Too busy to write much

I've started writing posts several times, but haven't found time to write more than the beginning of a paragraph. I'll try to actually get something out tonight.

We got off to a slow start with catching mongooses, but today we made a lot of progress. Buzz had always been enamored with laying out grids of traps, but the past few days have convinced him that using traplines along roads is a more efficient use of effort. We've caught a fair number of mongooses in the past couple of days. We've caught around 20 so far.

We're sampling in a few new areas. We're trapping near the refuge headquarters and also at the north end of the refuge, near a public swimming pool. I've been trying to take more time to just look around, now that we have the students to do the lion's share of the actual work.

Near the pool, there is a population of iguanas that go out into the lawn to eat grass and other greens. They are shy around people, but aren't afraid of cars, so we could get some good pictures of them from inside the car.

There is another guy here who studies bats. We took him out to see our mongoose operation and we're planning to go out with him "batting" sometime. Daniel already got to go with Jonathan and George (the bat-guy's son). They caught 20 or 30 Artibeous and the boys got to release them. Coincidentally, there was a bat low down on a tree near the cottages today that we all got to look at. For him to be hanging around in the day, suggests that he's not healthy. We tried to poke some mango into him and he seemed to be eating lustily. Hopefully, he'll pull through. They're cute little guys, with soft fur like a chinchilla.

This evening, we also visited the turtle researchers on the nesting beach. We went to a spot where a green turtle had recently done some excavating, but hadn't actually nested. We could see the tracks, though. It sounded like that was all we were going to get to see. I was sitting in the sand watching, when I saw a baby sea-turtle back up the beach. I ran for it, to make sure the pelicans and ghost crabs couldn't get it. It turned out to be a leatherback nest they had missed. We rescued all of the babies and then got to take them to the other side of the point and release them. It's wonderful to watch the little guys struggle into the waves and swim away. Mission accomplished.