Last day/ Babies can kill

So my last day in Gamboa and I went to the greenhouses to do my last round of experiments. I use some butterflies that are in a net enclosure that doesn't really have a proper door, basically there is a net that overlaps and its held by a hook and there is a lot of extra net on the ground so the butterflies won't scape. So I open the cage to get in and I saw a brown round thing, I then look closer and it was a small pretty snake rolled, I look even closer, and realize it was a fer-de-lance (talla-x in Colombia) so yeah!! finally I ran into one of these cool snakes. It was not aggressive at all, but I had to be reaaaally careful because I was in flip-flops and these babies can be even more dangerous than adults because they still don't know how to regulate the venom glands in a bite so you can get a huge amount -by the way these snakes will kill within 4 hours if there is no proper medical attention-. So I went for a big long tool to press it against the ground and put it in a jar, but in the process the snake slipped and escaped...too bad because I guess everyone is going to have to use boots for a few days ;)


woooooot to Mexico tomorrow!

Tree fall

Little story but pretty neat I think. The other day I was working in the greenhouses which are located just next to the forest. I started hearing a noise, like if someone was hitting a tree, then I heard a few cracks, like wooden cracks, I walked over the forest and saw a pretty large part of the canopy started moving, well a huge tree started to fall! it was massive and it destroyed a bunch of other smaller trees on its way down!! I ran over quickly to check the whole scene and the tree had a big sting-less bee hive and the little things were pretty alarmed, hahaha. Next thing I'm doing is removing a bunch of these bees from my hair!! Oh well now I know, if this happens in the middle of the forest you pretty much depend on your luck and senses because this happens really fast and you would need to run when you start hearing the wood cracking. Glad the bees were sting-less because I still found bees in my hair the next day!

I know I know my last post was a long time ago!!1

Ok quick update... the end of this field season is about to end...feeling sad as I did last year when leaving this amazing place. I will soon post pictures and perhaps a few more videos.

Lolo -our cat- stole the hearts of everyone in the house (Laura, Sergio, and me), besides being a cool cat, he is super well behaved and pretty much he earned the trip to Colombia, yes, Laura decided to take him to Colombia since Sergio and I pretty much had no certainty of whether we could offer him a nice place to live in FL or Canada.



I moved to a new house, my new roommates are a girl from south Spain, an American, an a guy from an indigenous Panamanian from Darién. They help in a Harpie eagle project, pretty cool. Again I got lucky and I have the best room in the house, yeah!

Beside this, and a few wasp and ant bites, it's been a lot of work lately and getting ready for Mexico, yes I'm going to give a talk in a scientific meeting in south Mexico, so it will be meeting and then a couple of days backpacking south Mexico, yeah!!

Derby Day

So there is a big traditional day that they celebrate in one of the stations here. It is called the Derby day. It is held at Barro Colorado Island and it's all about racing. Why racing, well there is a big horse race every year in Kentucky which is called the Kentucky Derby so here we pretty much have our own Derby but with big toads! yeah we race big toads and bet and everything.

So to make it even more fun the day is full of activities and of course some good alcohol. The boat picked us up at 8AM here in Gamboa, once we got there we chilled for about an hour and then we had a huuuuge brunch, never ate so much food I believe, hahaha it was like 4 heart attacks on a dish. We played volleyball, jump from the boats into the lake, and so on. At about 4pm everybody went to get ready for the race, girls got "fancy" dresses and hats and guys wore shirts and ties. The race was held at the heliport of the island. There were like 8 frogs in total and it was like 2-3 rounds, I didn't pay much attention to the details of the race, I was just having fun. After the race we had a big party until like 5AM, then at 6.30 we took a boat that brought us back to Gamboa. It was an amazing time!

Big boat!

LOLO's first bath!

LOLO, our new pet!!