Jan 26--Termites & Tarantulas

January 26, 2006
Casita #2

Despite the respite from an early rise, the lulling rain, and night songs of frogs and wrens, I sleep poorly, tossing and turning. At 2:12 am, I must get up for a trip to the pit toilets, something I put off until my bladder is near bursting. O joy, another stroll in the dark wet forest! At the time, I notice a light on in Donna’s tent, but in the darkness notice nothing else. 

At  5:30 I get up for good. On the way to the toilets, I discover that the heavy bamboo framework over the outside tents has collapsed. Water collected on the tarps pulled the framework down. Both Cathy’s and Donna’s tents are in danger of being crushed, the poles actually touching them. Isadora’s and Amelia and Mauricio’s tents have been crushed by the poles and drenched by the pouch of water that pulled the poles down. The two women are huddled under the casita trying to stay warm in their wet clothes. Mauricio has set up a little tent under the casita and is sound asleep in it. (Men!)

I wake Cathy and Donna and help them get carefully out of their tents. Why the others have not done this is a mystery. The situation has the potential of a fatal accident. Donna reports hearing Carlos and Evelyng behind her tent in the night (this apparently when her light was on) and asks why they did not tell her what had happened. They say that they did tell her but didn’t think she was in danger—guess that in the dark they couldn’t see the pole resting on her tent top or the one ready to punch though the back wall of her tent. These poles are heavy 3-inch diameter bamboo! Donna says she doesn’t remember talking to them; she was too groggy.

The photo is from my slide show. The caption on it is wrong: Carlos is holding the tarantula Donna found in her tent

Ecuadorian Purple Tarantula

The whole gang is awake by now. It is still raining. I and others give Isadora and Amelia some long-sleeved warm, dry clothes. We recruit a couple of spare rain jackets for the men, also. I loan Cathy my rain jacket as she moves her tent. Donna eats breakfast and then takes her tent down. While she is doing so, we hear: SPI-DAH!  Yes, Donna has found another tarantula, this one inside her tent on the rear wall. If this keeps up we’ll have to call her Spider Woman. The men dismantle the broken down framework. That evening Donna sleeps upstairs in the Casita sharing Erica’s tent. Mauricio, Isadora, and Amelia, set up under the casita, on as much dry bedding as we can find for them.

Ecuadorian Red Bloom Tarantula

Our heroes, Erica and Susan, don their rain gear and climb to the hummingbird pasture to take down the traps. Tomorrow a team will go up to take down the feeders. Mauricio and Pascual finish the vegetation surveys. They and Susan decide that it is too dangerous for gringo volunteers on the slippery slopes.

Marlene, poor baby, undergoes another native treatment of her insect bitten legs. Carlos goes off with Alejandro on another frog hunt, this time up the mountain and down the other side at the pasture to a valley they haven’t been to before. As he is putting on his boots, Carlos complains that they hurt his feet as they are two sizes too small. I give him mine, which are a perfect fit. Later, when he gets back, he asks if he can buy my boots. I tell him that he can have the boots after I wear them to get back to El Suspiro tomorrow. He’s a happy camper.

Susan and Erica return for a lunch of popcorn in hot cheese-onion soup and fried plantains. That afternoon we huddle under the casita—hot, damp, and weary—and finish summarizing the translated El Suspiro, Loma Alta, and Dos Mangas community hummingbird polls. We use colored pencils to color code the vegetation surveys as well. We try to resurrect the car battery so that we can input the last data, but have no success.

After she recovers from her treatment, Marlene gives Evelyng some English lessons by having Evelyng read a story in one of Marlene’s triathlete magazines. They ask me (a former English teacher) how to know when to accent the “ed” on words and when not to. I really had not thought of this before and have no answer for them. It is common for Spanish speakers of English to accent the “ed” inappropriately, e.g., stopp-ed, walk-ed. How does one know when to pronounce a word with “ed” (resurrected) or a “t” (stopped) sound?

While Marlene and Evelyng are working on English lessons, Carlos, who is sitting on the end of the table says, “Oh oh. Here they come again.”

“Here what come?” I naively ask.

“The termites,” he replies. And come they do, swarming from the thatch above the casita by the thousands.

The cooks cover the evening meal, which is just about ready for serving. Some retreat to their zipped tents again, but most of us move out into the clearing to the right of the casita and do the “termite dance” for half an hour or so, brushing the things out of our hair, off our legs and clothes and shaking them out of our tee-shirts.

Termites in the cloud forest often build large mud nests in the trees such as the one in the photo left. However, these termites come both times from the thatch, so I think that maybe they are ants. But, no, when I look closely at the one accidentally pressed into  my journal, I can see that it is a black winged termite.