friend the zookeeper gave me a bag and a broom and told me to change their straw. it was disgusting, and particularly difficult to do with monkeys hanging of me and launching themselves onto my back. It was particularly tricky when Thandi realised that she got quite the reaction from me if she started poking at my butt every time I bent over.


It was quite special because Oliver, the spider monkey has been very standoffish lately, to the point where he'll play with one or two people but he's pretty much avoiding contact. Anyway by the end of it I had Thandi jumping up and down on my shoulders and launching into my arms or onto the nice springy bag of straw, Oliver holding on to me and ignoring her, and the floor was all shiny and clean!

From there I helped with random things around the zoo, notably moving a few lizards to different tanks, which involved carrying extremely heavy tanks filled with sand between displays, catching lizards inside the tanks and then setting up new tanks with two lizards in each hand. It was awesome!

The next day I organised to go in early and help, in exchange for letting my uncle visit a few animals. He's blind, and so it's really fantastic for him to be able to touch different animals and learn about them, while 'seeing' their different characteristics. It's also a great excuse or me to be able to go and play with some of the animals I don't get to see very often. The best part (besides watching my aunt's face when the Mona monkey peed on her shoe) was going into one of the lemur enclosures and paying with a hand-reared lemur. He's adorable and fluffy and so so cute and we had the added bonus of the general public on the other side of the bars looking very jealous!

The bad part was that as I was helping with the new baby spider monkey and the Mona monkey, I ended up changing nappies and the little spider decided to pee all over my lap when I changed her. I hosed myself down and used some hand soap so it was all off, but I had a rather embarrassingly situated wet patch. I forgot about it until we came out of the lemur enclosure and were confronted with half my third-year students coming to say Hi!

and after all that I was completely exhausted, went to a games evening were Luke was house-sitting and was so tired I managed to end up on the wrong third avenue! Whoever decided to put two roads with the same name within 5 km of each other was a moron!

Super-substitute! (Not really super but super enough)

So I woke up this morning feeling fantastic (possibly helped by a rather large mug of coffee). I just knew that it would be a great day. I got up, got ready and left to go to the lab, and proceeded to get stuck behind every slow moving car in the southern hemisphere. no problem, I'd found another old cassette tape that for some reason has the soundtrack to My Fair Lady, so I was quite happily driving along, enjoying the sunshine and singing along (windows closed of course, nothing like a funny look from a biker to throw off a perfectly good morning!).

Anyway I was a few blocks away when my phone rang, and on the ther end was one of the higher-ups at the zoo, in tears because the zoo staff decided to go on strike today and there was nobody to feed the animals. I went through immediately and was left alone pretty much taking care of all the lizards.

Despite a slightly close encounter with a cranky sungazer it all went well and I was moving from one area to another when I heard the strikers approaching, vuvuzelas blaring (WHY they must scare the animals is beyond me, why not just march around management's cars in the parking lot?) And I (very heroically of course) turned and ran back inside.

fortunately one of the institutions that works out of the zoo was running a tour and I'm quite well acquainted with the tourguide and so I gave them an impromptu lecture on the various lizards and lizards in general, and was able to keep them occupied until the danger ahd passed and I could go and climb the fences into the tortoise enclosures to feed them.

For the record, the tortoises were starving and rushed to the food, and it was the cutest thing ever! After that I joined the others and got covered in baboon poo while a friend of mine was nearly attacked by said baboonand I learned the skill of cleaning a water dish through the bars of a cage by skillfully manoevring a hose pipe (although that last orange peel will be in there for all eternity).

Once we'd finished there we went to start on the next section to find that the strike was over and the real zoo staff were back at work. So we went for lunch. And then I saw Thandi, the baby mandril and played witha meerkat and did all the usual stuff I do at the zoo, before going shopping! Where I discovered that, while MAC has some awesome stuff, the staff have no idea how to use it and I ended up feeling like I'd spent half an hour in a room full of... ladies of the night?

So I didn't actually make it to uiversity today, but I had a totally awesome day. And I'm so glad I wore sunblock! Although closed shoes would have been advisable!

It's wearing a nappy!

So on Saturday I got a message from a friend of mine who works at the zoo, asking if I was still alive. I usually spend at least two Sundays at the zoo every month (if not ever Sunday) as well as popping by occasionally during the week when I've had a particularly bad day. As it happens I had been thinking about her that morning (weird huh?) and so I replied straight away to say that I wold be there on Sunday.

And it was awesome! I hadn't realised how much I'd missed the zoo - from the crazy people I know there to the weird puddle that you should NEVER step in, to the fact that ever visit involves me doing completely different things! The monkeys gave me a huge welcome as usual, although at one stage Thandi freaked out about something and got very aggressive to me, and then proceeded to evacuate her bowels all over the zookeeper. Oops.

Fortunately nobody works at the zoo without keeping several changes of clothes handy and so after appropriating a clean t-shirt from a vet and meeting a very charming new vet student (who had the girls squabbling over him almost immediately) and having lunch with a bunch of people (including some who thought I'd been away on fieldwork because it's been so long...) and feeding the crocodiles (for the record, giant piles of meat drip! and f your friend happens to be bending over to grab some as you lift it up... blood in hair is so not cool!

So anyway after all that I was taken to meet one of the new monkeys. This one has been raised as a brother to the little spider-monkey who was born last year, although he's a Mona Monkey (and he is also convinced that a teddy bear is him mother) and he's very mobile and super-cute!

The main problem is that he is so active already - with the monkeys before they were always quite nervous and would hang on to me while I walked around and did whatever - wit the last two I wold literally put them under my jacket and zip it up and they'd hold on and go to sleep while we did whatever needed doing around the zoo. This little guy is totally fearless and won't stay with anybody for more than a few seconds. At the beginning he was asleep in his basket with his teddy, but that barely lasted five minutes and then he was very much awake!

So the rest of the day involved me catching up with people as we drove from place to place, rescuing one of the education ladies from a cranky boa (not the feather kind) and keeping the monkey occupied. A lot of that included being left in the zoo vehicle trying to stop him from eating everything that wasn't tied down - they have pouches, so if anything gets into his mouth you have to get your fingers in and pull it out - did I mention he bites?

By the end of the day he and I were getting along pretty well, he didn't squeak too much whenever I picked him up (usually to stop him from shoving something else in his mouth) and I figured out that swinging him around in his basket made him settle down and stay still(ish) and I had a lot of fun attacking hi with his teddy bear and playing with him.

The only problem is that the general public tend to notice him and swarm around you, and the first thing you hear is "Oh CUTE! Kyk hierdie apie! ag mommie! He's wearing a nappy!!" EVERY time! Sometimes they manage to get me to respond (I avoid making eye contact at all costs) and generally I get asked about how long he has to wear a nappy. i usually respond honestly - "Once he's in a cage and I don't have to worry about being crapped on."

Seriously, how about mentioning his amazingly long tail, or how tiny and perfect his fingernails are, or how his noises sound like a squeaky dog-toy... nope, how amazing he's wearing a nappy.

Next time I see a human baby I know I'll be tempted to say "how cute! He's wearing a nappy!" and see exactly how excited the mother gets...

I'm typing this at the desk I've appropriated in Luke's lab. I started spending a few hours a day here, then full days once Luke had arrived... About a week ago Is tarted working late, staying in the lab after Luke had left. Today is the first time I've been here before him and let myself in with the spare key from someone n the lab across the passage... I feel kind of guilty, I hate people going anywhere near my stuff if I''m not around, but I just couldn't face the idea of a)stairs and b)my lab-mate upstairs...

All credit to Luke for actually being nice about the whole situation, and for letting me stay here. I would have kicked me out a LONG time ago!

So my weekend had a quiet start, I had computer trouble on Friday and so ended up staying at university until 8:30 or so - not late for a normal day, but pretty late fr me on a Friday. On Saturday after a horribly hectic morning (which extended about an hour further into the afternoon than it was supposed to) I dashed home and had lunch at super-speed before dashing off to meet Candice and a couple of her friends for an afternoon of geocaching. I haven't been geocaching since I left the field in November, and I haven't done a serious geocaching expedition in rather a lot longer, so I decided to put exhaustion aside and go for it! It was also a good opportunity to take my new camera out. As it was my first serious attempt at photography with the scary new SLR, the photos are pretty terrible, and I battled a lot at first (I realised once I'd got home that I'd set it on one thing while I thoughts I'd set it on something else... but for a first try it wasn't too bad, and at least I know that some of the skills I've learned from other cameras do carry across, so now it's just a matter of getting to know my way around the controls quickly and then a lot of practice!

Geocaching was interesting... I'm not usually a fan of geocaching in the city, besides having to hide from normal people while you're hunting, I have also learned the trick of poking around with a stick rather than your hands n order to avoid some of the more charming things you can find in the undergrowth around here. The caches Candice had picked out were actually pretty nice to find, although we only found two in the afternoon, we didn't end up covered in mysterious muck or having to explain ourselves to security guards (like last time). The sole unpleasant part physically was that I was COATED in blackjacks at the first site, but considering that I rock-hopped across a really disgusting waterfall and made a concerted effort to climb a tree in really unsuitable shoes, I think we did well!

After that I went home and had a nasty dilemma of having to choose between working for Lara on Sunday (and thus giving her an extra day on her holiday in the Drakensburg) or going to Chief Goth's house for a braai. I decided to be a good person and worked, which I regretted a lot as it turned out I was working with Laurin (of the spastic colon) who was acting as annoyingly as always, with the added bonus of being on energy pills or something. It was like working with an insanely hyperactive talking machine with the volume UP. Fortunately her boyfried came to visit and they went outside to chat, so I had a little bit of a respite, but as she keeps getting in trouble for spending half her shifts ouotside with said boyfriend, every time anyone came near the counter or the phone rang she came screeching back in, usually yelling about something she thought was funny or imitating dumb comedy shows she's been watching over and over and over... I never thought I'd be the type to share exasperated looks with customers, but after 5 hours, we were all sighing and rolling eyes at what she considered to be her charming antics.

After that I rushed across to Chief Goth's house to join in for the tail end of the braai. It turned out it had been rained out, but she, a friend I'd met before and her brother were there, so I neded up staying until almost midnight, playing guitar hero. It was a lot of fun, but of course monday arrived, and now I am completely exausted!

To make things worse, I went to the zoo this morning. Luke was showing the new honours student around and I tagged along and took the opportunity to go say hi to Thandi. She was really sweet and she remembered me and it was awesome, but she also crapped on my back and smeared it ito my hair, so I had to wash it all out in the bathroom and now my shirt has a huge wet patch over the shoulder. It was worth it to see the little fuzzy monster again!

AAAAND... WE'RE BACK!

I ended up not going away last week because I was missing a mildly essential set of configuration files (yes, I live in a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, and I can't go because I need something for all the piles of techno-geek equipment that I have to use down there). So I decided that I couldn't let the time be wasted and I settled down to get some major work done. And I did!

Ok, well I didn't get as much done as I would have liked, but I stayed in the lab until late every night (except Friday when I had to get to a birthday party at 7 so I left at 6) and read a lot, and played with stats programmes, and finished going through 2 super-awesome stats books (although Luke's supervisor said I haven't learned much becasue I'm not using sequential models yet... I told him that stats is a lot more subjective than people realise and I'll figure out sequential models if and when I need to use them). The bonus of all the reading is that although I may not have progressed too far in terms of deliverables I can feel my thinking getting sharper and when I read the scary scary papers I can mostly understand them. I even took a landmark paper and pointed out all the flaws last week! w00t!

And that is why I never let anyone else read my work. Which is a problem.

The weekend was good, I went to Chris's birthday party at Joey's house on Friday. It was fun, but I felt kind of bad - although it was Chris's birthday (and Chris and I really don't get along well), all the people there were Jo's friends, and although we had a great time, I don't think we spoke more than 2 words to him the whole time. Lara was there which was great as I haven't seen her in a while. She's been writing tests, which means that she usually vanishes from the face of the earth for a week or two and studies like a maniac. Her last test is today so I'm hoping to spend some time with her before I head off on fieldwork again. I was supposed to joing Luke and Duncan later, but as the only left home quite late I decided to head home instead and get soem sleep before work the next morning. I felt liek a little old lady trying to get home before bedtime, but I managed to get a lot of reading done at work, and I didn't make any huge mistakes, which is easy to do when I'm tired!

Sunday was FREEZING! We got hit by a nasty cold front and I was very grateful to all the heaters in quarantine where I found two dead frogs :( and spent some time hand-feeding a gecko who has decided to be friendly! I try and ignore all the times that he has bitten me in the past. FRom there I ended up fighting with a spreadsheet for one of the curators and then I helped Elaine feed her piglets (SO cute! And they were hungry so they snuffled like crazy and then drank really fast!) and then we went for lunch with Luke, Brett (one of the vets), Caleb (a volunteer) and Louise who has a dodgy sense of humour and always makes us laugh! Althea joined us for all of about 5 minutes and then ran off, so after lunch Luke and I went to see her and Luke got to meet the baby monkey who has grown a lot and she's getting more hair on her head so she looks less like a cross between a gremil and Gollum.

Other than that everything was pretty uneventful, I must get back to work now as my supervisor should be back in teh coutnry today and I need to show him some *sigh* deliverables.

It's a monster!

I must explain that "monster"is not entirely a bad thing. Ever since Thandi the mandril hit her first 'terrible twos' stage, a few people I know have referred the the monkeys as 'monsters' which I've picked up from them. It's actually quite an affectionate thing!

So anyway, as of Saturday night, Oliver the spider monkey has a new baby sister. He really doesn't lke her very much, but she's still really small and doesn't do much, plus they're not in any physical contact. Her mother basically abandoned her lke she did him, and so for the first month all ahndling is with rubber gloves and facemasks and everything is super-sterilised before she comes into contact with it.

To backtrack a little bit: we saw Sarah on Thursday night and it was awesome! She brought me a really cute little keyring thing of a little chef eating sushi (complete with chopsticks!) and it was really really great to see her again. It felt weird - like she hadn't been away at all. I walked in, said "Hi Sarah." and then "Hang on... SARAH!!!!!" it just felt realy normal to have her back. She's such a bubbly and energetic person that I think there was a pretty big void when she left and it was just... right... or something. Unfortunately she's not around for long, but I hope we can see her as much as possible before she leaves again at the end of next week.

On Friday I was a total zombie and nearly fell asleep several times during the day. I'm not sure why, but I decided to go off to see the Dark Knight in the evening anyway. It was fun, although going fof to Luke's side of the world was confusing - I always get lost out there - not only on the street, but also in the shopping centre, in the parking lot... I really do appreciate the fact that most thigns are nearer to my house usually and I totally appreciate all the driving that other people usually have to do! It was a good movie, just a bit long and I kind of fell asleep once or twice before neaking out right before the end - it was late and my Dad was going to be stressing about my safety and so on and so on. I did enjoy the movie, but I guess it's partly that I'm not really a batman fan and I've hardly seen any of the other movies or read the comic books or anything that I didn't find it as life-changing as everyone else did. I'm glad I saw it though, and I thought they did a really good job.

Anyway, on Sunday morning, after a very stressful session of collecting my mother from the airport (I'm sorry, HOW does it take an hour and a half to get luggage from the plane to the airport? and how can a 'car guard' in a place where you're paying R1 a minute for parking get to demand payment when he hasn't done anything?) I went off to the zoo hoping to get there in time to scrub out my frustarion on some frog and/or lizard tanks. I got there quite late but as it happened they were desperate for help and I got to do the whole room I usually clean out on a Sunday! I was quite annoyed to fond that a bunch of the animals which had been reallocated to a certain place had been taken on Friday and nobvody thought to tell me so that I could say goodbye to my frogs - Speckle as well as Mr and Mrs Speckle (our volunteers have great eharts but not much imagination when it comes to naming things) are gone as well as a pile of the big geckos and a few of the tomato frogs. I got to put some of the other geckos outside in the sun for a bit though and it was awesome to see them rush out and bask!

After all that I saw Althea, who showed me the new baby spider monkey. She isn't names yet, and she's so absolutely hideous that it's totally adorable! Feeding her was a huge battle because the bottles they ahve for baby animals have really hard rubber teats and she couldn't cope with them, but she's too small for a baby bottle. As I ahd to go and get a birthday present for my sister-in-law I offered to go bottle-hunting. The best to use for her was apparently a baby medicine bottle.

So I spent my afternoon and evening going to every pharmacy and hopsital that I could find looking for them. Half the people didn't know what I was talking about, and the rest usually said that they knew them, that they were amazing and fantastic things, and no. Nobody had them. Finally I went to visit Lara and Laurin and sat ont eh floor behind the coutner with teh phone book, calling every pharmacy I could think of and then calling whoever they referred me to, until at about 6 pm I found a dodgy little pharmacy that was open until 9 that had them! Strangely enough it was owned and staffed only by men, but they had the one thing that every woman who had had a baby swears by! I went and got three different variations on the nmedicine bottle adn then rushed off to Althea's house to drop them off.

I ended up staying for a few hours, I got to hold the baby while she sorted things out (it's usually in an incubator, but mid-feed Althea whould suddenlt nees something or have to rush off and I'd get to sit with the little monster who is SO UGLY it's toally adorable! Two feeds later she got the idea and drank all 10mls! I was so excited!

And I went home and collapsed and, of course, couldn't sleep. Cue the mondya morning zombie!

The beauty of friendship

Yes, cheesy title, I know! But bear with me - it's been a pretty horrible weekend, and I was saved from complete and utter despair by an awesome night out with some pretty amazing people!

My weekend was horrible because I haven't been sleeping well. Even today I lay down for a nap and ended up dreaming that I wasdrowning in a dirtly green swimming pool. I woke myself up because I was thrashing around trying to swim... On top of all that (lizard woes number 5) the last really sick lizard was dead when I went to treat him this morning. I'm praying that it wasn't the result of anything I did. I'm justifying the whole situation by sayiong that I did my best, that he wasn't really improving very much, he was realy far gone to start with and that I was silly to let myself get attached to something that was that sick (silly to get attached to anything that is, in fact, a test subject). Is there a name for some kind of reverse-Stockholm syndrome? It was still pretty upsetting. Fortunately just after that whole thing I had coffee with a friend from the zoo, and it was really nice.

So anyway, last night I went out to dinner with Lara, her (and my) friend Nicola and a bunch of other people. I knew an alarming number of them, and even more alarmingly it was because I've taught them at some stage! It was fun though, and we laughed a lot, between lots of really rough Afrikaans jokes... and various lous and random discussions. La and I also met someone from Sevende Laan in the bathroom, which got her all super-excited! After that we realised that it was still pretty early, and although La needed help to walk to the car (Nicola was driving) we were all up for going off somewhere else, so we headed off to a pub near my house.

It was really awesome! I tend to stayt clear of pubs and clubs, as I find that I always run into people that I know either from babysitting them (sad, but oh so true), teaching them or serving them at any of my various jobs. It's incredible awkward and I always end up feeling old and embarrassed. The bonus of this place is that I think they actually check ID, so it was packed with people of around my age. When I finally found Lara and crew we set off to the bar to be stopped by a very tall (and very tipsy) guy in a suit. He rushed over to La and gave her a kiss on both cheeks. I figured that either he knew her, or he was really drunk, in which case the best option (once he left her and headed for me) was to let him do the cheek-cheek thing and then he would either introduce himself or go away.

So it was left cheek, right cheek.. the he grabbed my face and pulled in to me! La tells me that she's never seen a look on my face like that, and it was really luck that he did, indeed, go away or I would have had to hurt him. Unfortunately he didn't stay gone, and spent the next half an hour wlaking past us and casually slapping my butt until I had to switch places with Nicola (you don't want to upset her!) and he got the message.

Once Lara and I'd recovered and we;d all managed to squeeze in at a table in the back, we decided that it was a good time to take photos. One of the other people (Natasha, neither of high heels or Eyes) had a camera with her, and Lara and I tried very very hard to do self portraits with the two of us in various poses. It didn't work. Most of them involve one of us laughing while the other poses. Eventually the owner of the camera reclaimed it, but carried on taking photos, so there is a fantastic series of pictures of us in various stages of gigling fits. I hope to get a copy soon, because it's been a long time since I've laughed until I cried, and I think that having a memento would be a great thing to get me to giggle should a weekend ever be as depressing as this one!

So yes, friendship is really a wonderful thing, and I'm giggling as I type this, so I'm going to have to stop there!

Desert! Mole-rats!

So I was just thinking about how boring my life is at the moment. Yes, in the last week I have had to battle with the power-that-be to get sick animals to a vet, where they were treated inbetween massive snakes (including a beautiful anaconda that bit a friend of mine), but in general, the months that I'm in Joburg tend to be pretty routine and boring. I don't work an office job, so I guess my life is more interesting than most, but there is very little to write about. When I go on field trips everything gets more exciting, but even that has faded a bit.

Fieldwork now is incredibly routine and I like it that way. I have to occasional excitement of the roof falling in or watching random antelope from my window, but otherwise it's pretty much business as usual. Back in the day (I'm getting old) fieldwork was always to different exciting places where we met new and crazy people and had weird things happen to us.

So back to the point: a long time ago Luke and Id ecided that we would write a book called "The mole-rat diaries" all about our adventures catching mole-rats. On the last trip (it was almost 2 years ago) we actually started keeping accounts on his laptop all about what stuff happened. I stopped after about a week becasue I was too tired at the end of the day, but I have a few pages that I thought I would put up here in installments. I figure when I run out of actual stuff, I ahve the photos and the memories to try and carry on.

So watch this space for the new and exciting series of the Mole-rat Diaries (Helen's POV)

Family ties

I am exhausted at the moment! Last night my aunt arrived from Cape Town. She lives in England, but had a business trip to the cape, and now she's spending a few days with my grandparents. Her flight arrived at 8pm, so my dad and I collected her and went to my granparents house for a late supper. Wow, my grandmother is a really good cook, and while I appreciate that she made us an incredible meal, it was the size of about 2 of the meals that I cook at home, so I spent most of the evening feelnig mildly ill.

It was really nice to see my aunt again, but I found it strange, and a bit sad, that I'm not upset that I won't see her again before she goes back overseas. When I was youger she came out once a year and we all went on holiday together. When she was in the UK the biggest treat for us would be to phone her and talk for 5 minutes. Now I guess we have Skype and email and it feels like she's not all that far away.

I'm struggling at the moment a bit - the sick lizards are taking a lot of time, as well as the fact that I feel obligated to help at the zoo more often because they've helped me out. My actual work is falling behind, although I'm getting a lot done, and I'm making up for it by staying up late. When I finally collapse into bed I struggle to sleep. I think it's all the stress. This morning I think my body outvoted my brain, and I slept until 9:30. That means that this weekend (besides coming in to university every day to treat sick lizards) I'm gonig to have to catch up on a lot of work.

Fun times...

Anyone (aka lizard woes part...4?)?

So I took the (surviving) sick lizard back to the vet today, along with two others that have been looking a bit under the weather. I'd been giving them fluids and stuff so they weren't looking too bad, and even bit and peed and all the usual stuff that makes me REALLY dislike this particular species. I'll probably be taking the sick one home this weekend so I can keep an eye on him, as well as giving him his fluids. I've actually grown quite attached to the little guy! Here's hoping that he's ok!

So after going in to help with the frogs, rushing back to university, collecting lizards, rushing back to the zoo, rushing back to university... I settled down to realise that work of any description was NOT going to be happening today - an alarm was going off about 2 offices down from the lab, as well as drilling and sawing and hammering downstairs. so I tried very hard to work while the masters student read (and commented about) Heat magazine, and then I rushed back to the zoo to collect a treatment sheet for my lizards (so that the powers-that-be can see exactly what's going on) and have lunch with Luke and Elaine.

Luke was off with his chimps, so I sat with Elaine and Tommy, a guy from the technical staff who has offered to give me a zoo cap! I really don't like hats, but for some reason volunteering at the zoo has a side-effect of really wanting a hat! For the record, hats are only given out to official staff, and they can give them away to volunteers when new ones are issued (volunteers aren't allowed any current items of the zoo uniform). The bonus of the hat (besides reaching super-power status amongst volunteers) is that it means that people at the restaurant who recognise it as you either working or helping at the zoo, give you a 20% discount!

So during lunch Elaine spotted a little girl carrying a kitten, and went to yell at her - pets are definitely not allowed in the zoo, for obvious reasons. It turned out that the kitten is a stray, although she's really really tame (and SO cute!) so Elaine ended up adopting it and looking after it. The kitten is really adorable and I would love her, but I have two large dogs so I doubt it would last long in my house! Luke has it at the moment, and I'm hoping his family falls in love with it and takes it permanently. Otherwise, I'm really hoping that we can find her a nice home soon! So anyone in Joburg wanting a kitten?