Trapping and revolution

In my high school there was a boy famous for being the best writer of the institution; most of the times winning the yearly literature context. Then, I arrived (Muaahahaha). Depending on the year, we were on the same or different categories because of the age difference, and we disputed each other the prizes. I still remember the year I won not only in the prose discipline but in poem too, to see him sat on one of the green chairs of the conferences room, biting nervously his nails. We never spoke, even if we had common friends who insisted in that we had to talk; I guess it wasn’t the style of any of us. Until one night, in which I was taking the nocturnal bus back home after a fail party night and he came in a couple of stops after me. He sat behind my seat and we talked a little, don’t remember about what exactly but, since then, I have remembered a commentary. This was that it was difficult, if not impossible, to write when you were happy; sadness is a kind of muse.

For long I agreed with him; writing was almost the only relief I had during many years of darkness. Then the university came and the spare time ran off as well as my willingness to write. But the macaques in Morocco, among others, made me want to write again, even if it was in a language that would make things more difficult. This time, my inspiration came from happy moments, things about my outside world that I wanted to share instead of things of my inner world that I needed to get rid of .

This entire long story just to justify why I’m lagging behind with the posts and, it’s simply that I haven’t been very joyful these last weeks; but things are going to change…inshallah.

“I think I saw a pussy cat”

After some weeks of preparations in which we had to clear areas and do some pre-baiting (i.e. dragging pieces of beef fat, penises and testicles on the ground and hang them afterwards on the clearances); the Trap Master came and we were ready to start the leopard trapping. Each night, two people had to check the traps at certain hours, driving along them all by a predetermined circuit.

My first night was quite peaceful, with nothing remarkable. Then, some nights afterwards, it was my turn again, together with the French-Spanish to make the checkings.

She collected me at the Barn some before 21h and drove towards the bumpy area where the traps were. After checking the first trap, we continued until the one close to a little bridge, which we were supposed to check the last, but which is in a junction that you need to cross to go to the other traps. "Well, we'll check this one latter, it seems there is nothing" said the French-Spanish in Spanish when we were passing along...but just then we both looked again and realized of the two tiny round ears attached to a squared head which seemed grey between the bushes. She slowed down even more and the leopard stood up trying to escape.

She drove further to don't disturb the animal any more while we started the protocol, using the satellite phone to call the Owner.

After that, we had to continue our checking. The thing is that, as I said, this trap was just in a junction in which we necessarily needed to pass again and nobody had thought in this detail. So, we stopped around 50m before arriving to the trap and switched off completely the lights to see if the Team was already there or what.

Then we started to hear it...a kind of soft purring...leopards are big cats, after all, but they sound a little bit creepy when you don't see pretty much anything. For long we didn't see any clue of the presence of the Team; latter, we could see light sometimes. There were a couple of hours of confusion but, at the end, everything went fine, even with the typical unforeseen events of the first time.

The samango revolution

As I said in previous posts, I wasn't very pleased with how the things were done around here concerning to the primate data collection. After two weeks of really having a bad time because of this, thinking that was a terrible mistake to have come, a waste of time and money and even thinking of leaving, I tried to fix the things. Giving up is in my vocabulary, but till now the meaning has been always theoretical.

I dared to speak to the Leader and the Co-leader, giving my point of view on how the things should be. The outcome was surprising. Apparently, they had been so busy with the predator stuff that they hadn't really had time to review what the primate volunteers were doing and they were quite surprised that many obvious things weren't being done. Next day, we had a meeting the three of us together with the primate co-ordinator to speak about the protocol and discuss some of the several ideas I had presented. As a result, now I'm in charge of writing a new detailed protocol, as well as creating  new spreadsheets, ways of managing the data, etc and I also carried out a between-observetr reliability test which, even if it wasn't as good as expected (ever is?) gave us clues on many aspects that we have to work on and fix.

Well, it is something. It's true that I came here to learn, not to teach ( If I thought that I am  in that level I wouldn't be volunteering...though I know that the world doesn't follow my  standards). I'll do my best, hopefully counting with the help of the primatologists around here, the Scottish and the PhD student, but I guess that I will make some awful mistakes. Even though, it is a victory. I'm not only going to learn more than I expected but I'm going to do a kind of trial of how to manage a field study, which I hope it will be great to be prepared for a PhD...and WTF! I'm leading a complete group of English-Speakers (…even if I suspect that some don't understand a damn word of what I say...)!

Let's see how it goes...