Confessions of a Dangerous Herpetologist

Nothin' but the dog in me

So let’s just say, hypothetically, you’re a doe. A deer. You know, a female deer. Just go with me on this one. Everything is going along pretty well for you. Lots of plants to munch on, a lot of big bucks around vying for your affection, and no predators, apart from humans, trying to nibble your bum. You’re on Guam and it’s not too bad of a place to be, albeit not the place you’re originally from. So, you’re frolicking through the woods, like you do, and you come to a road, opposite of which is a fence. Instead of trying to find your way around this obstruction, you decide to leap over, being the young and agile thing you are. It’s pretty high for you and you just barely make it, but you survive unscathed. No problem. Or so it would seem. Soon after passing this barrier, the air explodes in a cacophony of unknown origin. This ear-splitting roar, unbeknownst to you, is produced by man-made devices. You decide, upon this outright disturbance to your peace, that it’s time to make haste for a more tranquil setting. You bound past these noises only to discover another fence in your way. However, there are now so many humans around that you don’t dare jump it. It’s too risky. You run into some bushes and hide for a while. Soon, however, you hear steps crunching through the brush, growing closer. You can’t stay in there or you’ll surely be discovered and killed. So, you make a break for it. That’s when they spot you.

This, dear friends, is essentially what went down out at the closed population site early last week. A young doe got stuck inside the fence and was successfully terrorized by a bunch of hungry Chamorro guys. It was actually pretty hysterical, mostly due to the fact that many of these guys are not what you’d call Olympic sprinters and therefore should not be chasing anything anywhere, let alone a deer through waist-deep vines. Matt spotted the deer and quickly alerted everyone of its presence. Once the crew working on the fence found out, it was all over. They formed a team and went inside trying to flush out the deer by making lots of noise. Each time they saw it, they went running after it in an occasionally semi-organized group (although most of the time it was every man for himself). One guy even had a knife in his hand, ready to leap on the deer as it raced by him and administer the fatal stabbing. I even heard him say, “Yo, I’m going to catch that f[bleep]ing deer with my bare hands and cut it’s f[bleep]ing throat, man.” Hmmm, maybe you should take some time on a treadmill before making the move to bipedal pursuit of swift ungulates? Or you can just run around making an ass out of yourself for my amusement. The latter? Good decision! Shockingly, after much screaming, mad dashes, and profuse sweating, no one came close to catching the deer. It ended up effectively hiding somewhere and escaping once everyone was gone. Survival of the fittest. . . or is it the smartest? Maybe both.

Moving along to less primal, but still primitive in origin, activities, Brent and I joined Haldre for some outrigger paddling on Monday. Haldre is a sometimes attending, always welcome, member of this paddling club, which meets every Mon, Wed, Fri in Tumon Bay. I’m not sure exactly who funds this club because Brent and I weren’t charged for a thing. Maybe that was because of Haldre’s feminine wiles, but it’s more likely that there are club dues taken now and then. Whatever the case, the price just can’t be beat.

We arrived at the beach in the late afternoon, grabbed up some paddles, and got a quick lesson on form from one of the instructors. Now, an interesting thing about outrigger paddles is that you hold them opposite to the way most people would assume. And, no, I don’t mean with the paddle out of the water and the handle in the water (though it would be very interesting to see them try to move a boat that way). Outrigger paddles are bent slightly, forming an obtuse angle. It’s easiest to see in a picture, so check out this link. The paddle can be imagined like a soup spoon at a Chinese restaurant, where you bring the bottom of the spoon (the flat side) towards you during the stroke, not the concave end. This angle increases the efficiency of the stroke if you’re doing it correctly, which often times I wasn’t. As I learned, almost all of the effective power from your stroke is within the first 1/4 or so of the way through the water. Beyond that, you’re exerting more effort into pulling the boat down than pushing it forward.

There’s a lot of technique involved, and this is as much on your part as that of your partners in terms of moving the boat effectively. We were using the large, multi-person outrigger boats, although the boat to which Brent and I were assigned had two long hulls strapped together with wooden beams, not a single hull with a rigger. I guess our boat looked more like a ghetto catamaran sans sails. It appeared to only weigh about a thousand pounds more than the other boats, too. However, we were a group of 10 burly lads, so we kept it moving along fairly well. This would have been more the case had we been in sync with one another. In the most ideal situations, every member of the boat has fantastic form and they are paddling with nearly identical strokes in perfect unison. In such situations, say the experienced members of the club, things are so efficient and occurring with such ease that it’s as though you’re gliding on air.

We were basically slogging as if taking on water. That is, of course, to be expected when you have a group of mostly non-professionals, some of whom are doing this for the first time. I honestly think we kept up a pretty good rhythm (despite a couple folks who, although powerful, didn’t have much in the way of timing) and kept up well with the other two groups (there were two other boats, one with 5 or 6 guys and the other with the same number of girls). The ladies, in their glory, won by a landslide on our race back at the end of the practice. Well done, indeed.

Our basic route involved traveling down the bay, out across the reef into more open ocean, and back. It was very cool being out beyond the reef, in part because we weren’t in water so shallow as to scrape shellac, via large chunks of coral, off our paddles. Once beyond the reef, we also caught some brief glimpses of dolphins and some great looks at a manta ray. I think that was the first manta ray I’ve seen in the wild… and it was awesome. The thing was huge! We paddled around it a few times and, although it didn’t swim away in a panic, it wasn’t too eager to get close us. We felt quite the other way around.

The end of practice involved each opposing pair in our duel-hulled beast taking turns pulling the boat along to practice paddling technique. I didn’t have anyone opposite me, so I attempted paddling myself. Let’s just say there was a jellyfish floating by faster than we were moving. The guy sitting in front of me, who was of substantial mass, was ridiculously powerful in his frantic paddling approach. He moved us along with amazing speed for all the weight he was alone pulling. The most impressive was the coach, who, being thin and sitting at the front of one hull, pulled the whole vessel along with considerable force. Given, he’s strong, but not that big. Thus the power of good form.

The next day, though I thought my shoulders and back would be killing me, they were fine. What hurt, it turned out, was my ass. The same goes for Brent. Apparently, when you’re twisting and turning on a small, hard seat while exerting a lot of energy, it creates some serious friction on the ol’ behind. My rear is now healed, but I was paying the price there for a little while.

Later this same night, we did a night search down near Talafofo falls. I didn’t actually see the falls that night, but I’m assuming they’re really nice. As with many of the cool natural areas on island, this location is also littered with caves. One that we saw had a drop off of about 80 feet. Watch that first step, as they say. But I’m not writing to discuss caves. No, the reason I’m discussing this search was because of two separate incidents, one sad, the other hilarious.

First, the bad news. After arriving at the trailhead, we parked the car off to the side of the road. The edge was rough (especially for a Mazda Protégé), so we couldn’t pull off very far. This particular location was on a fairly steep hill soon after a bend, not dangerously so (though not ideal), and people were driving by well over the speed limit.

Soon after we exited the car, a small, extremely energetic dog came rushing down the hill towards us. This little pup appeared to be a mix between a dachshund and something smaller in stature. She was extremely friendly and, if she barked at all, it was only once. All of us were happy to have this dog there to greet us and she definitely appeared to be glad to see us. We all took turns petting her as she frantically ran back and forth checking us out. At one point while petting her, I said, “Watch out for cars, pup.” Obviously this is a small, hyperactive dog and, being a dog, it’s not going to understand a thing I say. Still, we all talk to dogs even though they may not necessarily have any clue what we’re talking about.

Unfortunately, she didn’t listen to me… and neither did the SUV coming up the hill. I had walked a bit downhill from where she had been playing and soon after heard a high-pitched yelp. At first I though she had just let out a bark, but my misinterpretation was made apparent when I heard Haldre gasp and say, “Oh no! That poor little dog!” Brent actually saw her get hit and it was a direct hit with the front tire. Amazingly, however, it didn’t kill her. I ran over to find her under our car as Andy was attempting to see how badly she was injured. She had a couple visible cuts on her head, one on her ear and the other above her left eye. Most of the injuries were probably internal, so it was almost guaranteed to be worse than we thought. She wasn’t moving her legs at all and, when checking her pupils, one was fixed nearly shut and the other was also fixed, though at mid-dilation.

By this point, the owners, who had been alerted of what happened by Karen, came running down the hill from their house. They were upset, but surprisingly calm given the level of injury their dog, whose name we found out was Darby, had just sustained (and I mean that as a good thing). The owners felt completely at fault for what happened, since they weren’t watching her and she wasn’t on a leash. They usually keep her tied up during the day when people are visiting the caves and falls, leaving her time to run around at night when she has little reason to go near the road. We also felt guilty since the only reason Darby came down was because we were there. In retrospect, I wish I had just picked her up and brought her up to the house, especially given how dangerous it was for a dog to be off leash at that spot. I know it wasn’t my fault, or anyone’s fault in particular, but more just a combination of unfortunate incidents.

The owners took her inside and we remained at the car and continued preparing for out search, even if a bit flustered at what happened. A few minutes later, the SUV responsible (which just kept going after impact), drove by again and, without stopping, said, “Is the dog okay? I’m so sorry.” And drove away. Given it was an accident and there are boonie dogs hit all the time all over the island, but it was still irritating that this guy didn’t even stop. Of course, there were 5 of us out there and perhaps he thought we would beat him within an inch of his life if he stopped. From what we know, Darby was still responsive and actually walking around by the time we finished our search. If she’s still alive, she may be one of the toughest little dogs I’ve ever encountered. I wish I could say this was the only bad dog incident from this past week, but I’ll get to that later.

Now, it’s time for the funny story. This occurred about halfway through our search. During these training searches, we each pair up with another person and the respective pairs search different areas. On this night, Andy and I were paired up to search from the trailhead, Brent and Karen searched farther down near the caves (heading towards us), and Haldre, being the pro that she is, floated between both to make sure we were doing alright. This reminds me, as a brief side note, that Haldre searched behind me for a while to see if I was missing any snakes (if you haven’t already, see my “Hawkeye McGee” entry for an explanation into these concerns) and she found none.

So, we’re searching along and the snakes are few and far between. Okay, so there weren’t any. Suddenly, Andy alerts me that he’s found something: “Isaac, come over here and check this out.” Intrigued, I head across the trail to his side, knowing that he must have found a snake. Knowing that I have yet to find any snakes during a roadline search, Andy wanted me to try and find the snake for myself, albeit now in a very narrow area since I’m placed in the immediate vicinity of where he found it. He tells me to look in the woods on his side and tell him what I see. I scan my flashlight through the branches and quickly discover what he has found. It’s a snake, wrapped around a branch. The only thing is, this snake is dead. So dead, in fact, that it was never alive at begin with. It’s a blatantly rubber snake that Haldre has planted there.

You make at first think this is the funny part, but it’s not (that would be kind of lame, anyway). Haldre actually plants these now and then to get an idea of our detection abilities. Once I had spotted the snake, I said to Andy, “Boy, he’s not looking very lively!” Andy acknowledged this, and began to put on his gloves. I immediately thought, “Why is he putting on his gloves?” and shrugged it off as following protocol for catching snakes, but even so it still seemed a bit strange. “Aw, just pick it up,” I said. “No, I don’t want to get bitten!” he replied. You’re such a joker, Andy.

So, he edges closer to the snake (he’s now only a little over a meter away) and says, “I think there’s something wrong with this snake. Look, its skin is kind of discolored.” By this time Haldre was next to me observing this situation and in such silent hysterics that she couldn’t speak. Andy continues: “Look at its tongue, it’s just staying out. I think it’s sick.” The peanut gallery behind him suggested, again, that he just pick it up. Soon after, the begloved Mr. Wiewel quickly snatched the snake with a mildly disgusted face (“Eww…”) and said, “Is it dead…?” At this point, with the aid of hearty laughter from both Haldre and I, Andy realized, finally, that it was a rubber snake.

Now, this isn’t meant to put down Andy in any way, but he wasn’t hired to catch or ID snakes and, really, it’s a good thing. Andy is a rodent man (again, no insult intended), so I’m sure I would be more apt than him to mistake a stuffed rat for a live one. It was still hilarious how long it took him to realize that the snake was a fake. However, he did actually find it in the first place, which is what really matters. Later, I found a similar snake on my side, although its vitality was not called into question.

The major event of last week was out trip down to Cocos Island. A very small chunk of land about two kilometers south of Guam. It’s a beautiful place and especially cool in that there are actually birds there. There are some birds on Guam, of course, but you see them infrequently and in low abundance. They were fairly plentiful on Cocos, thanks to the low or nonexistent numbers of brown treesnakes. Still, there have been sightings and trappings of snakes on Cocos, so our trip was in part training, the other part actually looking for snakes that may have snuck onto the island.

Some of the birds on Cocos include fairy terns, micronesian starlings, and brown knotties. The fairy terns are especially cool because they have the classic tern body shape, but they are entirely bright white (“And once… there was this teeeern who… got into an accident…”) with black eyes. Interestingly, fairy terns lay their eggs in the crooks of branches without the use of a nest. The egg just sits there, entirely exposed apart from when mom is sitting there. I’m not sure of the current hypothesis as to why that is, but my guess it has to do with being adapted to a predator-free environment. The thing is, you would think just for the sake of stability they would have some sort of nest. I actually saw this during our night search. I also saw a female with her chick, which was pretty cute.

This leads into another point about these birds. Being adapted to a complete lack of predators, they are astoundingly tame. They are hardly bothered by a person walking right up to them and, in the case of a starling I found, flying away only when I reached out to pick it up. Apparently, the birds will often sleep on low branches at night and you can gently handle them, without even waking them up. I saw members of all species dozing in trees during the day with nary a care about anything snacking on them in the meantime. This leaves little wonder as to why the brown treesnake has been so successful at wiping out all of these birds. They’re just not accustomed to predators and therefore have very few adaptations to prevent being annihilated.

Our first day on the island was spent setting up the search areas, as would happen during a true rapid response deployment. We had a break in the afternoon, during which I set up the big project tent and went on a little photo shoot. All of us had gone on a brief tour earlier in the day to see some of the island and, while along the beach looking at tide pools, Karen has been attempting to get some photos of various moray eels. They were really difficult to photograph because of the cyclical flow of water into the pools and their unbelievable weariness. Once they caught a slight glimpse of you (even if from several meters away), they would dart back into their holes or under a rock. If you then tried to extract them by moving the rock, the eels would actually make a mad, thrashing break for the open ocean. They would literally leap from the water, smack themselves over the rocks, and escape into the waves.

I think Karen managed to get a couple distant shots of an eels, but nothing to her satisfaction. So, I decided to try and get some photos for her in the time before our search. I walked along the tide pools, checking out things like the mudskippers (“Who’s got segmented eyes? He’s Muddy, the mudskipper!”), crabs, skinks, and, occasionally, an eel. The first eels I saw shot off into the sea so fast I couldn’t even lift my camera to my eye before it was gone. The second one was very large and, although it didn’t swim right away, it lunged into the ocean after I attempted lifting the rock it was under. I did manage to get a shot of the following one, although it was mostly hidden by rock. I decided to keep moving in the hopes that I would see something else.

Around about the last tide pool I encountered (I had walked the entire southwest stretch of the island and was rounding the southwest end, after which there were no tidepools, just beach), I saw what I was looking for. It was an eel that had just pounced on a crab and was starting to eat it. Not only was it awesome to see an eel eating a crab (something I didn’t even know they did), but it was also distracted enough in its endeavors that I was able to get very close to take the photos. It was a large eels, too, and to make things better it was accompanied by a smaller eel, perhaps the opposite sex or another species.

The search went well that night, although we didn’t find any snakes (which is a very good thing if there are indeed none around). I saw many large oceanic geckos that aren’t found on Guam, cane toads (of course), and LOTS of rats. Disgusting, plague-like quantities of rats, the bulk of which were roiling within a trash bin near one of my search areas. Haldre spotted them and called me over to take a look. At one point, there were probably a few hundred in the pile, although they would quickly dissipate when headlamps were shone down on them. It looks like Andy may be stationed on the wrong island.

After our search, we rendezvoused back at the campsite and decided it was time for a swim. Brent, Chris, Karen, Haldre, Matt, and I played a rousing game of water ultimate Frisbee for about an hour, though it may have been longer. We had all the same rules as terrestrial ultimate Frisbee except in order to score a goal one hand had to be gripping the side of the pool in the end zone prior to catching the disk. Not an easy task, as we soon found out.

This pool was perfect for playing this game, though. It was large enough to allow fairly long throws and of uniform depth throughout (maybe 4 feet or a little less). We had a blast playing and, as one can imagine, it was very tiring in the process. I can only imagine what it’s like playing water polo after running through that much water for an extended period of time! After about an hour with no one scoring, we decided to change the rules a bit. You were allowed to sit on the edge of the pool and catch the Frisbee with both hands in order to get a touchdown. Although the team of Brent, Matt, and Isaac finally proved victorious, cheers go out to Haldre for great defense and quick throws, Karen for her ingenious piggyback defense style, and Chris for his superb long-distance catches.

Brent and I worked a bit in the early afternoon out at closed pop the next day, but had the rest off due to the number of hours we racked up out at Cocos. I took it easy for the most part and Brent went to sleep around 5:30pm. He stayed there until 7:30am the next morning. 14 hours later. The reason his sleep rivaled that of Rip Van Winkle was due to the fact that none of us got a very good night’s sleep while out on Cocos. This isn’t merely due to our bacchanalian revelry or late night S’Mores, but due to the mosquitoes and humidity. The mosquitoes didn’t really bothering me once I was in the tent and, even when outside, they weren’t as vicious as those I’ve experienced during spring and summer nights in New England. However, it was still nice to get away from them. Once in the tent, it was the heat and humidity in particular that got to me. In general, I need it to be cool and dry in a room to get a restful sleep (or at least a fan blowing on me), so sweating in a stagnant tent isn’t exactly conducive to anything but tossing and turning.

The weekend was really kicked off on Saturday morning with the game drive out at closed pop, hosted by Claudine. The basic goal of said drive was to rid the interior of the fence of all wild pigs and deer that might still be wallowing/prancing about. The reason we don’t want them in there is because they could potentially cause extensive damage to the traps (this is especially true for the pigs) and fence. In thanks mostly to Karen and Dianna, about 30 volunteers showed up, bringing our drive total to over 40. Everyone lined up within the side of the enclosure opposite the opening and, slowly, with much pausing to make sure everyone was in line, we made our way across the plot. I did my fair share of screaming, as the intention was to make as much noise as possible to drive out anything inside. When finally we had stamped across the entire area, not one mammal was to be found, as many had suspected. Still, it was a necessary step to ensure that nothing was in there (which is especially difficult to determine with all the vines covering everything).

Afterwards, Haldre, Brent, and I went on a snorkeling excursion with Gordon, who is here for a week. We went south of Tumon, near an underwater marine observatory. This observatory sits a couple hundred meters out into the water inside the reef, within an uncharacteristically deep area. The observatory itself looks kind of like a scaled down version of the Seattle needle’s tower stuck out in the ocean. People pay a hefty fee to talk down the pier and down into the lower tube, where they can watch fish as if in an aquarium. What the four of us did was head out to a point north of the observatory and snorkel down along the currents. This allowed us to basically float along and check things out, with the only necessary swimming to come when heading into shore. The credit goes to Gordon for the knowledge of this and idea of going there.

This snorkeling was definitely cooler than when Brent and I swam around Tumon Bay for a couple weeks ago. I saw a ton of fish and much more coral. Some of the new fish I saw included prickly sea cucumber, trumpetfish, pufferfish (Although it didn’t puff for me. I guess I should’ve pissed it off a little more like a seem to do with triggerfish.), an anemonefish, a clam, and some brilliantly blue starfish (and I mean bright, royal blue). My favorite part was probably when I was over the deep portion near the observatory. The water was very calm there and there were large schools of fish just sitting in the water as if frozen there, holding position. My least favorite part was that my mask kept leaking like a sieve, as did my snorkel. My snorkel acted more like a straw than it did a breathing apparatus. In order to prevent cell death due to dehydration, I think I’ll have to purchase my own snorkeling gear in the next couple months. That should make it a more comfortable experience when next I go.

As always occurs on Saturdays, the weekly hash followed our time at sea. I joined Brent and Haldre for this particular round, which commenced in Agat, a few miles south of where I am. Painfully, I forgot to bring my gloves this time and in doing so got several good slashes on my hands from sawgrass. The fact that I was wearing shorts didn’t help, either. I began the hash by “flying” (i.e., by the seat of your pants) with James (a.k.a. “Sex”) and a couple other folks. When you fly, you’re not following the trail and essentially looking for the quickest way to the on-home. We stopped after about 15 minutes of running and stayed for an equivalent amount of time while Sex and the rest contemplated where to go. We finally kept moving, although the main group’s decision was to head back to the road. I decided, for shits and giggles, to head up the mountain to get some exercise. An FNG named Shaun decided to follow me (poor bastard) and we basically just ended up running over creation, finding the trail a half hour before dark, and heading back down the mountain, making it to the road as night hit. I didn’t know where the on-home was, so I ended up getting a ride with Bambi when he stopped by where we parked. Apparently, if you don’t actually get to the on-home of your own volition (even if you run miles and miles, probably even if you lose a limb or two, get lost for several days, and catch the black death), you’re dubbed a chariot rider. Thanks, Haldre.

Now comes the other sad dog story. Over the past week, we had gotten to know a young female dog out at closed pop. She was a boonie dog who had puppies right near the site, although we weren’t exactly sure where (some of the guys working on the fence had heard them, plus her mammary glands were enlarged for nursing). She was a really sweet dog and would always come up to us to say hello and, hopefully, get some food. Given her emaciated state, that’s exactly what she needed. This dog was skin and bone, in very rough shape. So, Saturday night Brent bought some Pedigree dog food and went up with Haldre to feed her. We had seen her during the game drive earlier that day and, despite the heat, she was doing all right. When they arrived, they found her, dead, just beyond the gate leading to the site. She was stiff and had obviously been dead for quite a while. Brent thought he saw a large amount of dried blood on her side, although he wasn’t positive because it was dark and rainy. It was very suspicious given that she was found near where we saw her last and blood was possibly on her. Of course, she was desperately thin and in serious need of nourishment, so it’s by no means out of the question that she could have died as a result of those factors. It just seems odd that she would have died so suddenly after making it all that time. I’m personally not ruling out the possibility that someone who had been there decided to come back and put her out of her misery, so to speak.

Geez, if you’re still reading this, I commend you. It's time to get some food, but I’ll press on because there’s not much left to tell. In conclusion, Brent and I are officially moved into our new, albeit very hot, apartment. We decided upon Ocean View, where Andy, Karen, and Jason are living. Our apartment is on the top floor, nearest the road, with a lovely view of Burger King. It’s a good place, though (especially compared to some of the other apartments here… which are essentially cesspools), with new tile floors, queen beds in each room, a little whicker (with padding) living room set, a balcony, and A/C. We haven’t run the A/C much and I only run the one in my room for a few hours at night. Brent decided to take the room sans A/C because he likes fans. Also, he’s more used to the heat being a California lad. The fan he got is a Patton 20’’, typhoon-intensity model. The thing puts out 75 mph winds and it’s right next to his head when he sleeps. He may go deaf, but at least he’ll be comfortable.

Posted by Isaac at March 8, 2004 11:59 AM