Fieldwork report (finally) (with lots of pictures)

[Mokele]

I almost forgot to post this thing.... Anyhow, I went off on fieldwork for 3 weeks in Guam a few weeks ago, and this is the results.

 

Ok, first, this is gleaned from the log I kept in the field, updated daily when I got back. As a result, it's somewhat journal styled, with some omissions on test data and the like. If a day was nothing but a long sequence of repeating the same test over and over for different individuals and variations, that'll be omitted, since I doubt you all want a copy of the notes. I'll intersperse photos where appropriate.

 

Before I begin, I'll give some background. DARPA, the research arm of the Pentagon, decided they want a snake-robot for infiltration, and they want it to be able to do everything a snake can do: crawl through clutter, swim, climb poles, etc. Several companies competed for the contract, including Draper Labs, who won it. They had contacted my prof about being the token biologist, since he's an expert in snake locomotion. He'd perform experiments for them in return for funding, and one aspect was a trip to Guam. See, while we understand most snake locomotion to a limited extent, very little has been examined with respect to *arboreal* snake locomotion. That's what my cornsnake and boid project is on. My prof, Bruce, thinks most truly arboreal snakes can be lumped into two groups, the grippers and the gap-bridgers. The former are things like tree vipers, tree boas, etc, and support themselves and move by gripping the branch. The other group, the gap-bridgers, are things like vine snakes, twig snakes, and genus <i>Boiga</i>, who span long gaps and basically move by lateral undulation, which includes no gripping. An adaptation of this group is that the spinalis/semispinalis muscles (which are the most dorsal muscles with any appreciable cross-sectional area) have an extremely long tendon which stretches anteriorly up to 40 vertebrae. However, since tendons are rather stiff, this should result in tradeoffs or alteration of non-gap-bridging locomotion, if they even can do it. So where does Guam come into this?

 

Guam is a small pacific island in the Marianas group, near the Marianas Trench, located about 2000 miles north of New Guinea and 2000 miles west of the Phillipines. Originally settled by the Polynesians about 2000 years ago (though the archeology is rather uncertain), it was colonized (brutally) by the Spanish in the 17th century, and became a US colony in the late 19th century, iirc. When WW2 broke out, the Japanese conquered it with ease, due to the tiny force we had left there, and they hung onto it until we took it back late in the war, with some difficulty. It immediately became a huge naval and air base, (which remain to this day, in the form of Andersen AFB and some Navy facilities). As a result, a *lot* of cargo began passing through it, mostly from various pacific islands. Stowing away on one or several of those shipments were Brown Tree Snakes (<i>Boiga irregularis</i>), a species widespread throughout the pacifc. Guam, at the time, was much like Hawaii, with a lot of unusual and rare endemic and indiginous birds, and no snakes (the only sizable reptilian predator was a 3-4 foot monitor lizard introduced by the natives for food, and which has never truly 'taken off' in numbers). Thus began one of the most dramatic ecological distasters in recent history.

 

In the 60s and 70s, many ornithologists noticed that the bird population wasn't just dropping, it was plummeting in near free-fall. Many causes were kicked around, but finally, in 87, Julie Savidge published a paper that blamed the Brown Tree Snake. This species ranges from 40 cm (16 inch) hatchlings to adults of 3 meters (10 feet), is an excellent climber (a gap bridger with the long tendons noted above), can constrict prey as well as using a weak venom (delivered by grooved teeth in the back of the mouth, as is typical of "rear-fanged" snakes). Her conclusions were correct, and over the remaining part of the 20th century, the Brown Tree Snake spread across the entire island, eradicating from the wild over a dozen bird species and the only native mammal, a fruit-bat. It began to get onto power lines and into transformers, causing island-wide blackouts regularly. At the moment, densities of over 14,000 snakes per square mile are reported. Attempts to eradicate or control the snakes failed, and primary efforts shifted toward preventing the same disaster on other islands. Trapping, and hand collecting still go on, mostly around the airport and AFB. In addition, search dogs, akin to drug dogs, have been trained and are being used to find snakes in cargo. In one case, a cargo crate that had been on the ground for only 15 minutes already contained a snake. Additionally, USGS has trained "Rapid Response Teams" on other islands so that, should a snake be reported, they'll be able to find it and hopefully prevent a population from being established.

 

So, we traveled to Guam begin there was a super-high abundance of a snake with a trait we wanted to study. The results might help in control, but further study is needed to evaluate this (Hint hint NSF funding committee). The group was Bruce (my prof), Me (MS student), Brian (new PHD student) and Steve (PHD student who got here last year).

 

So, without further ado, I'll begin...

 

Day 0: Arrived at night, and found we'd been moved from our original hotel to another. When we got to our room, we were absolutely blown away, it was incredible, bigger than my apartment and a lot nicer, with a great view. We collapsed into bed at 10 pm. Photos of the room and view below.

 

Day 1: We woke up at about 8, with suprisingly little jetlag, had a leuisurely breakfast, and I got to email Gemma. While Bruce and Steve went to get a rental car, Brian and I went looking for useful stores on foot. In the process, we saw several small skinks of unknown taxa, probably <i>Carlia</i>, an <i>Anolis carolinensis</i> (aka green anole, introduced by the pet trade), and reptilian fecal material containing bone fragments and cockroach bits (probably from <i>Varanus indicus</i>, the mangrove monitor, introduced by the original natives). The beach shop next door had lots of snorkels and such (which we never used), too many jet skis (which have basically killed Alupang bay), and a captive mangrove monitor that was tame only on account of extreme obesity. The hotel, Alupang Beach Tower, overlooks Alupang bay, which has a lot of sandy shores, an island, some rock areas, and a barrier reef. We left for a 1pm appointment at the Guam National Wildlife Refuge, which is at the extreme northern point of the island, near a huge and beautiful cliff. We talked with Richard, the USGS guy in charge, and Gerry, the park ranger, about all sorts of stuff like permits, can we climb on the roof to film from it, the snakes, what they know, joining their collecting team, how efforts are going, how we could get some snakes and use lab areas, etc. Richard showed us the snakes and got a big male out (males are larger), about 6 foot, and let us hold it so we could feel what they're like. We were immediately shocked by how weak they were in dorso-ventral gripping (gripping with the belly) as opposed to lateral gripping. It was quite agressive, which they show by striking and inflating the neck dorso-ventrally. During our meeting with Gerry, someone called on the phone claiming they'd seen 6 Guam rails, which have been extinct in the wild for 20 years thanks to the snakes. After we finished, we went down to the beach on the NWR, where there were plentiful hermit crabs and ghost crabs, but also a vicious riptide that prevented swimming. Then we left, stopping by a grocery store on the way home (the hotel room has a kitchen). We ate out at a Thai place across the street, and went to bed at 9:30, thanks to some dishes heavy in coconut milk. Below are some pics of the cliff and one of snakes, both resting and in their agressive pose.

 

Day 2: We woke up at 6:30 with the sunrise, and I had cereal for breakfast, admiring the sunny day. On our way to the fieldstation, we stopped at a hardware store and bought several plastic pipes for our experiments (which include how diameter affects movement on pipes), along with t-joints and scrap pipe to make stands. We had to put the seats down and endure a rather uncomfortable ride, but it was only once, and we needed the pipes at their full 10 foot length. We ate lunch, and monkeyed about with the perches and some snakes we were given in this octagonal concrete enclosure with 5' high walls. The snakes did some interesting things, mostly moving by lateral undulation without gripping, in contrast to the corn snakes and tree boas, who grip and use concertina locomotion (a method by which the body is extended while the posterior is anchored, then the anterior is anchored and the posterior drawn forwards, where it anchors and the process repeats). We had to leave at 4 (the refuge closes at 4), and we hung out and had Phillipino food, which was delicious, especially my pepper-squid. Often, squid feels like eating an innertube, but this was just wonderfully tender.

 

Day 3: We got up early again, and set out after some brief trips to Kmart and Guam Hardwood (the hardware store) for supplies. We set up the self-standing perches next to the back of the building, then had lunch. The prior night's field collection was donated to us, about 8 snake, including a dead baby about 40 cm long. We painted up snakes (crosses at 1/8 SVL intervals, so we'd have points to track for digitizing), which was suprisingly easy given their nasty dispostions. We used gape gages to measure the dead baby's gape (since nobody has ever actually quantified gape in snakes before), then we went outside to do testing. Bruce was on the roof with one camera for an overhead view, Brian had another camera for an end-on view, Steve took notes, and I handled the snakes. We got in a good 2 hours or so before we had to go. We dashed off and had some good indian food, including these shake-like things called Mango Lassais, then came right back to the refuge to do night collection with a Rapid Response Team that we being trained. Bruce and Steve went with one group and Brian and I with another. Brian and I split off from the group, and walked for about 2-3 miles. Brian saw the first snake, but once I knew what to look for, I spotted 5 more. We ended up at a memorial thingy on the side of the road, where we found a 1.1m snake on the ground (all the others had been in trees, mostly tanguntangun, a mimosa-like introduced tree). After that, we found a few more and went roading (driving slowly along the road at night looking for snakes either crossing or basking), which netted two more, also about a meter long. Then we went back to the hotel room and crashed at 1 am. Below are pics of the perch setup, the dead baby snake being gaped, and the snakes in ziplock bags prior to being sorted. The ziplocks contain *more* than enough air for the snakes to last over 24 hours (due to their low metabolism) and their transparency makes for great ease of handling. Below are pics of the perch, the gape measurement, and snakes in bags.

 

Day 4: We woke up around 8, and took our time since we can't do tests until 1pm, when the shadow of the building covers the perch so it won't cook the snakes. It was rainy, and when we got to the fieldstation it was crawling with officials of dozens of agencies. Turns out a boatful of illegal immigrants from China landed last night, and they'd caught some but were looking for the others. Bruce and Steve said they'd seen a pair of people walk past them while night-collecting last night, without any headlamps or anything, just walking down the road from the refuge in the near-total darkness. Because of the rain and the officals, we couldn't test, so we painted up more snakes, futzed with the cameras, and started setting up a version of the gap-bridging test (to see how far they can stretch between branches as a consequence of the elongate tendons mentioned earlier). I got bitten by a 80cm one on the right thumb, and it hung on, quickly moving it's jaws in the same "jaw walk" they use to swallow prey to ram my thumb into the back of it's mouth, where the fangs are. The bite was suprisingly strong, since most snakes have rather weak jaw muscles. We got it off me, and I never developed any envenomation symptoms (which would have been patheticly mild anyway due to the weakness and the fact it's mostly evolved to work on lizards). After that, we went to the Guam mall for lunch and tried two collecting sites in the city. Because of the rats there, the snakes apparently get bigger in the city, we didn't find any ourselves, since the heavy rain rather interfered with covering ground well. Below is a skink, probably of genus Carlia, that Steve caught.

 

Day 5: We got up at 6:30 am and went to the field station. It was raining heavily again, so we did more setup work and painted more snakes, during which time a 1.2m snake bit me on the right index finger through a cloth bag while I was returning it to said bag (snake bags are the usual method of storing snakes when they aren't in cages, since the darkness and closeness of the fabric keeps them calm). Again, it bit hard but I prevent it from pulling my finger into the fangs, so it wasn't any worse than any of the countless other snakebites I've had. We ate some PBJ, which was our lunch every day for the rest of the trip, and then gave up because of the rain and went to do touristy stuff. Apparently, there was a cluster of vendors called "Chamorro village", so we went there and shopped a bit. I bought a few gifts for Gemma and some shells. Then we found a place selling mounted Coconut crabs, covered in resin. For those that don't know what these are, imagine a hermit crab without a shell, but a moderately hard abdomen. Now feed that little crab about 2 lbs of anabolic steroids every day, until you have a monster with a 14" leg span and claws that can rip open a coconut. The largest ever found had a leg span of over 3 feet, and they are the largest terrestrial crustracean in the world. I've always thought crustaceans look cool, and this thing looked like something out of Starship Troopers. Bruce liked them too, so we haggled them down to $250 for the pair (Guam uses the US dollar since it's a territory). Then we visited an art store run by the artist himself, and spent a long while talking. I was futzing with some stuff on the desk, and he asked me to pass him a pair of blocks that were there. As I did, I put them together to form a tetrahedron (3-sided pyramid, all sides equal), since that just seemed to work, and he was dumbfounded. Apparently most people can't solve it, and nobody had ever solved it that fast before. Major ego boost. Afterwards, we had Chamorro BBQ, and lounged in the hotel room. Below is a pic of the coconut crab, with a standard Pilot pen for scale.

 

Day 6: It was a gloomy day, and reports said there'd be lots of thunderstorms due to a tropical storm parked over Guam, so we played tourist again. First, we went shopping for groceries, then Bruce and Brian bought stuff for their daughters. Then we went back to Chamorro village, where I had some lovely chocolate with a spicy filling (Pica filling, iirc), which, despite what you'd expect, tasted very good. Then, at the gold store, the lady behind the counter told us there was a guy who comes on wednesdays (when there's a huge vendor fair with outdoor BBQ and music) who sells jewlery made from brown tree snake vertebrae. Obviously, we were quite enthused, and she called him to be sure he'd be there for the fair. After that, we visited the artist shop again, where Bruce gave him a shirt he'd gotten of petroglyphs in CA, since the guy liked petroglyphs. Bruce bought some art, and I did too (albeit a small piece) and a carved coconut crab keychain. We returned to the hotel and had a walk on the beach, during which I found some nifty shells and a dog skull (there are a *lot* of strays in Guam). Brian cooked yellowfin tuna steaks for dinner (he's an excellent cook), and we returned to the refuge (since now we have a key to get in whenever we want) so we could walk the road at night again, this time with more emphasis on videotaping movement in natural vegetation than on capture for experiments. We saw a LOT of <i>Bufo marinus</i> (the cane toad, an invasive pest that's been introduced all over the world), most about 7 inches body length. The males made a deep trill when picked up, probably a release call (which communicates "get off me and stop trying to mate, I'm a male too!"). We found 10 snakes, filmed all of them, and captured 5. All 5 had stomach contents (retrieved by palpation, aka squeezing the snake behind the stomach and moving your hand forard until the contents pop out), and 3 were fresh (probably from tonight), 2 geckoes and a skink, all very small relative to the snake. This corresponds with the idea that the snakes are getting smaller and hungrier now that all the plentiful birds are gone. We got to observe two feeding attempts, both on geckos, one which failed and one which succeeded. In the later, I noticed that a snake we'd stopped taping because it stopped moving was actually very near a 2 inch SVL gecko. It's head was positioned about 120 degrees around the branch (which was about 1/2" diam) from the gecko, and actually very close to the tip of the gecko's tail. The gecko was resting head-down on a near-vertical branch, and after a moment's wait, the snake struck and caught it. The gecko bit the snake on the head near the back, around the quadrate (the articulated upper-jaw bone that helps snakes expand their jaws so wide, and gives vipers their characteristic head shape), but the snake quickly jaw-walked the gecko's torso to the back of the mouth and chewed in the venom. After a while (maybe 3 minutes) the gecko went limp, and even though the long axis of the gecko was perpendicular to that of the snake, the snake swallowed it sideways easily. In fact, most of the gut contents that were intacts were "folded" like that, indicating similar consumption and that the snake is eating prey nowhere near the maximum size. During the rest of the night, we killed 3 others we caught (by decap, since it's the only way out there) because they are, after all, an invasive species. In the process of trying to catch another, we nearly tore down a tanguntangun tree, the recoil of which sent the snake rocketing through the night. I also waded through a lot of plants with a LOT of thorns. Since I was the the carrier or the stomach contents we retrieved (at least the fresh ones), my line for the night was "I've walked a mile with partially-digested lizards in my pocket". We got to bed around midnight.

 

Day 7: We woke up at 8, got ready, and went to the refuge. We noticed the waves were really high on our way in, so we stopped to take pics, and a group pic. Since it was Sunday, we had to get Emily, a ranger, to let us into the building. We euthanized 5 snakes immediately, got gape measurements on two of them, and cut up others for determining center of mass and muscle cross-sectional area. After lunch, we went outside to start testing, which Brian and I doing most of the handling. We got video of all the snakes (about 20 at this point) crawling on a 1 5/8" pipe both with and without duct-tape covering it, plus a snake Emily found that Brian caught, dubbed "Rocky" both because he seems to have brain damage (one pupil doesn't react to light) and because he was found in a rock crevase. On our way back, we dined at another Thai restaurant, which apparently didn't agree with me. Below are pics of the waves and our group pic (L to R:Me, Brian, Steve, Bruce).

 

Day 8: We woke up, had breakfast, and got ready. We left early so Bruce could prepare for a seminar he was giving that day, a sort of return favor for everyone helping us out. While he was doing so, Steve and Brian did more work cutting up snakes for Center-of-mass, while I gave the live ones drinks of water and then assisted Bruce. The presentation was at one and lasted until 2:40, after which we ate lunch and the USGS guys donated a snake they'd been hanging onto for no clear reason, a HUGE male, 1.8 meters long, and a total length of 2.2 m (7.5 feet), who we called "jumbo" or "collosus". We painted it up, tested it, then took some shots of it and each of us standing behind it. We got Gerry (the head ranger) to do it too, and got a shot, but then he dropped his coffee mug, which startled the snake (this species is very visual) and it tried to bite him. Unfortunately, I didn't get a pic, because his expression was priceless. Then we packed up and went to the mall for food. I also bought some foamcore from an office-supply store in order to pack my giant crab. Below are pics of me with the giant male, and a size comparison between it and one of the hatchlings. The marks on the pole are at 20 cm increments for scale, and the pole is 1 5/8" diam. The baby snake is 40 cm SVl, and 10 grams, while the big male is 183 cm svl and 1 kg.

 

Day 9: We got up early and raced out to Andersen AFB, b/c the USDA guys who work there said we could scavenge snakes from their trapping efforts, which include 1900 traps. We stopped to buy some odd fruit on the way, none of which was very good, and had to wait at the visitor's center for a bit while they got security stuff done for us. We saw several B-1 lancers and some fighters parked before we headed to the snake area, which also contained snakes used for Tim Mattheis' study. He's trying to control them using acetomenophine (tylenol) poisoning, since in snakes it converts hemoglobin to methhemoglobin, which can't carry oxygen, and the snake dies within 14 hours. Anyhow, the USDA guys gave us 10 snakes, plus one huge but very unhealthy and emaciated one. We raced back to the refuge, got a lot of measuring and snake-painting done, ate lunch, and launched into a 5-hour taping spree in which we polished off the current perch, the 3/4" perch and the 3.5" perch (all horizontal). As we were taking it down, we saw a frigate bird overhead. We returned to our hotel and ate a buffet dinner (which included sushi) in the restaurant in the lobby, which had a huge art print by the artist in Chamorro village. After that, we moved our room to a different one (I dunno why they wanted us to move, but I didn't care that much). Brian gave me a 9-piece mix-and-match frog puzzle to solve, which I did in 4 tries over about 5 minutes.

 

Day 10: Typhoon Nabi is over the island and, though weak, it's effectively shut us down for the day. We did a quick errand run to buy a firewire cable, a wireless card (which never worked and nearly destroyed Bruce's computer), and to visit a carving store. When we came back, we noticed the deadline for abstract submissions for the annual SICB (Society of Integrative and Comparative Biologists) meeting was soon, so we quickly banged out an abstract for a presentation I'll be doing there. Because of all the weather trouble, we decided to extend our stay to the 10th (6 extra days), but Brian and Steve had obligations and couldn't stay, so it'd just be Bruce and me. We had dinner at Carl's Jr (which Bruce practically lived off when he was post-docing in california), and I called Gemma.

 

Day 11: We woke up, got ready, and went to the refuge. We painted snakes and euthanized some, and set up the 6 inch horizontal perch. I forgot the bread for making sandwiches for lunch, so we improvised as best possible. We did some testing on the perch, and none except the smallest snakes would cooperate. Then a hard rain from the typhoon rolled in and soaked us, forcing us to abandon taping for the rest of the day. We went to that nice Phillipino restaurant again, and I had the same pepper squid. Apparantly they like us, as they gave us free desserts. When we got back, we found there were only parking spaces on the top level, and since we'd been forced to bring the snakes with us when we abandoned the refuge for the day, we had to smuggle them upstairs and leave them in the bathtubs overnight.

 

Day 12: We got up early and snuck the snakes out of the hotel. When we got to the refuge, we immediately started testing, in spite of the lack of shade and fierce sun. We had to constantly spray down the perch to keep it cool, and keep the snakes under shade. By lunch, we were already exhausted. After lunch we just did some runs through grass to show terrestrial lateral undulation for comparison, and practically collapsed afterwards. We went back to the hotel and just had dinner at the Thai place across the street.

 

Day 13: We got up and went to the refuge, where we found out that the generator had broken, and the entire place was running on solar only. We did some more preservation work, and then began messing with the gap-bridging setup. Suprisingly, the snakes eagerly performed for us, and we were able to start testing right away. We got good data for most of the snakes, and when put into the spreadsheet, the r-squared for SVL vs gap is .88 (meaning that there's a very strong correlation, and that 88% of the variation is accounted for). Steve will probably present a poster at the SICB meeting along with my presentation. Unfortunately, we forgot to charge our camera batteries, and those ran down at the very end, but it didn't hurt us too badly as we were losing daylight then anyway. We took the snakes back to the hotel again, and went out for some nice Korean BBQ of sorts. Afterwards, we sorted and packed stuff, since Brian and Steve left the next day. Below is a photo of the setup for gap bridging and a snake doing so.

 

Day 14: Brian and Steve left before dawn, since the flight was at 6:30 am and they needed to be there 2 hours ahead of time. We had a bit of a slow morning, leaving at 11 and stopping in K-mart for supplies. We got to the refuge at about noon, when we set up the gap bridging test and tested Rocky, Collosus, and 3 others. Then we had lunch and euthanized all of them except one exceptional snake, 8-30.8, aka "Yellow brown". We measured maximum bending laterally, ventrally and dorsally, then measured gape and cut the snakes up for center of mass and future examination of muscle cross-sectional area. Because we expected to be locked out at any minute (and for over 24 hours, since the next day is labor day), we worked in a frenzy to get everything done and get the snakes outside. By that point, though, there was only an hour of daylight left, and we were so exhausted we called it a day. We went back and ate Indian, enjoying a lovely buffet and some Mango Lassais.

 

Day 15: It's Labor day, and we're locked out of the refuge offices (though we can still test outside), so we're not leaving until noon, in order to guarantee some shade to retreat from the sun (for us and the snakes). However, it was a rainy day, and too cool to test the snakes, so instead we played around with the idea of getting them to climb ropes. In the wild, they often climb the guy wires on electricity poles, and cause blackouts when they get up there. We measured the angles of some of the guy wires on the way in, and apparently that attracted the attention of Andersen AFB security (the road to the refuge borders the base), so a pair of black vans drove by and scoped us out, but didn't stop. When we got to the refuge and started playing around with ropes, we hit upon an idea for the incline, namely making it adjustable, raised and lowered by a pulley and rope system. We figured that if we put the snakes on a horizontal pipe, then raised it, they might actually crawl, since they refuse to do so on any pipe that's already at an angle. Not only will this be great here, but can be replicated back home at lab to hopefully get data from the corn snakes faster. After our breakthrough, we ate dinner at the mall, and I did some quick trig when we got back for camera angles and such. We packed up our coconut crabs, which should be pretty well protected in our suitcases. Tommorrow, we have a big hit of snakes at Andersen, as well as a lot of testing and preservation to do, but after that, things should slow down.

 

Day 16: We got up extra-early and euthanized most of our snakes in the room before leaving. When we got to the refuge, we found out that due to the cloudiness, the solar panels hadn't been generating enough power and the batteries were down to 40%, so all power had to be shut off. However, we couldn't stop work, so we did curvature photos outside, and put on headlamps and did sectioning and preservation in the dark. When we finished, we called Andersen and found out they had checked 75 traps and gotten 50 snakes, some of which were large, but that we couldn't come get them until tommorrow morning. After that it just rained continuously, and eventually we gave up and went back to the hotel.

 

Day 17: Today, we got up early and drove right to Andersen to pick up the snakes. We got 6 that were over 1.2 meters, plus 3 small ones that a USGS biologist needed for her experiments. When we got to the refuge, we went right out back and took advantage of the overcast conditions to shoot incline footage of yellow-brown. Then we euthanized some more snakes and did more sectioning and preservation. We painted up 4 of the new snakes, ranging from 1.29 to 1.6 meters, and did gap bridging until the sunlight was too low. After that, we went to the Wednesday festival at Chamorro village, where we bought jewlery made from brown tree snake vertebrae and ate some delicious BBQ squid.

 

Day 18: I had a very weird dream, in which I was in a 1/5th scale version of Chamorro village that was infested with green anoles with 10" SVLs. They were being preyed upon by normal-sized mangrove monitors, and there was a Fiji Island Iguana in the mix and a prehensile-tailed skink under the sheets of the bed. After I woke up, we went to the Guam Dept of Agriculture to get permits for the preserved specimens (all we needed was a certificate of origin). While we were there, we heard about some snakes in outdoor cages in the complex, so we went to take a look. There was an outdoor cage with 4 large snakes, 4 monitors, and a live coconut crab (very cool-looking). We went to ask about the snakes and just happened to bump into David G., who I contacted off LJ about the trip long before we actually got there in preparation. He said he'd ask Gil, who used the snakes for demos, if we could have the big ones, and in the meantime we ran some errands. When we got back, he had them already bagged for us. We then went to the field station, euthanized yellow-brown, and painted up these snakes, one of whom was even larger than Collosus (by only 6 cm, though: 188 cm SVL). We then put those two and two we borrowed from the USGS through the gap trials, one of whom looked like a taipan in coloration. As a mixed blessing, a backup generator arrived, which gave us power but was so unholy loud that we had to yell just to hear each other even when only 5 feet away. When we looked at some out our preserved material, we found that some had been rotted by a special fungus that has evolved to grow in formalin. We lost 2 body segments of the big skinny guy, but the rest looked fine, so we used isopropyl as a hopeful sterilizer and temporary holding solution. Then we tested more until the sun went down, in the process identifying another potential great climber like yellow-brown. We ate dinner at the Guam Premier Outlet, where I had ramen and then this *awesome* dessert which was bannanas, whipped cream, and chcocolate syrup wrapped in a crepe. We got back to the hotel, euthanized everyone except the potential star climber, and I talked to Gemma while they were going down. After that we worked until midnight getting everything sectioned and into formalin. Below is a shot of the sunset off Ritidian.

 

Day 19: The last day. David G. came by in the morning, and we all had a long chat about the island, snakes, us, him, research, etc, which was very enlightening, especially on the concept of brown tree snake pheremones, which apparentlys have been isolated, but the snakes will only follow the trail if not presented with visual stimuli. Then we dashed off to the refuge, and went out back to test the last snake. The backup generator was loud as ever, but we got 7 angles done with the snake, then euthanized it. We bid everyone goodbye, and stopped on our way out for some scenery photos. There, a guy who'd been visiting Richard at the refuge caught up with us, and it turns out he's from a German nature film company (called "nano" or something) and was very interested in what we were doing. He and Bruce exchanged emails, and we went back to the hotel to prep this last specimen and pack. Gerry mentioned something about checking our bags the night before, and when we called to return our rental car, they *very* strongly recommended it (on account of swarms of Japanese tourists with souveniers checking them in the morning). So we had a frenzy of packing, and found out when we got there that not only was the check-in process on the day off worse than even the rental car people told us, but that our flight had been moved 30 minutes earlier (so it's a bloody good thing we went, or we'd've missed our plane). We stopped in Guam Outlet's foodcourt on the way back, and then crashed in preparation for our now 6 am flight. Below are pics of cool clouds at the place the documentary guy caught up with us, and the sunset from our balcony.

 

Day 20: We got up, got ready and left at about 4 am. We returned the car, and then spent a little while waiting until we got on the flight from Guam to Honolulu. I read for most of the flight, and Bruce was feeling ill. Honolulu airport was nifty; it has an open-air design, so you get the fresh air, and we got to see a Hawaii sunset. Then we got on board for the trip from Hawaii to Los Angeles, during which I read the whole time except for sleeping the last hour. By this point we'd been traveling for about 18 hours. We waited anxiously at LAX and when we got on the flight I dropped right off to sleep. We got in at Cincinnati at 3:30 pm of the same day we left (saturday), in spite of having traveled over 24 hours. Bruce's wife picked us up, and we dropped stuff off at lab before they dropped me off at home. Oddly, because of the sleep on the plane, I couldn't get to sleep, so I futzed around online until midnight, then slept for 14 hours. Unfortunately, one of my coconut crab's legs broke off on the trip, but I fixed it so you can't even tell thanks to some epoxy.

 

Mokele

[JPQuiceno]

Very cool. I wish I could go to guam. Seems the people are very friendly. A question for you:

 

Does the Cocunut crab grow larger than that? Because holy MOG, that thing is HUGE.

 

I swear on my life, if I saw one of those things on my bed one day (I know it wont happen), I would litteraly shit my pants. Something about that crab creeps me out.

 

/me hides

[dorcus]

nice pics!!! those snakes look so cool! I've been to Taiwan, but i rarely see snakes there... Perhaps i'll go to Guam sometime...

[Sayonara]

I can't decide whether the crab is cooler than Mokele's facial furniture.

 

(And I promise I'll actually read the thread when I get home from work )