Rum

We caught a big hermit crab the other day in one of the mongoose traps. He clung to the hardware cloth and wouldn't come out, so we just brought the trap back. Daniel spent a while trying to get him to come out, but eventually wandered off. I waited until he started to move and then startled him. He pulled back into his shell and let me roll him out of the cage. He was a handsome fellow whose shell was a good bit too small. I took some pictures of him and eventually we let him wander off.

I've been very pleased with my new camera. I'm still getting the hang of using the advanced features, but I'm starting to feel like I have mastery over the exposure and f-stop. The only shortcoming I've found is that I wish it had a split-prism in the center for focusing -- that was really handy with my old SLR.

We've been having technology difficulties with our GPS hardware. Buzz got this fancy GPS device called a "Trimble" that has been nothing but trouble. It's supposed to have resolution down to 1meter, but seems flaky and unreliable. It uses a PocketPC device to run it, but menus seem to randomly disappear at times and its a nightmare to try to operate. We eventually just decided to stick with the cheap, commercial GPS devices.

Tom arrived yesterday afternoon. Daniel and I drove over to pick him up at the airport. We had to wait a few minutes until his bag came off the conveyor, but quickly enough were headed out. He was bewildered for a moment when I started driving on the wrong side of the road, until he realized what was happening.

After picking up provisions and taking a quick plunge in the ocean, we took Tom out to the refuge to release the mongooses we'd trapped in the morning. At the end, we walked out onto the beach to show Tom some sea turtle tracks. We found one of the turtle-project people with a bunch of leather-back sea turtle hatchlings that she was getting ready to release. Daniel really enjoyed seeing them and asked the woman a bunch of questions about them.

Jonathon is very frustrated with Daniel. He doesn't like it that Daniel gets to do things that he can't do. Worse, Daniel isn't old enough to know not to rub it in. He teases Jonathon, meaning to do it in a good-natured way, but it nearly makes Jonathon foam at the mouth. Jonathon, then, looks for avenues to get back at Daniel, which encourages Daniel to reciprocate. It's tiring for all of us. In general they're doing well, but it requires a lot of maintenance and intervention to keep things running smoothly.