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Published: April 5th 2010
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Returning to the lab after a day of following FC, Erin and I found Mini and Gideon sitting on the wooden benches, their faces conveying utter exhaustion and exasperation. I took one look at their sagging shoulders, hunched backs and the large cut on Mini’s cheek, no doubt from a particularly terrible bamboo spike, and knew that bad news would follow. “Well, you guys have your work cut out for you tomorrow,” said Gideon forebodingly, throwing me into a mild state of panic. They proceeded to describe their failed attempt to follow our newly tagged and collared group, Jean 4, that afternoon. Now, we all thought that we had seen some tough terrain in FC’s territory, but, according to Mini and Gideon, this was on a whole different level; in their despair, they had even named Jean’s territory The Inferno. Erin and I left the lab with visions of bamboo spikes and bullet ants dancing in our heads, dreading the next morning, when we would begin our day-long follow of Jean.
The next day, Erin and I sheepishly set out, handy dandy radio tracker in hand and a whole lot of nervous anticipation weighing us down to a sluggish
pace. Not without reason, it turns out. We tracked for roughly an hour before catching a mere glimpse of tamarin tail across the vast see of thorny bamboo, at which point we crashed through as best we could, only to have them disappear promptly. Now, I have to clarify here; “thorny bamboo” doesn’t adequately describe The Inferno. No, The Inferno is a fiery pit of numerous, densely entangled vines with a wide variety of spikes, ranging in size from the little ones which easily get lodged in various appendages to the larger ones which drill holes into your flesh. Lots to choose from. At one point, one of the spikes became firmly lodged in my leg and Erin, unaware that the spike in my body was connected to a vine wrapped around her foot, continued to trudge ahead, resulting in a painful dragging of the thorn through my thigh. That’s going to leave a scar. At any rate, the trouble is that the vines are so densely clustered that it’s nearly impossible to get anywhere in less than ten years and, once you do manage to scrape your way through Thorn Hell you’re met with such incredibly tall bamboo that
you quite literally cannot see over it and are left to helplessly (and somewhat pointlessly) hack your way through with no idea of where you are going.
A hellish environment in its own right, to say the least, that becomes almost unbearable when you add the pursuit of saddlebacks to the equation. The saddlebacks have several advantages in this situation, the most obvious being: they move over The Inferno in trees, they know where they’re going and they’re faster. Clearly a stacked deck, in my opinion. However, Erin and I refused to give up so easily and faithfully followed the tracker for several hours. Yes, you read right: we followed the tracker, as opposed to the group. That’s because we barely saw a glimpse of Jean 4, and were left to suffice on the three bars consistently displayed by the radio tracker in whichever direction the group was. As long as those three bars flashed, we trudged on, growing increasingly more scraped and depressed. Inevitably, I approached my breaking point and was on the verge of one of my epic tantrums (fondly referred to as Karina Melt Downs by my father) when Erin rushed over to appease me with a pack of cookies and suggested we sit down to take a break.
So it happened that I was sitting eating a delicious chocolate cookie with half strawberry and half vanilla cream filling when I spotted the devils themselves over Erin’s shoulders. I began crying out with my mouth full of cookie and we quietly hurried over to the location where they were last spotted so as not to spook them. By some miracle, we managed to “follow” them (and I use this term very loosely) for roughly an hour and a half, occasionally catching glimpses of the group as they dashed away from us. Sadly, Erin and I rejoiced when we observed one scent mark take place (normally we see upwards of 20), as this had become a sufficient standard for success. Note: lower standards are the way to go. By some even greater miracle, Erin and I happened to see the group retire to their sleeping tree and were quite pleased to leave them be. This was about the time we realized that the GPS batteries had died and that we had lost most of our actually legitimate track for the group. Too tired to cry, we headed back to camp, dazed and bewildered.
That night in the shower, I assessed my body for damage, only to find countless scratches, scrapes and a few weird rashes covering my skin. I’ve got to say, the physical damage was miniscule compared to the psychological injury accrued and permanently etched in my mind from our descent into The Inferno.
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Nick
non-member comment
Karina, Forgive me for saying this, but what are you actually accomplishing by following these epicly mustachioed monkeys? I see the value when you catch them but what about the following? Are you mapping stuff to keep it conserved or learning what they eat? Maybe you could address the data that you collect and the analysis on the data in your next post. Nick p.s. The inferno sound completely miserable. Are you able to reuse the paths that you cut to make the traveling more easy next time?