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Published: November 30th 2010
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Polypedates otilophis eating Rhacophorus dulitensis
Preparing to stuff himself for Thanksgiving, perhaps? This week we celebrated Thanksgiving, and we definitely had much to be thankful for.
In the work week leading up to Turkey Day, still reeling a bit from seeing two clouded leopards last week, we observed a large tree frog (
Polypedates otilophis) eating a smaller tree frog (
Rhacophorus dulitensis), saw 4 snakes on one transect (2 vine snakes, a pit viper, and a racer), found a snake and two frogs in our leaf litter plots, and saw a species of frog we hadn’t yet seen here (
Philautus hosii). On top of that, we are all acutely aware of how lucky we continue to be to live and work here at Danum, and that we only have 3 weeks remaining in which to cram as much wildlife and frog research as possible before we have to leave. Plus, we all just really really like living and working together.
In order to have Thursday off, we jammed in much of our work early in the week. We also had to make a trip into town to restock for our final three weeks here, which meant doing the majority of our work Sun-Tue. By the time we finished our survey
on Tuesday night, we were all pretty beat, but as soon as we finished our survey it felt a bit like we were on vacation, given that we were preparing for Thanksgiving—Rachel’s first in the field!
It’s always a challenge to celebrate holidays away from home—there’s an element of sharing your traditions with those around you (we invited our research assistant Tambi to join us for dinner), an element of trying to make it as traditional as possible in order to feel connected to those you’re missing at home (we spent the day cooking and trying to ring our families), and an element of improvising with what you have to make everything work (we couldn’t find turkey, so we bought two chickens that we roasted on a grill, given our lack of any type of oven, and we made a pumpkin cake in our rice cooker). I’ve had a few Thanksgivings like this, and each one is different and special in its own way, and always a bit surprising.
We decided on a fairly traditional menu, given that most things were easily accessible here—mashed potatoes, roasted sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, stuffing, and roast chicken to replace the
Thanksgiving Dance Party
Tambi teaching Rachel the Malay version of the Electric Slide--to some sweet Malay music! turkey, topped off with rice cooker pumpkin cake. Given that nobody here makes stuffing, we had to make our own breadcubes by toasting two loaves of bread. My mom’s suggestion of just “letting it sit out and go stale” is completely irrelevant in the humid tropics—it would just mold and get soggy! Sorry mum! But we had fun chatting and toasting, and getting into the Thanksgiving spirit. The next day, we slept in a bit, had a leisurely breakfast, and then began the long delicious process of cooking everything. Since we didn’t have an oven, we made the “casserole” by boiling the green beans, mixing it with the cream of mushroom soup in a cake pan, and topping it off with local fried onions. We grilled our chickens and sweet potatoes, I threw the cake batter into the rice cooker, and by 3:30 pm, we were ready for our feast! It was great, and in the true spirit of Thanksgiving, we sat on the sofa to watch a movie after the meal, where at least some of us fell asleep.
The surprising bit was when our fellow Danum friends came over in the evening for drinks. I figured everyone would stop by, we’d chat and have a few drinks, and everyone would get to bed at a reasonable hour since we had to work the next day. But they had different plans! Shortly after showing up, one of the guys got in his truck to get a speaker for his iPod so they could blast music and have a crazy dance party—which Rachel took to like a fish to water! She also managed to card shark a few of the guys, and when the power went off at midnight, the Danum folks kept the festivities going by playing acoustic guitar and singing various songs in both English and Malay. Ah, life in the field.
We now start our final 3 weeks here, and I’m trying to stay focused on the present and suck all the marrow out of my time here, without looking ahead TOO much to Christmas. Can’t wait to see what these last few weeks hold for us! Hope everyone else had as lovely a Thanksgiving as we did here.
xoxo
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