Day 2: My first experience with mongoose!

Another beautiful day!! Woke up at 7:30 when Jonathan ran in to tell us that there was a big cruise ship in the bay. It looked liked one i had seen at Charlotte Amalie yesterday, so maybe they are doing a tour of the islands.

Had another wonderful breakfast courtesy of Matt. After breakfast, Buzz, Matt and Katie went to move in to building at the refuge, while I stayed behind to watch Jonathan. While Jonathan played in the surf I did some grading until it began to rain. Jonathan and I returned to the cottage where I napped until everybody came back and we had lunch.

After lunch Katie, Matt and I went to the refuge to check the traps. The road into the refuge was really bad so we took about 15 minutes to drive the short distance to the shore. When we parked the van a little yellow warbler, whom Matt and Katie call Wally, flitted around the van staring at its reflection. It clearly thought its reflection was another warbler and was trying to defend its territory. After filming the warbler we then went to check 10 traps along the shore. I went with Katie to check 5 of them, while Matt checked the other 5. All of the first four were empty so all we had to do was replace the bait (chicken feet) and reset them. The last trap had a mongoose so I got to go in and pick up the cage. The mongoose was not very happy at all(and neither would I if I had been trapped in a cage) and spit and squawked at me. I had to be careful picking up the cage so I didn't get bitten by the mongoose. We replaced the trap, and went back to the van; Matt had found two mongoose so we now had a total of three. Here are two videos of the first mongoose Katie and I found.

We started going up the road checking the remaining 20 traps. Most of them were empty and so we replaced the bait. We found another four mongoose along the way most of them spitting mad. We did also found a huge termite nest.

We then brought the mongoose back to the cottages and began examining them. First Buzz coaxes them out of the cage into a canvas bag. He then weighs them ( the weights varied from 360 g to 770 g today) and Matt scans them to see if they've already been trapped and tagged. If they have, Katie checks them for fleas, takes a fecal sample and checks their teeth. Buzz then puts them back in the cage and we move on to the next one. If they haven't Katie gives them a small injection of Ketamin Hydrochloride which basically makes them doped up and easy to handle (unfortunately this drug has also been used as a date rape drug). After the drug takes effect, Buzz takes the mongoose out of the bag and makes a small incision on the inside of the left leg to insert the computer tag. After he seals it up, Katie checks for fleas, takes a fecal sample and tries to take a blood sample. Unfortunately when Katie inserts the needle, the vein collapses and we can't draw blood. There are lots of thorns here in the refuge so the collapsing of the vein is an obvious adaptation to their environment. When we are done, Buzz puts the mongoose back in the cage. Out of the seven we had trapped, five were recaptures (including two from yesterday) and five were males.

Katie, Matt and I then went back to the refuge to release the mongoose. When we opened the cages, most of the mongoose did not immediately run away (unlike yesterday) and instead the continued to spit at us, as though they were saying, I'm not just going to go away, you trapped me and now I'm going to get even." Fortunately with a bit of coaxing they ran out of the cage and into the brush.

This was an amazing experience. It was fun to examine the two we had never captured. I got to hold one after it had been drugged and it was very docile. They are very clean animals. Although they look like ferrets, they are from a completely different family.

After we returned the mongoose we returned to the cottages to have a wonderful dinner of flank steak, potatos, fried plantains and fruit salad.

Tomorrow we will begin our work a bit earlier in the morning. It should be another fun day.