My daughter Rachel (she’s 19–just finished her sophomore year at St. Mary’s College of Maryland,) got back last night from a 4 week course on the Isla Colón near the Panama Canal. She was studying rainforest ecology in Bocas del Toro.
Rachel with local children who lived near the research station in Bocas del Toro.
Joe is the 67 yo tree climbing instructor. Here he’s on the observation platform, 75 ft up, with Rachel’s friend Kirsten. The highest they climbed was 165 feet.
Rachel’s individual research project was on strawberry poison dart frogs. Evidence that they hop up the tree to tend their tadpoles (which they’ve put in water-bearing bromeliads high in the treetops for safekeeping,) but leap 100 ft to the ground uninjured, was anecdotal to this point, so her study was to document this behavior, which she successfully did.
Well, I really wish you had mentioned the poison dart frogs a bit sooner. I have run completely out of poison dart frogs, and the stupid cat has been at the bromeliads again, and is now puking all over the rugs.
Yes, well, among the funny stories she brought back with her is one about 7 coeds from U. of Michigan, who spent a few days at the research station as a stop on an honors travel tour.
This set of girls were quite taken aback at the rusticity of the cabanas–mosquito netting at night, etc.
In the middle of one of the few nights they were there, Joe, the tree climbing instructor, heard a girl screaming bloody murder so he grabbed his machete and went in the girls dorm, certain someone was being murdered. The shrieking U. of Mich girl was standing in the middle of the room saying, “I thought I saw a mouse!”
Rachel says it was common for those girls to shriek in the middle of the night because there was a bug on their mosquito netting. Amazing!
Very good. Among them, my daughters have done volunteer work in Mexico, Honduras, Romania, China, Vietnam, and the United States of America. It makes us feel, as parents, like we did at least part of our job!
Another silly story: In order to encourage frogs to demonstrate their preferred descent techniques a bunch would be rounded up, placed in plastic bags, and taken into the treetops for release. A particular male, finding itself in a bag with a couple of females, wasted no time making time, so to speak. The kids on the team decided this must be the “dork” frog, you know, the one who gets sand kicked in his face if the other guys are around, so they helpfully moved him from bag to bag to make sure he had as much fun as amphibiously possible.
I don’t mean to brag, or anything, but I do know the budding scientist in person. I am sure that it is not only frogs who would jump off trees to win her favor.
This is what it would look like if she were a nature photographer:
And this is some sort of cicada-like thingy emerging from its shell:
(the girls were concerned for its safety, as it was hatching on a stair, so they helpfully transferred it to a tree where it was promptly eaten by a passing gecko.)
