Coffee blooms and boot scorpions

Greetings from Chiapas! We are wrapping up our third of five sampling sessions. More than halfway through the field portion of the study, hard to believe! Although tired and having a rough week with insect bites and stings, our collective will is as steely as our new and improved leg muscles.

Coffee blooms for only a few days in a season, once or twice a year. Luckily, I was here to see the mountains erupt into bloom this week. Each breeze brings the scent of the blossoms, which smell fantastic-- very similar to lilacs. That each coffee plant is covered in blooms also makes it a challenge to find the flagging marking our traps! Our "bajo" site in particular is like the Bermuda Triangle; although set up in a typical 5x5 grid, it takes even the most familiar person a few minutes extra to find their traps to check or rebait.

The first day of coffee blooming was quiet, but by the second day, the fields were literally buzzing with honeybees, small through massive bumblebees, and a variety of other pollinators. Although disconcerting in its volume and intensity, the buzzing hopefully implies both a healthy bee population and a healthy coffee crop next year.

The Mexican word for popped popcorn is 'palmonitas,' literally "little doves." I like that a lot, though I was unsure as to how to describe the actual tiny doves browsing by our road a few mornings ago.

This morning, Mandi stopped to shake some gravel out of her boot, only to shake out a scorpion! She had shaken out her boots as normal before putting them on, but apparently to no avail! Luckily she escaped without a sting, and the scorpion escaped without a smash and scuttled off into the garden. It was almost as big as the scorpion which lives in the pipes of our bathroom sink, who I have dubbed The Basilisk Scorpion.

We closed one of our sites this morning, saying goodbye to our regular captures. Some mice come back every day, which implies that they find the bait more rewarding than our probing to be traumatizing. I get to know these regulars pretty well. Farewell to Sam and Juvie the Heteromys, BlueBalls the Marmosa, and Excessively Pregnant the Handleyomys! Good luck with your delivery, and please may it be soon.