Staking Their Claim

Number of Ticks Removed: 22
Days Tick Free: 1

Its been a tough week.

By 6:30 on Monday morning, the North Group had moved into a fruiting ficus tree in the South Group's home range. They behaved like they like they were homestead squatters, staking their claim. They stayed in that tree the entire day without budging. Yes, the same tree. All day. They seemed to be afraid that if they moved, the South Group would run in and eat all the figs. And with good reason. The South group had them flanked, and they were howling as they hungrily eyed the ficus. But they had no luck. Wrinkle Belly and the rest of the North group had claimed those figs as their own.

It was an interesting day, but the action was-- in typical howler fashion-- quite subtle. The sun was blisteringly hot and I had such a headache that I thought I might puke. But I knew I needed to power through. Minute by minute, the day was boring, but the implications of this territorial dispute over figs were profound. Or at least that's what I would somehow try to say in my dissertation.

Out in the forest, I have plenty of time to think, and more and more I've been thinking about how I'm now halfway done collecting data, and I have no idea what I'm going to say in my dissertation. Marginally functioning toughness tester aside, I certainly can't answer the questions I came here to answer. At this point, I feel like I can't answer any questions, and I will go back with absolutely nothing new to say about howler monkeys. This worry quickly transforms into an even greater worry, which is that I'll never be able to get a job at the end of this (I've been on the job search committee, I've seen what it takes). And from there my ever-present concern is that even if I do manage to get a job, the stress of it will likely drive me to a conniption before I'm up for tenure review.

So this was my dismal mind-set on Tuesday evening when I realized that something had happened to my data file from Monday and all my data had been erased. Even Rob couldn't do anything about it. Neither of us knows what happened; my data are just gone. Since October, I’ve been recording my data with a hand-held iPaq (like a palm pilot)-- using software that Rob wrote expressly for this purpose-- and then I beam it to my computer every night. So far, this is the first problem I’ve encountered with the iPaq. Its not as bad as it could be—if I were recording everything by hand and something happened to one of my notebooks I could lose weeks of work. This was just one day. But still.

There was really nothing to do except get back on the horse and go to the forest on Wednesday morning. It ended up being a pretty good day. They dropped some Albizia leaves, and when I came home I used the toughness tester on them. I thought if I got weird values that would probably drive me over the edge, but my values were actually in-line with previous tests of that specious. I breathed a sigh of relief and entertained the tiniest iota of a possibility that the damn machine might actually work.

Thursday morning I was back at it again and had a really interesting day following Wrinkle Belly's every move. He ate some really crazy foods, including uripe mango and unripe avacado. Just as it was coming up on 4pm, I was following WB across a rock wall (incidentally, in the heart of the South group's range) when I somehow crashed into a rock and crushed the iPaq to smithereens (see photo at right). The screen was all black and nothing would happen when I pressed the buttons. Talk about freaking out. And just when my great day with Wrinkle Belly had begun to take away the sting of Monday's lost data. I gathered my things and ran down the volcano. Literally. I was surprised at how agile I could be in a time of crisis. Of course, getting home sooner wasn't going to save my data if it was lost, but I had to know.

Miraculously, Rob hooked the thing up to a bunch of cords and extracted the day's data. It was all there, everything. I had destroyed the device, but my data were intact. I breathed an enormous sigh of relief.

A huge part of me wanted to take today off, but in the end, I decided to come out for one more day before taking a rest. In fact, I've written this whole thing in the forest while the monkeys were napping. We have an extra iPaq and a more durable case, which I don't like as well but under the circumstances am learning to love.

I've heard that its been a rough week for a lot of my friends and family back at home, too. Just so you know, I am thinking of all of you and wishing you the best. As for myself, if any of you could think of alternate dissertation topics, job prospects, or general words of encouragement, I could really use some of that. For now, I need to get back to my enthralling observations of nap-time with the South group monkeys, who still have yesterday's Nispero plastered all over their faces. Thanks for reading.