August 11
A slow day. Morning trap check in JBB revealed nothing, though the afternoon trap check in JBA turned up a couple of chickens that had been shredded by something. Whatever had done it had managed to reduce a chicken to McNuggets without setting off the trap.
The other ominous note of the day was a discussion with the people doing radio telemetry, revealing that they'd been detecting minimal fossa activity. I began to wonder if Caesar was not the only fossa to meet with an untimely end.
August 12
While riding in the truck to JBB for the morning trap check, we passed an auto wreck by the side of the road, with a body covered in a sheet. Still nothing of interest in the traps in the morning.
When I was coming out of the woods near the lake after trap check, I came across an odd enclosure.
This, I learned, is a sacrifice pen. Every year, a few zebu (the local cattle) are kept in here, then their heads chopped off and thrown into the water as a sacrifice to the crocodiles that infest the lake. This is meant to convince the crocodiles not to eat the local kids. As far as I know, we don't have solid numbers on how effective it is.
In the afternoon, we walked
to and from JBB for the afternoon trap check, as the truck was lent out to transport
the corpse from that morning's accident.
Trap check was uneventful in and of itself, though I did get a chance to swing on a vine in the jungle, as seen here. One should never let such opportunities pass by, I feel.
On the way back, we tried to take a shortcut around the lake to get back to camp, but wound up getting lost and having to navigate our way back to the road through a large rice paddy field. The paddies were arranged in a rough grid, separated by low dirt walls, which we had to balance our way along to get back to the road.
Back at the road, I bought a couple leaf-wrapped packets of a local drug called rambo. Rambo is a flat green leaf that tastes bitter and slightly peppery when chewed, and acts as a mild stimulant, not unlike a good shot of caffiene.