First a correction to yesterday's blog: Dave looked up our skink which turned out to be a slave gecko, so named because they came over to the islands with the slaves who were brought here to work the sugar cane fields. The students caught several mongeese yesterday afternoon (see photo). The group that was doing a study on them measured their length, the length of the tail, brushed them for exo-parasites (mostly fleas and ticks), took pictures of their teeth (for counting purposes to determine age), checked if male or female, weighed them, shaved a patch off the leg and marked them before releasing them. Some of them were quite feisty and others were resigned to putting up with all the fuss. Most people have heard of Rudyard Kipling's story of Ricki-tiki-tavi, but these are quite a bit smaller than the Indian ones who tangle with cobras. In fact, we found that they are close cousins to meerkats! We had a huge rain/wind storm last night. It was quite exciting as the cottages only have screens so the wind came whipping through as the rain beat on the tin roof. It was great to listen to and we both slept soundly. We took the day off today and drove Barb, Jim and Glenn into Cruz Bay. We had to wait at one point as a herd of five cows were meandering down the middle of the road (see photo). We went to visit an artists house/studio that Barb and Jim were familiar with. I bought some of her postcards and enjoyed looking at her watercolors. He dog posed quite nicely for me so I snapped her picture (see above). As we were getting back to the jeep, we spotted a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig in the surf (see photo). His owner was luring him in with Cheerios. His name was Ziggy and he was rather cute. Jim renamed the spot where we saw him, the Bay of Pigs! We stopped at the post office and mailed some boxes and letters from the staff. We also picked up mail going out to camp. We drove down to Mongoose Junction and did a little shopping (not that there was much there, but I did pick up a few things). We ate lunch at a Texas BBQ place and decided we had had enough of the "big city" and decided to head back. Unfortunately, the parking brake was stuck and we could not unstick it no matter what we tried. Jim and Dave stayed with the car while the rest of us walked up to the car rental place to see if someone could help us out. One of the guys drove us back to the Jeep and he basically pounded on it until it became unstuck - we probably would have broken it if we had tried doing the same - so no more parking brake for us! We stopped at the National Park Service area to borrow a projector for the camp and then headed out the north road for home. We made one more quick stop at Lily's in Coral Bay for bananas for some of the volunteers and then made it back to camp by 3. The back seat of the Jeep is not really made for 3, but we managed. The students just got back from their hike. They went up to Ram's Head, Drunk Bay, and snorkled in Salt Pond and then back to camp - about 6 miles round trip. They are now working in groups on a variety of research projects - mongeese distribution, sea urchins, anoles, etc. They are all busy doing their projects, but look like they are having a good time, too. By the way, the lemon squares were a big success!
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