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Published: September 18th 2011
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The morning after the Komodo trip I took a motorbike to Tebedo, the nearby village which I was constantly assured was home to Wallace's hanging parrots and giant rats. I met up with Frans who lives there (and who was the one doing all the assuring) and we went into the forest where he grows coffee to find parrots. There were none. "Lots of nuri here yesterday morning," he says. I don't think I'll be returning to Tebedo. Even I know when to call it quits!
I went back to Labuanbajo, got my bags, and took a bus to Ruteng where the staff at the Rima Hotel were pleasantly surprised to see me again so soon. I basically had two more chances at finding a giant rat, tonight and tomorrow night, and then I'd be out of range. In the evening I took a motorbike to Golo Lusang, the pass just out of Ruteng. It was already dark when I arrived just after 7pm so I immediately headed on foot down the road shining my torch through the trees. Golo Lusang really is a better place to look for the rats than Danau Ranamese because the road is on the
a tree like the one the Giant Rat was in
not the same tree, but it gives you an idea of what it looked like covered in the tangly old climber side of a mountain so you can look directly into the canopy of the trees downslope rather than pointing the torch upwards and trying hopelessly to see through the understory.
Just half an hour into my search I found a tree that looked like a species of
Schefflera which I felt would be perfect for a giant rat to live in. The trunk was covered from the ground almost to the crown in a tangled creeping plant with sturdy thick stems that a rat could sleep in during the day, and then at night it just had to step into the canopy to feed on the small fruits the tree bore. While I was thinking this I heard a loud rustling noise coming from the climber on the trunk. The noise stopped and started a few times, and it was definitely being caused by something alive moving around. I scanned the tree futilely with my torch, seeing nothing. This couldn't be one of those times when you know there's something there but just can't find it and have to leave thinking "what if?". The tree wasn't actually far from the road, maybe thirty feet, but it was down a
Flores Giant Rat....er, somewhere
look to the right of the bit where the two white branches cross each other and there's sort of a squiggly brown vine. The two wiggly glowing things to the right off that are the eye-shine of the rat. Really! The photo was taken by torchlight while holding the camera in one hand, the torch in the other, and trying to focus as well. Very difficult and not at all successful! steep slope so I couldn't approach it, and it was partly obscured by other trees in the foreground. I could see the whole of one side of the tree from where I was, but not what was making the noise, so I moved along the road a bit till I could see through the other trees into the canopy from another angle -- and there was a Giant Rat!!! There seemed no more appropriate time than this to perform the Ren & Stimpy "Happy Happy Joy Joy" dance!
The rat was sitting on its haunches on a branch, reaching up to pull leaves and fruit towards itself, looking just like a possum feeding. In fact it reminded me very much of a cuscus in its behaviour and it seems likely it is the ecological equivalent here. Its even about the size of a cuscus (or for NZers, its about the size of a brush-tailed possum). Its quite a cute chubby rat actually, rather slow in its movements when I watched it. The position it was in was no good for photography unfortunately but it didn't seem bothered at all by the torchlight, just carried on with what it was doing, so I got to watch it through my binoculars for about half an hour (but not continuously because it was moving around in the tree crown and was out of sight for much of that time). The reason the rat's position was no good for photos was largely due to the flash bouncing off the leaves of the foreground trees, so I tried taking some without flash by the light of the torch. It really wasn't successful at all but I did get some blurry shots. Even I can barely see where the rat is in them, and as you can see from the one I've posted here all it does is prove that I took a bad photo at night-time of a tree.
I had been thinking before this that repeating this Indonesian trip was a bit of a waste of time and money that I could be using for Sri Lanka or somewhere. The chances of finding a pigmy tarsier were always going to be remote, but I thought the Flores giant rat would be about 50-50. The more time that went past though the more I was losing motivation in the search. But now I've been justified and I couldn't be happier. I really can't stop talking about it (although truth be told, I'm mostly just talking to myself because nobody else really cares that I finally found a big rat after two years).
Now I just need to find that hanging parrot!
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