The Weather's a-Changing

Things have changed down here since we got back from vacation. My group has moved on to a new monkey group! This new group, Silver, is a much larger group than our previous one and it has many more adults that we need to take data on. We've been spending most of our days trying to get to know the faces, habits, movements, and territory of Silver. Their territory is about a 45 minute walk down a 3km trail, so quite a ways. I'm tired and hot by the time I get to work! This also means that our days are longer, much longer. The morning shift has to wake up at 4:45 AM, and the afternoon shift works until 8pm. Their territory is also riddled with swamps and a decently big river, that I had to cross three times in one afternoon with the water up to my waist. Every day since working with Silver, my boots, socks, and feet have been soaked. But working with this new group is at least a change from the routine of the old one. Soon, we will be starting to dart the monkeys. This involves a blow dart-like device with some sticky stuff on the ends of the darts. The aim is to have the dart blow past the monkey collecting some hair for DNA analysis. Nobody knows how this will work exactly, so it's a very trial and error kind of thing. Boi and I have been picked to be the preliminary dart team. We practiced one night in the kitchen hitting random objects, books, pots and pans, each other, and I wasn't horrible. I'm looking forward to getting to shoot some monkeys soon.

When we were on vacation, a Puma attacked and killed a deer very near to our place of residence. So close in fact that a couple people went out and watched it devour its prey. I'm actually sad I missed it. For a while we were all on high alert at night for more puma and jaguar sightings. One jaguar was sighted in the 5 minute walk from my house to the Sheraton. Things were pretty exciting around the jungle. Sadly, for me probably not for you who is reading this worrying, there have been no recent sightings. As for me, lately I have seen an array of wildlife. Besides the usual monkeys and coatis, the tegus (the big lizards) have come fully out of hibernation and are everywhere, I have seen 3 snakes-2 dangerous coral snakes and one regular big snake that was maybe 2 meters long, and a cool woodpecker with a yellow head and a red face. I think that's all.

It's been hotter than hell here recently, some days reaching well into the 90s with lots of humidity, as we round into summer down here. The good news is is that it is still raining a lot. It poured today for a few minutes in fact. I can't believe it's already the middle of November! Three months down, three months to go. Around the 20th, my friend Angelica and I are planning a little trip across the border again into Brasil to see the movie New Moon (there is no movie theater in my tiny town of Puerto Iguazu here), no matter what language it is in. And then before I know it, it'll be time for another short vacation (not sure where we're going yet). I'm also starting to think about where to travel to when I'm finished here in February. Hmmm.. I think that's all that's new down here in Iguazu!