Wildlife Tales From Picaflor Research Centre

I’ve got a few wildlife tales from Picaflor I haven’t told yet, so I’ve collected them here…

Capybara

One day while Elissa and Joel were here, Ron the capybara was trying to play with me while we were pumping water.

He took a tiny little nibble just below my right knee, but he shouldn’t be faulted. He’s just a baby, and got excited because we were all wet and he thought we were playing with him.

Well, we were throwing buckets of water at him!

Bats

On the night Katie and Eric arrived, there was a small opossum in the kitchen. So cute! That same night, the sky was beautifully clear. I invited Eric and Katie to join me on the steps by the river (no docks here) to observe the scintillating stars.

On my way down (Katie was waiting for Eric), I heard animals rustling in the bush on both sides of me.

I’d been attempting Pico’s trick of only lighting the flashlight briefly and periodically, so now I turned it on to have a look. Nothing.

I inched forward in the dark and the noise returned, but this time something sounded familiar and I realized what it was.

Beating wings. All around me, frighteningly close. I could feel air moving around my head every time a bat swooped by.

Eric and Katie arrived and together we turned our flashlights on and watched a few dozen bats flitter about.

Nocturnal Hike

Last night, Eric, Katie, Johanna, and I went on a nocturnal jungle hike in the hopes of seeing cats or caymans. We walked along the trail that follows the river. Nada.

All we saw was a frog potentially of the hyla family. Possibly it was the short-nosed tree frog, based on our best guess from the books available in the library. It was tiny, tan, with a facial mask, just sitting on a leaf.

I don’t know how Katie spotted it, but if anyone could have, it would’ve been the biologist (winky face).

Oh, yeah, can’t forget the attack by army ants, either!

When we came back, Katie and I decided to check out the tarantula’s nest. Mama was on the trail and babies were at the entrance of the nest! There were one or two larger than the rest. We speculated if they could possibly be an older generation of babies or possibly, males.

We observed for a while and when mama got skittish, she huddled her herd back into the nest, remaining at the entrance and watching us. She eventually realized that we weren’t harmful and moved back out, allowing the babies to mill about the entrance.