Well, shock the world, I'm posting again. After two straight days of me either not having enough fun stuff to talk about or just being surly vis-a-vis my blog, I'm back and ready to... well... I don't know what.

Might as well do what I always do: recount the day.

After my brief image/post last night, I finally succumbed to the pressures of Dr. Tucker to join him in the lounge for a few beers. He is a jolly sort. The intellectual, slightly dry, but always good for an interesting discussion type of scientist. Actually, I get the feeling that he's starting to drop the stodgy scientist exterior around a lot of us and is starting to become fun, like he might even end up on the HHI at some point. At least that's what I though when I saw his beer tab.

It turns out that he has pretty much been blowing away everyone for the past week. Locals, young jock-y Bryson, me, you name it, he was far ahead. Good for him. Science needs that.

So we proceed to sit and drink and discuss politics and drink and then archaeology and drink and Bryson talks about the "crazy shit mafioso shit that those Turks do." It's extremely odd to have a conversation with a preeminent NASA researcher on one hand and a fast-talking, cocky, swearing, savant-ish tree-climber on the other. It was like some awful Dinner For Five episode or something.

Either way, I had four beers and I think I might have been wasted. Four beers? Are you kidding me? That's what dehydration and two weeks of sobriety will do to you I guess. Regardless, I got home at midnight and woke up with a bit of a headache this morning. Hangovers, even really mild ones like this, are not fun when it's 75 degrees and sticky when you wake up to howlers outside your window for the second time this trip.

Whatever, I shook it off quickly. The new Argos arrived (arrove?) today. They are a little younger than the current batch and look like rookies. I've been here 10 days and I already think newcomers look soft. The look like nice kids, though they'll have to work their butts off to surpass the current genius-crop.

Of course, when new people arrive here, the animals seem to know it and like to show off. Recall the ocelot on my second day here. Well today it was a pair of sloths right there in front of us. They are the most surreal creature: a cute face that looks like a starwars alien, massive 3" claws, and this fluid, deliberate, molasses movement that is hypnotic to watch.

So yes, I did love the sloths, and you can see some pictures of them hanging out with us here:

Now here is the thing I didn't like. These sloths were found by a local Panamanian guy who lives here. He had heard that our group liked the last sloth they saw. So he cuts off a 20 foot branch and brings them down to the docks on it, one on each end. They didn't seem really happy about it and the man was sort of grabbing one sloth and holding him up for us to see. The other sloth was older and grayer and seemed to be growling mournfully. It felt really exploitative and I don't want to hear any apologist bullshit about "He's a native Panamanian guy, he knows how to handle these animals, he's been doing it for a while." That's crap. It's one thing to show animals to people, that's important and the animal can suck it up for a minute and be gazed upon and studied. It's another thing when you manhandle them like they were lettuce and don't stop when the poor things just want to go back to their trees.

I don't know, maybe it's because sloths look so damn human, way way more than monkeys and gorillas. Their cute faces probably caused me to feel worse than, say, if someone had kicked a monkey that threw poop on them. Here, take a look at this picture to see what I mean. It's a little sad, be warned. But don't you just really want the sloth to go back to his tree? (Picture)

Ok, end all the green "Save nature" stuff. But you gotta agree with me on this.

I also got a bit ahead of the curve on work today and so spent the last few hours watching the live broadcasts up on Donato Trail. It's a really beautiful site up there and watching live TV in such a situation is a wild experience. The canopy climbers have their ropes at least 150 feet up into the trees. I have been promised at least one trip up there. I don't know how our Argos and researchers stay up in the woods all day and remain "on" for the audience. It's a learned skill I suppose. If you have the National Geographic Channel, I expect you all to watch tomorrow at 1pm. Keep an eye out for Dr. Mike Kaspari, he's starting to crack I think, you'll see.

And so went my day. On the way back from the broadcast site, I had to walk directly under a howler monkey who was going off about something. It was probably the most tense 30 seconds of my whole trip, just waiting for the wet smack of feces to hit me as I hustled by. I escaped unharmed.

Well, tonight I refuse to be sucked into the vortex of pseudo-intellectual drinking games with 55 year old satellite data analysts and 19 year old spaz outs. Luckily those two have gone out to lead the Argos on a nighttime search for tarantulas. Here's the thing, our arthropod expert, Randy Morgan, is off the island for the night. These other two have gone on a couple bug hunts so they feel confident taking ten 14 year olds into the woods at night to look for poisonous spiders. And if something were to happen out there, our new doctor just came in today, and he's a radiologist. So if anyone out here needs a bone set he's your man. Great.

Ok, enough hoo hah, off to bed or at least some semblance of.

Written by Orion Smith on Jan 29, 2004 at 8:47pm

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