Have you ever felt seer frustration?
Like the kind a child's feels when you hold up a candy a bit too high; just out of his or her reach. Well I don't remember if I had to experience such an atrocity in my childhood but my first night sampling in the Amazonian rainforests of Ecuador, definitely made me feel similar emotions.
But before I start ranting about my misery (and a bitter rant it will be), it's only fair that I explain the necessary background. You see I was fortunate enough to land a placement at Timburi-Cocha Research Station situated in Payamino in the Amazonian Ecuador. Here's a link to their website. Six months in one of the biodiversity Hotspots of the world! I had to make the most of it. Thus I decided to collect data for a research project I require to complete in the third year of my university degree. Amphibians have always fascinated me so my project was always going to be something to do with frogs.
I will not be a bore and save the details of my project for later. All that's required to be known is that my work requires me to collect frogs, take certain measurements and then release them. The huge amphibian biodiversity of the region had me excited. There was a spring in my feet and a spark in my eyes when I and my mate Tom (check out his Facebook here) set out in the forest with our guide. I could already hear a chorus of frog calls, as if they were inviting me into their world. Little did I know that this very chorus was going to be the cause of my frustration, desperation, anger and a broken permanent marker in the very near future.
A rainforest really comes alive in the night, critters scurried away from bellow our feet with every step we took, a thousand insects sang a thousand songs from the undergrowth. Spiders hunted on leaves and sinister looking (but harmless) whips scorpions blockaded the path. From everywhere around came the unending chorus of the frogs. We walked on taking in the sights of the forest while trying to avoid stepping on a trail of leaf-cutter ants travelling along the path carrying their huge leafy cargo back to the nest where it will nourish their fungal gardens.
We soon came to a river, which I had determined would be our sampling location for the night; and from there began my misery. For there wasn't a single frog to be found for the entire three hours we searched. We looked and looked till my back began to hurt and my eyes saw frogs everywhere the torch light fell; only for them to turn out to be giant spiders, grasshoppers, katydids, millipedes and every other non-frog creature there is. But the frogs were there; we could hear their endless chorus from above our heads, within the numerous branches just out of our reach. Their song which had felt inviting and beautiful just a few hours ago, now sounded like their mockery of our inability to find or capture them.
It seemed to me that they had somehow been alerted to our arrival and had climbed up as high as they could so as to torment us and mock us. I shouted at them to shut up but of cause they didn't shut up. More than once I felt the urge to chop down the trees which were their means of escape from our hands. I may even have tried if my machete wasn't so blunt that it couldn't cut down a banana tree, let alone a woody stem; and for the simple fact that this was a rainforest and there were a million trees to chop down.
Finally we gave up and returned to the station with a grand total of zero frogs captured. I was angry, felt betrayed and ridiculed; my dreams of sampling hundreds of specimens now shrouded in doubt. I had to take my frustration out somewhere....... So I took it out on the only thing possible, my permanent marked (whose original use was for marking the frog bags). It promptly smashed (even though I had thrown it lightly on my mattress), and spilled ink all over my sleeping back, thus providing a fitting end to my first frog sampling night.