Feb 10

Our first day in the field. We woke up at 6 to be at breakfast by 6:30. We were out in the cars by 7:30. While we drove we passed tons of impalas, monkeys and even zebras right up next to the road! We then went around setting up dung beetle traps for my group’s independent projects. Other groups set up their traps for reptiles, small mammals, ants, etc. Later in the day we had to roll fresh rhino dung into little parcels for the dung beetle traps we were setting up. They’re set up with a bucket flush on the ground and then two pieces of wire crossed over it, with a large piece of dung wrapped in cheese cloth perched on top of the wires. So of course, we had to roll the dung. It was absolutely repulsive. Luckily, I had just cut my fingernails in preparation, but the smell was awful. We rolled 75 parcels which took a good 3 hours. While we did this, everyone else went swimming in the pool right outside our rooms. Then in the afternoon we went to 15 different sites setting up the traps with dung. By the end of it I smelled absolutely disgusting. But I am proud to say that I personally handled the dung balls and I even squeezed them when necessary, although I needed some coaxing the first time. I also almost ate a small piece of dung for $100 but then decided that my pride, and the taste in my mouth, was more important. Also, Evan kept upping the rules, saying I had to chew it for 4 minutes which is really not okay. So I did not do it. At the sights around the river we heard hippo which make a really strange snort/barking sound. I was slightly terrified but no one else seemed to care, even though we had to walk down to the riverbed to collect sand to make our traps. At one of the sights there were water buffalo just across the river. We set up the traps but were very cautious and looked for signs that they might consider crossing, at which point we would have ran back to the car. Or climbed up a tree. At the last site I got tangled up in thorns and ended up slicing my thumb open, which caused me to then leave behind all the rest of the rolled up dung…oh well. My finger was bleeding, what was I supposed to do? It still hurts, as I’m typing this. So we got back and had dinner, etc. (On the way back we saw a hyena right in the middle of the road!!) And then we had to plan for getting more dung for the next day because the traps need to be set up with fresh dung every 24 hours. So Alan said he would take us on a drive to try to find dung. The guys guarding the gate to the camp were very reluctant to let us out because you’re not allowed to go on night drives and they saw that we had headlamps, etc. But they finally let us go when we kind of made up a story about why we were leaving. As we drove along, we looked out for bush babies and impalas and anything we could see. And then, all of the sudden, there was a massive shape in the middle of the road: an elephant. It was probably 20ft away from us—it was amazing. And huge. So we drove down the road that it had been walking up and sure enough, in the middle of the road, was a gigantic pile of steaming, fresh poo. We got out of the car and scooped it, with our bare hands, into a huge bucket. It was still warm. My hand smell so badly and I’ve washed them a million times and I think this smell is supposed to last for weeks. Ew. But the drive was amazing. I cant wait for more night drives.