Hi all,
I’m ‘out of the field’ as we field biologists say! Madagascar is amazing, we were visited on camp by crowned lemurs every day, who were very noisy and often stole our bread! It was impossible to walk more than a few metres without finding a gecko or chameleon or snake, I turned out to be quite nifty at catching and handling all the above (not the lemurs) except for the chameleons which are scary little buggers and best left in peace in their trees. They are very cool to watch though! I did get bitten by a Blasydactylus gecko, lots of blood ensued and apparently I very politely said "please can someone take this off me, it’s biting me quite a lot!" Probably serves me right for catching it but that was what we were there for…most beasties were quietly returned to their habitats after being measured and marked with hot pink nail varnish. The others sadly met their end in local 70% rum…if I’m ever specimened that’s the way I want to go.
We also went frog catching which I loved, frogs being some of my favourite beasties! Also butterfly catching which was really very difficult but I managed to catch a few. There were tree frogs (Boophis) and Pikadena and some enormous Pharmacophagus butterflies (Huge humming bird sized black, white and red ones).
Luckily I was there for the very end of the dry and windy season. We only had two cyclones, one being the day I left so the walk out of camp was very wet and the boat ride (in a local pirogue sailing boat) back to Diego was long and cold and wet. We shared the boat with several locals, about 50 empty crates of beer (from our camp!) a dead wild boar, some chickens and Puppy the camp dog who kept rolling his eyes and looked rather seasick.
I’m going to write a proper blog and put my photos somewhere sensible very soon, for now I have to go and read all my post and try and prepare myself to go to Australia in three days time! I’m also still trying get used to electric lights, cars, hot water and cooking on a hob…I can now bake bread on an open fire, I’m pretty damn good at it too!
XXX Sarah
