All Tough, All The Time

Mud, rain o'er me

You know, I just blab on far too much about useless subjects. My sincerest apologies for the excessive banter involving silly topics like roads (no offense, Dad) and the weather. However, the weather is an important topic since my last entry, so it's something needing to be dicussed. The reason for this is that we had a major tropical storm move through the area a couple weeks ago. This tropical storm, known to meteorologist-types as "tingting" (not to be confused with tin-tin), was quite the event, mainly for its level of rain. Now, the last major storm of any significance that moved though Guam was the super-typhoon Pongsona (pronounced pong-san-wa and meaning "big-ass storm from hell"). This little beauty hit in December of 2002, bringing sustained... now this is a very important word, here... winds of 120mph, with gusts up to 160mph. That, my friends, is ridiculous. So ridiculous, in fact, as to cause millions of dollars worth of damage. Interestingly, although it was a massive storm, Pongsona brought "only" 15 (recorded) inches of rain during its approximately two day assault on the island. Tingting, although smaller and, when nearest Guam, not at the level of a typhoon, brought over 30 inches of rain. I'm still not sure of the exact totals, but I heard that in the first 12 hours of the storm, the Guam International Airport (about a mile from my apartment as the crow flies) received about 18 inches of rain.

Luckily we didn't get nailed, but that storm did give me a taste of what could happen during a typhoon. Gordon is here right now for a few weeks and we were talking a bit about typhoons. Apparently the typhoon frequency has increased dramatically in recent years. From only one bad storm every hundred years about a century ago, increasing in the mid-20th century, and up to something like 10 or a dozen bad typhoons in the 1990s alone. Around 1994, Gordon informed me that there were three major typhoons that hit Guam directly in a two month period. That's just amazing. This year we've already had a couple big storms move through the region and it isn't even really typhoon season yet. The worst time of the year is about September through December.

On a lighter note, Matt and I were down at the lab last weekend gathering up some gear to check traps, when Matt found a little note from the past. It was located on a Post-It note, stuck to the top of a box of tea, which itself was shoved up in an infrequently used corner of a cabinet. Scrawled on the note in pencil were the words “Every day in Guam is like a kick in the nuts.” My guess would be that Andy didn’t leave this message. Most likely it was a disgruntled former employee, who, upon leaving, decided to leave their mark in an unobtrusive place for some redneck from Alabama to find months later.

Now, despite the comments from my last entry, I don’t really agree with the joker who left that note. Guam may be trashed ecologically; riddled with cars that pollute every breath you take; and sloppily developed, run, and maintained; but it’s still a tropical island conveniently located close to many cool places like Indonesia, Australia, the Philippines, and southeast Asia. Basically, what I’m trying to say is that I didn’t want to make Guam sound all that bad. Sometimes I just need to vent about dumb things that I see going on here, of which there often seem to be many.

On a vastly different topic, my little brother, Daniel, just celebrated his 3rd birthday a couple days ago. Being the good-for-nothing brother I am, I still haven’t sent anything back home. But I will! At this stage in his life, the little guy won’t remember what I send or if I call, but I’d still like to send something. Apparently he’s going to be starting a preschool program this fall, which is just scary. By the time I get back, he’ll either be in, or just about to begin, Kindergarten. I was recently able to see some footage of Daniel sent in the form of DVD by my Dad. He sent some great photos he took, footage of himself, my step mom, and Daniel. It was great to see them, even if not in person, since the opportunity to do so won’t present itself for a while.

Looking back to the fourth of July, I did get to see some fireworks. Most of the fireworks shown on the island are, appropriately enough, hosted by the Military. Normally Andersen Air Force Base and the large Navy complex (known commonly as “Big Navy”) both host a show, but this year it was only Navy. Justin, Ginger, and I decided to head down to that neck of the woods and stake out a spot. Due to the fact that we didn’t have a government vehicle or proper automobile pass, Justin’s lack of ID, and the insane number of people trying to get onto the base, we decided to head for higher ground. There’s a spot on a place called Nimitz Hill from which there’s a great, albeit somewhat distant, view onto the base. The peak on which we sat is part of the War in the Pacific park owned by the National Park Service. Therefore, not only did we have a good view, we had a historically relevant, patriotic view, with a distinct link to independence. It was a good fireworks show and interesting in that, given the distance, there was a delay of several seconds between when the fireworks went off and the resulting sound. This was especially apparent at the end of the finale, when the sound continued for about 3 or 4 seconds after all the lights stopped. It’s odd seeing fireworks and having them be so quiet, but it was an interesting new vantage point.

In the realm of work, I’ve been helping out Andy a decent amount over the past few weeks with his rodent trapping. We set up a grid in a forested area near the closed population site (by the refuge) and trapped there for about a week. Although we considered it forest, the site is disturbed Guamanian forest, which makes it rather stunted, full of invasive vines, and torn apart by pigs and deer. The grid consists of 81 traps, placed evenly in a 9x9 matrix. Using Sherman live traps and Haguruma traps, we caught a few rats. We also caught a couple toads, some hermit crabs, and billions of ants. My vision of hell, as it currently stands, is being strapped to the ground of a Guam forest, alive, but unable to move, and smeared in peanut butter. This would likely be worse in some rainforest with army ants, but it would still be pretty bad here. Most of the baits were either covered in, or composed primarily of, peanut butter. The ants were especially attracted to these baits and they would often be found in a solid mass on the bait. Many of these little beasties are ants of the stinging, followed by itching, variety, making it a lot of fun to change the bait when necessary.

Apart from nightmares of being eaten alive, the ants here are pretty cool. I’m no entomologist, but it looks like there are hundreds of species here on the island. I know that E.O. Wilson, a renowned Harvard entomologist, did a lot of his early work on ants on Pacific Islands. This work contributed significantly to his formulation, along with Robert MacArthur, of the theory of island biogeography, probably one of the more influential biological works of the 20th century. He also won something called a “Pulitzer” for a book he wrote called The Ants. I’d like to check that out sometime to learn more about these ravenous little arthropods. In the meantime, I’ll avoid getting too much peanut butter or sugar on myself as I hack through the jungle.

Anyway, apart from catching rodents, ants, toads, and crabs, our traps were visited en masse by highly aggressive and obviously hungry pigs. The pigs had avoided the traps the first night we had them out, but that didn’t last long. The morning following the second night of trapping revealed that numerous (or perhaps just a couple rather industrious) swine had beaten the piss out of several traps. They were especially brutal to the Hagurumas, which they would stomp on, bend into all kinds of strange shapes, and finally violently tear to bits. It was not unlike a grenade had been set off inside of them. The lesson: don’t get between a malevolent pig and its insignificant tidbit of food, lest you want to be chopped into suey. I’d hate to see what these pigs would do for something larger than a scrap of coconut or peanut butter. No, I think I would… just as long as we used already damaged traps as to avoid the cost of replacing all of them. Perhaps to avoid these pig problems in the future we should bait the traps with bacon.

That wonderful trap grid is now closed and Andy has moved down to the central part of the island, where he now has a grid in an open field area. Last Monday was the first night the traps, which he and Val placed the previous day, were set. Tuesday morning, we caught 8 mice, 4 rats, 2 toads, and very few ants. Apparently the field is much better for rodents than the forest. Much of that has to do with habitat, but I’m sure the lack of destroyed and ant-filled traps also helped. Amazingly, there wasn’t much pig damage while the traps were out there. As one last note of this topic, I have to impart a quote from Andy. As we drove down to the refuge a couple weeks ago, a small pig tore across the road in a panic to avoid being run over. After making some half-joking remarks about making the pig roadkill, Andy said, “Aww, it’s all right, little piggy. I don’t wanna e’t ya. I just wanna pet ya.” The line was funny enough, but he used the southern accent we often pick up during field work, making it all the more hilarious. I’ve started to say the last two sentences in reference to all sorts of other things we see, such as chickens and boonie dogs. I should make it a little less obvious how easily amused I am.

So, last week was the annual (although it could be more frequent) “Fat Boy” hash, in which two rather substantial individuals set the trail. To fit the theme, the hares place food at all trail checks. Given that it’s the fat boy hash, they aren’t placing carrot sticks and rice cakes. No, they set donuts, twinkies, ding-dongs, ho-hos, and various other obnoxiously sugary snacks full of hydrogenated oil and saturated fat. Yum! In hearing tale of this particular kind of hash, we all expected that there would be large portions of food all along the trail on which we could gorge ourselves. Well, campers, things didn’t turn out that way. It started off great: at first, they gave five or six of the fastest people a double cheeseburger each, with the intention of slowing down their progress. Once the race was on and we rounded the first corner there was a guy waiting with a bucket of delicious barbequed chicken and a cooler of beer. This was very clever in that it was just out of sight from the starting line (a.k.a. “the box”). The first check was about 50 meters after that and it contained about 10 donuts. After that, no more food. Why? Well, despite the 10 minute head start, the hares, being large, didn’t get very far. In fact, they barely made it a half-mile before the speedier folks caught up with them, so they didn’t get to lay out more food. I suppose both sides are to blame for that. However, the run was good and there was plenty of food, and beer, to be had by all at the on-home.

The next day, several of us (friends from the hash, Brent, Haldre, and I) went to Tarza water park. This is a smaller park, but it has an incredible number of things given the constricted location on which it’s built. They have several water slides, a lazy river, and this really cool setup on which there is a powerful band of water being sent over a rise on which you can body board… that is, if you have any balance. Otherwise, you’re just sent flying over the little hill and into the lazy river. I stuck mainly to the waterslides, many of which utilize a tube. There was one in particular called The Black Hole (ahem) in which there was no light, save one dim little bulb strapped to the ceiling of the tube about halfway down. Not being able to see the oncoming turns definitely added excitement of the ride. My least favorite experience was probably on their high-speed slide. This is one of those body slides that starts off gently and then suddenly drops off dramatically, sending you shooting down at an 89° angle at 60mph. Now, that in itself is fun and I’m not opposed to going fast; what sucked is that the sections composing the slide weren’t exactly vertically level with one another. Because of this there were slight rises along the slide that, when hit at high speed, hurt your back like a sonofabitch. Every person that went down the slide had large red marks on their back as a result (letting you know who was tough enough to take the plunge). Another benefit of this daredevil ride was that, when you hit the flat landing strip at the end, you get a ridiculous wedgy. It was worse for the ladies, but not so great for those guys wearing looser swimsuits (as opposed to sturdier board shorts). I gave a couple amused Japanese girls a revealing show when I climbed out after a run down that baby.

Later that evening, a few of us went out to see Will Farrell’s new movie Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. I often like Will Farrell’s style of humor and this movie lived up to my expectations. Although it had some lame parts, overall I found it hilarious. I liked the addition of Steve Carell, one of the former anchors on The Daily Show. I loved Steve for his incredible ability to deadpan, in the form of an impressively convincing archetypal newscaster, the most absurd things. He basically plays a moron in this movie, but he still has some funny lines. If you like the silly humor in movies like Airplane, Hot Shots, Zoolander, etc., then you’ll probably like Anchorman.

Moving up to this weekend, Haldre and I were partners on the most recent G.E.A.R. sprint (the mini adventure race series) on Saturday. It ended up being more of an adventure race than the last one in which Brent and I were partners. It began with a bike ride of several miles, much of which was unbelievably muddy. I have never had my bike so begrimed as it was in this race. The thing about Guam is that the soil contains a lot of clay, allowing it the ability to stick to everything when it’s wet. At one point, Haldre had to disconnect her breaks just to move. When I picked up my bike, it literally felt as though it weighed fifty pounds. Despite these problems, we actually passed a team and gained some time on others ahead of us who had experienced problems earlier. Following that portion of the race, we dropped off our bikes and headed out on foot for the remainder. The path took us through several farm fields, a long river valley, and then along the shore (which is covered with lots of loose rocks that aren't much fun to run on). The final task was a brief swim/slog through a cannel that brought us back to the starting point, although at that point it was the finish line. We came in fifth, which we both felt good about, especially given that Haldre hasn’t had much time to get out on her bike and this is only the second time I’ve done one of these. The first place team was that of Chili, the insane, but very nice, Australian racer who wins basically every race he enters. Then there were a couple motivated lads about 30 seconds behind them, a couple experienced racers on their tail in third, and two guys from Saipan who came specifically for the race in fourth. These guys had really nice, really expensive bikes, which, along with the fact that they came to do this race, made me feel good when Haldre and I were only 3 minutes behind them (meaning we could see them about a quarter mile or less in front of us). After Haldre and I made it in, there was a really long gap until the next team arrived and another large gap after them. We stuck around until most were in, but by then we were well overdue for some food. I guess in closing I just have to say that keeping up with Haldre is quite the task! I had no problems on the bike, but I was struggling some about halfway through the running portion. Luckily we got to hit the cool water right at the end. Passing out in front of the other racers would be a little embarrassing.

The final bit of news that won’t likely bore you to death is that Haldre, Brent, Karen, and I will be heading up to Saipan on the 26th to conduct a mock deployment. Most of the trained biologists who have experience on actual deployments have left the project, or they’re leaving soon, which means that the remaining searchers, although having experience on the ins and outs of a deployment, would benefit from going through the process as if it were actually happening. Really, this will be exactly like a real deployment, with the exception that no snake has been sighted initially. In all deployments to date, no snake has actually been found. Although that sounds like failure, it’s really not, given that the main goal of a response is to find out, quickly and early, if there is an incipient population of snakes. If a team of experienced searchers finds nothing in the area of a sighting after a week or two, there’s a good chance a population has not been established.

It should be a good time and I’m looking forward to seeing one of the other islands in the Mariana chain. Saipan is about 120 miles NE of us and significantly smaller, so it’s not likely to be seen on any maps you may have. However, the internet yields many resources. From what I’ve heard, Saipan is more topographically rich and ecologically healthy than Guam. This is especially noticeable in that there are many bird species there. It will be strange seeing birds after being around so few here on Guam. There are also several lizards on Saipan that are no longer found here. I’ll be sure to take my camera to document the trip. Oh, and speaking of which, I hope to post some photos following the trip. I have a backlog of photos I’ve been meaning to post, but I just haven’t had the time. There may even be some photos of my friends and I thrown in there. You’ll just have to come back and see.

Posted by Isaac at July 19, 2004 12:55 AM