2/13/10

Finished the big 5 today.
It was another 530 morning. I cannot wait to be able to sleep in until 7, as awful as that sounds. We were getting ready to go when Colin notices that his shoes weren’t fitting well. Turns out the bite on his ankle had swelled up so much that his foot was almost twice its normal size. Because we need to be able to run when told, they told him to stay behind today. So I did the collections by myself, which wasn’t so bad. We caught 3 pygmy mice (one was a recapture), and a fat mouse. We came back to camp, and identified the fat mouse. Then it was hang out time until 1130, when we had a lecture on insect orders. It was so stuffy in that room, all I wanted to do was go to sleep. It was bad. After that, I took a quick half hour nap before lunch.
After lunch, I worked on my valentine (more to come). Since Colin was still gimpy, he asked Nick to accompany my to the field for the afternoon, as rebaiting and taking foliage percentages is much more of a two person thing. On the way to the field, we were driving and talking to alan’s son when Stevie yelled “RHINO!” Me, thinking that it would be far away, turned to the side and yelled “where?” Nick then pointed straight in front of the car. It was literally a meter and a half away. A humongous male white rhino. Holy god. It was gigantic. I luckily got a really good shot of it, and have one picture to document the event. Then we rebaited the sites, and came back.
The rest of the night was a little eventful. In the morning, we had caught a puff adder and a Mozambican spitting cobra (a baby). We released the adder, but we had kept the cobra in a terrarium for people to look at. Then, during dinner, Elizabeth TA announced that this snake was now loose. These snakes are ungodly poisonous. Luckily (again), the snake had just hidden right below the terrarium, and Dax put it in a sealed bucket. Phew. Now I am off to a small party, for god knows why. Word of the day: tihuway = wood