15:12, Tuesday, 23 October, 2012

Let the wildlife stories commence!

For lack of a good way to organize things, I think I’ll go by size, starting with the littles.  One day after it had rained and we were stuck in camp, I took a short walk around the perimeter, and happened upon two little dung beetles rolling a rounded piece of fecal matter (A.K.A. poop).  Squatting down, I watched them for a long time.  Dung beetles are anything but graceful; they will often crash-land into the dinner table at night, and you wonder how they manage because they literally cannot get off their backs without help.  But seeing them do what they do best is a different story – grace certainly still isn’t the word, but their hustle is every basketball coach’s dream. These little guys are incredible!  Working together in a rough and tumble fashion, they zip right along while rolling something five times their size.  One pushes on one side while the other rolls from a different side, sometimes guiding it backwards, legs in non-stop motion.  All at once the main pusher will be swept up by the rotating mass and tumble down the other, but undeterred it immediately rights itself like a football player jumping back from the tackle.  At this time the other assumes the main pushing position, and the one who took the fall goes to the back or side.  Roll roll roll roll roll until eventually the momentum of the ball overtakes the main pusher and it’s lifted off its feet, but bruises ignored the two merely switch positions and keep going.  I was so fascinated that I went to get a stopwatch and some measuring tape.  I measured their distance for one minute and did a little math to discover that it would take them 33 hours to go 1 kilometer.  That might not sound impressive, but this is not accounting for all of the grass in the way that veered them off course or made them stumble extra times.  The fact that they are rolling something so much larger than they are should also be considered.  I’m impressed.  When Charlie discovered the calculations I had left on the table, I think he was under the impression that I had just defined a new level of nerdom, while Julia said that this is the sort of thing that happens when one is stuck in camp for too long due to rain.  

I had a fun time chasing a little frog around my tent on another day’s night; I think he entered while I was out brushing my teeth and had left the tent unzipped.  Fast little bugger!  I have also been having a case of the toads.  Stepping along in my tent, and I suddenly hear an odd chirrup.  Quickly remove my foot and feel where I had stepped; must have imagined the sound, clearly the lump is just another dirt clump beneath.  But later the same thing happens, and I investigate the lump more thoroughly until it starts moving.  I felt terrible for having stepped on whatever it was, and of course had to make sure it was alright, so I nudged it along beneath the canvas.  I couldn’t just go out and lift up the bottom of my tent since it might be a snake (although its shape was most un-snakelike, and I suspected a lizard of some sort), so I strategically kept nudging until it was pushed to where I could unzip my screen and raise the canvas edge from inside to see what was coming out.  An adorable pair of toad eyes looked quizzically up at me.  Well, I suppose beneath a human-inhabited tent is indeed a good hideout from predators, but I am going to have to be more careful where I step!  Just this morning I had two under there, and played matchmaker by nudging their little moving forms toward one another.  I don’t think there was much chemistry; they shortly moved apart. 

In fact, all of camp has been having a case of the toads.  There was one night I must have run into six or seven on my walk back from dinner, each a little heart attack waiting to happen as they don’t move until you are right upon them.  These are some sizable toads, and their eyes glow mysteriously beneath a flashlight.  A particularly large one gave me an immense start, but I was delighted to see what it was, and watched it hop about in the beam.  It ran smack into a large weed and was lifted off its back legs, nearly tumbling forward to do a somersault, and causing me to laugh out loud. Clumsy little fellow!  It landed back on its feet and gave one huge blink as though still processing what had just happened. 

That same night another was clamoring into the shoe I had left to block the hole where my zippers join.  I carefully moved the shoe aside so as not to scare him, and I think it provided a nice shelter for the night.

Charlie and I stayed long after dinner one night watching a bunch of tiny red ants moving little pieces of chapati about.  Their organized chaos is fascinating as they run this way and that and somehow end up working together.  Some of them are exceptionally lazy however, and end up riding atop the chapati like queens on those carried bed-whatevers.  A little black species also helps me clean my tent sometimes, swarming and eating dead bugs that have fallen to the ground.  Ants aren’t often cited in the category of decomposers, but they belong there!

I saw a millimeter worm!  Very probably a baby inch worm, but maybe even the worms are converting to the metric system (America, even nature’s doing it).  It was fascinating that this itty bitty measurer could as yet produce such a drastic little hillock while millimetering across my arm.

I’ve seen some gorgeous new species of butterfly lately.  One just like the cabbage butterflies back home, but about ten times the size, fluttering about above the river.  Another stunned me as it loop-de-looped like a miniature fluffy white bed-sheet with orange tips.  I didn’t get to enjoy its beauty long, however, because a paradise fly catcher with a gorgeously long tail swooped directly in front of my face to carry it off.  I watched it alight in the tree with the beauty sticking out of its mouth; lucky for the butterfly it must not have tasted very good, and soon was released to fly about as though nothing had happened.

I think that offers a nice lead into birds, which I have been learning so much about from Benson and Wilson.  I can now identify a fair few in this country leading in bird biodiversity.  More stories tomorrow.