Already two weeks in Chiapas! Our fieldwork is going well; we are completing a first round of sampling with Sherman traps (small metal boxes that live-capture small animals like pocket mice and mouse opossums) and camera traps (motion-activated infrared cameras locked to trees). I've been in charge of placing and checking our cameras, something I really enjoy. Every day checking the memory cards on my little camera's screen at lunch is like presents on Christmas morning, finding out what animals you've gotten! Common animals in this area include agouti, coati, and armadillo.
Last week on the project, we spent most of our time chasing local guides up and down mountains, through thickets and across rivers, to find and group together appropriate study sites. Even the combination of GPS, extensive flagging, and a seemingly-endless string of route-documentation photos don't always keep us from getting lost!
We've been wrapping up our daily duties-- checking and rebaiting traps, processing captured animals, sorting and prepaid equipment, and data entry-- by early afternoon. It's a respectable workday, considering it starts at predawn 5:30am. That's left a lot of time for afternoon activities and projects, like Spanish study, swimming, exploring the area, and hardcore silent group reading parties. We've also adopted a general regime of group fitness, incorporating p90x, yoga, junglegyms, and various acrobatic stunts. Got to balance out the leg-crushing slopes with something for the rest of our bodies!
An interesting idiom: to form a line is 'hacer cola,' literally to make a tail.
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