Confessions of a Dangerous Herpetologist

Coming soon to an island near you: invasive species!

It has been a long week. It was a good week, but I’m definitely glad that it’s the beginning of a long weekend. Three of the days this week have involved waking up early for field work, taking a break midway through the day, and working again until about 11pm. The field work has been at the new closed population area that’s being constructed. This is a large, square area (about 225x225 meters) enclosed by a chain link fence. The fence will be lined with a fine mesh and topped with a “bulge” on both sides. This will prevent snakes from getting in or out, thus the population inside will be isolated (i.e., “closed”).

My main task has been hammering pieces of 1.5 m rebar into the ground along transects running through the study area. Basically, I pick up 13 of those babies and walk through waist-deep vines, hammering them in about every 16 meters. This is made especially enjoyable since the area is loaded with rocks. It’s actually not too bad (plus it gets easier because I have less to carry the farther I get), it’s more that my hand hurts from all the pounding. The point of putting in this rebar is to mark where snake traps will be placed. Also, it allows folks cutting paths through the vegetation to see where they’re going and make a (relatively) straight line. That was going to be my task today, cutting swaths through the plots with a Shindaiwa. Watch out kids: man with a spinning saw at the end of a pole! Unfortunately, mine was having severe idling problems and the engine kept cutting. I was therefore forced to kukri my way by hand through some thick transects to give a clear view for the Shindaiwers.

The condition of the plot is kind of indicative of the overall look of Guam in many places. One would kind of expect tall, thick jungle in the undeveloped areas of the island. In fact, where there is vegetation (apart from grass), it’s mostly stunted trees, low shrubs, and seemingly impenetrable clusters of vines. Some of that has to do with the fact that Guam was creamed during WWII. Much of the vegetation was destroyed, making it necessary (or so they thought at the time) to reseed the island. This, like most reseeding projects at the time, brought even more non-native species to the island, many of which took over. This is especially true for some of the vines and the Tangantangan trees. At least the Army Corp of Engineers didn’t come in and plant a whole bunch of multiflora rose like they did on parts of the east coast (Maryland was where I gained the experience with that crap). That lovely flora is extremely invasive and is covered in very sharp, stout thorns.

The main factor that keeps all the vegetation low on the island is typhoons. Guam is frequently hammered by these storms and they usually level large areas of forest in the process. It’s kind of the same idea as alpine climates where plants get stunted from the extreme weather. Obviously you don’t have the cold conditions to facilitate that here, but the high winds and storm damage have a similar effect.

Before coming here, I heard about the presence of a large number of cane toads (Bufo marinus) on the island. Cane toads (or Marine Toads) are natives of the southern U.S. and into South America, but they have been brought into all sorts of places, such as Australia and Guam. They, like many introduced species, are often brought for the purpose of eliminating some other invasive or pest species. However, they always become a problem themselves. These toads grow quickly, in large numbers, and they become very large. They also eat just about anything that will fit into their mouths, including other cane toads (which would be great if it happened more, seeing that cannibalizing a poisonous cohort can kill them), so many other animals suffer as a result of their introduction. I love amphibians, especially toads (as my good friend Evan would softly say: “I love toads.”), and, even though I know they’re bad, I still think they’re pretty cool. This is made especially true seeing that I haven’t seen any before this week—I’m sure my opinion will change over time, but I doubt I could ever really despise a big toad.

It wasn’t until yesterday that I actually saw a living one. Earlier, I had seen them all over the roads, squashed by passing cars. Their carcasses are literally everywhere along the roads (often next to the bodies of dead boonie dogs—in one half mile stretch of road I saw 4). This gal, who I named “Jumbo,” was hiding under some bushes in the closed population site. She was significantly larger than my hand and her body, when puffed up in a defensive pose, was about the diameter of a softball. Picture an inflated whoopie cushion and that’s the size attained by some of these toads. Last night it was raining and, just in my yard alone, I caught 8 of them. I put them in the sink out back and had a little toad photo shoot, during which one of the males latched onto a female. This guy was amazingly persistent. Whenever another toad hoped on his back (mainly to try and escape the sink, not to push him off), he would let out a release call and squeeze the female harder, which often made her jump. Since she had this guy latched onto her back, she kept losing balance and falling over, often on top of the male. During these incidents, he held on like a champ. I even experimented by picking the male up, which forced him to hold the entire weight of the much larger female. He still held strong. That’s one hell of a grip! I let the toads go soon after and the happy couple probably went on to spawn a whole new progeny of toadlets, who will further overpopulate the island. I’m such a good herpetologist.

Ah, that reminds me of how much I’ve currently sucked at nighttime roadside searches for brown treesnakes. We’ve gone out about 3 times to do the searches and I am the only one out of four to have not seen one damn snake. It probably has less to do with my lack of spotting abilities and more the fact that I’ve just had bad luck. Haldre has informed me that it’s very likely I just didn’t have snakes in the areas where I was searching (said she while thinking, “Man, this guy is BAD!”). The reason I say it's just bad luck, besides trying to justify my ineptitude, is because I have done really well with the barrier searches we’ve done, where I often find snakes in cryptic positions. Also, not to suggest that I'm the man, but I’m pretty good at finding things. Some folks may concur. So, with some luck and a little more focus, I hope to see a damn snake one of these nights!

One of our other activities this week was visiting the local wildlife services and department of agricultural resources (DAR). We got to see some highly (aggressive) endangered species (I was joking about the aggressive part), such as the Micronesian kingfisher. There are only about 40 left in the world, about 5 of which were housed at DAR. We also saw Mariana crows, an endangered fruit bat, and some Guam rails. They also showed us some introduced Ranid frogs (the “true frog” genus, to which Bullfrogs and Green frogs belong), Coqui frogs, and greenhouse frogs. All of those frogs were very recently discovered on the island, probably arriving as stow-aways on imported plant material. Some of them were just discovered a couple weeks ago: invasive species in action.

My birthday was on Wednesday and I had a nice time out on the town with Brent, Haldre, Andy, and Karen. We all went to Ban Thai, an excellent Thai restaurant in downtown Tumon. I was really hungry and ate a lot (big surprise there, I know), which included some panang curry chicken, wonton soup, fried dumplings, Thai iced coffee, and a “Singapore Slinger” (I think that’s what it was called), which Brent bought for me (“My friend here will have a Singapore Slinger.”). We left in a plump and contented state for Haldre’s place, only to be greeted by cake and ice cream. Ohhh yeeeeeeah. Haldre is so awesome for doing that—it was really good chocolate cake, and the ice cream, the first I’ve had since on island, was much appreciated. Speaking of which, ice cream is ridiculously expensive here, albeit expected given that it’s shipped to the island. It runs for about $7/half gallon. And that was basically all we did (good story, Isaac!). Pretty unexciting, but it was nice to be fed in the company of friends. Plus I think my Mom will feel better knowing that someone gave me cake and ice cream, not to mention balloons and party hats.

So, in my fledging effort to get into better shape, I’ve been running pretty consistently, mostly at night. It’s still humid at that time (it always is), but the lack of sun makes it immensely more tolerable. I run about 4 miles each night and I felt really good with tonight’s run. My legs don’t hurt anymore and the cramps (most often on either side of my torso) are mostly absent. I’m also trying to use the gym at NCTAMS, but I need a “wellness card” along with my Navy ID to use the facilities. All this in combination with swinging a kukri around for hours at a time should work to shed a few pounds.

Speaking of shedding a few pounds… and sweating like a maniac while running through the woods for hours… I’m going to participate in some “hashing” this weekend. I think I mentioned the concept in one of my earlier entries. To briefly recap, you’re running a route through the woods and some people are “hares”, while the rest are “hounds.” The hounds chase the hares with the goal of catching them. It’s basically just a fun was to get a lot of exercise, see cool parts of the island, and be belligerent. I’ll likely die in the process, but that will make it easier the next go around.

Well, kids, that’s all that’s fit to print for now. I’ll probably fill you in on the details of this weekend’s exploits on Monday night my time (Sunday for many of you). It’s going to be tiring, but, I think, enjoyable. Today (the 13th) is my friend Sheila's 25th birthday, so I'll conclude by wishing her a Happy quarter century milestone :)

Posted by Isaac at February 14, 2004 3:00 AM