Cat Tracks and Coerced Karaoke

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In the morning, the rangers fixed some more great food with the leftovers from the night before, then we headed off into the forest to check the camera trap to see if it had captured any new images.

We left the camera with 3 images exposed, but when Kanda checked it this morning, 16 photos had been taken!! Down the path in the salt lick, two more cat tracks were found…and they were fresh! We hoped she’d take the trap down and get the film developed, but she ended up sticking to her plan and re-mounted the trap and put artificial “supercat” bobcat fragrance on the leaves in front of the trap to see if it would attract any additional animals.

We grabbed our backpacks and headed back to the park headquarters. As we waited for our ride at the wildlife viewing tower, the young rangers posed with their Zoo Society water bottles. Kanda was wearing her Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium t-shirt as she collected feces samples and set camera traps. I am glad that in some small ways, resources from our zoo can help wildlife in its wildest state.

There were no rooms for us in the park or close to it when we returned, so we ended up staying at a strange bungalow hotel/motel with tree houses and aluminum-roofed shacks. We were the only "farang" there and very little English was understood. To help us feel included, one of the hotel managers kept trying to get us to sing karaoke (English! English!) as we ate our dinner ordered in pantomime. He finally settled on “Mamma Mia” by ABBA and we hummed along to the synthesized version before escaping and heading to bed early.

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