Gainesville Gators!

Another week of work passed quickly. The nights of listening to frog calls continue to be fun and I continue to be paranoid in the dark. My supervisor bought me a maglite which made me very happy. I can see much further now and can scare the wildlife as much as it scares me. I gave a poor deer a heart attack when I switched on the light right in its face after I finished a survey (I sit with no lights on when surveying). I didnt know she was there any more than she new I was. There was an explosive snort and then crashing as she took off.

Last night I was probably at the most paranoid I have been out there. Before I headed out Tom (the graduate student I work for) told me he saw an alligator in one of the rivers he was in surveying (everyone said they wouldnt be there!). He also talked about animals running at him before they swerved and ran into the brush. These are not stories I need to hear before I go work. And of course last night had a lot of sites I had to walk to! My maglite was my best friend!

Last weekend I went down to Gainesville to visit my friends Jill and Aaron from college. I met Jill on my trip to the Galapagos Islands years ago and through that got to know her in college. I think I most of you have met her. And this Aaron (I know far too many!) is of Bliss Gypsies fame! Most enjoyable live shows Ive ever been too. Jill is in the middle of earning a PhD. Her field work is in Peru and involves point counts. She has over 300 bird songs memorized. Its really amazing. She and I spent an evening listening to frog and bird calls and looking at pictures of some of the crazy birds she works with. Some of the calls are really unbelievable. They dont even sound organic! Aaron is still playing music. Hes teaching percussion and marimba (the giant wooden xylophone looking things the Bliss Gypsies played) as well as building and selling various African and South American instruments. Some of the instruments dont even look like instruments. I thought they had a cat box in their living room, but it turned out to be some sort of South American drum. It really looked like a box made out of ply wood with a small hole in one end for a cat. But Aaron sat on it and demonstrated how to play it and it really sounded good. The different pieces of wood were tuned and a range of sounds came out. Very cool. Theres no band like the Bliss Gypsies down there, but Aaron was playing with a Cuban percussionist group and is training up a band to play some of his new compositions for marimba. How did I ever meet someone so alt-trendy?!

So, the town of Gainesville kinda creeps me out, but the nature around the town is really nice. Jill and I went birding and herping down at Manatee Spring State Park and saw tons of beautiful warblers (yellow throated, northern parula, prothonotary) and a couple of cool herps (baby gopher tortoise!). That night we went out to some wetlands to try and find some alligators and for me to teach them some frog songs. We were on this board walk about five minutes. Jill was shining her flash light out on the water and in the first wave we saw the red eye shine of 3 alligators around us in the pond. Pretty amazing. The frogs were going nuts too: lots of green tree frogs and northern cricket frogs calling. So were standing there and in the large empty parking lot a motorcycle pulls up right next to our car. We assume its a cop and walk back (cause technically the park is closed at dark). But, not its a biker and as soon as we approach he pretends to be busy with his bike. Kinda creepy, right? Jill and Aaron were very wary because a friend got back to his car after dusk from a bike ride to find his windows busted in and everything stolen. He was at a state park. We tried to park several places to walk into Newmans lake and always (luckily before we are out of eye sight of the car) another vehicle pulls in right next to ours. So, because Gainesville is so thuggish we didnt get to find many alligators. But we saw some! I also found a couple of frogs on the road to show them. I asked Aaron to drive slowly along Lakeshore road and hoped out and grabbed various guys off the road. We found a pretty good variety: a big ol pig frog, a southern leopard frog, and a chubby green tree frog. It was a good evening overall!

Monday, before I drove back Jill and I went to the natural history museum. They had a gorgeous butterfly garden and most excitingly a replica of a set of megaladon jaws (largest shark ever in existence- could shallow 6 of me whole!). All in all, a very good weekend! Nice to see some old friends.