August 14
An almost completely uneventful day, apart from my discovery that chameleons will happily form white warning spots if threatened. Nothing of interest on either trap check run. Madagascar is still intensely interesting even when nothing's happening, though. In the day, everywhere you look the raw sunlight hits something totally new and unfamiliar. At night, you can stare upward until your neck goes stiff, because there's no clouds and no light pollution, so the whole sky is full of these strange Southern Hemisphere stars.
August 15
...was apparently so dull I completely forgot to make a journal entry for that day. Basically, everything I just said about how interesting it is was a lie. Seriously, some days you walk a long way in completely fascinating surroundings, find nothing, and have nothing happen that's particularly different from the day before.
August 16
The most frustrating day of the entire trip for me personally. First, morning trap check in JBA produced a troop of brown lemurs and an entire family of Coquerel's sifakas. This, of course, was the one day I forgot my flippin' camera. Instead I watched the sifakas eat flowers as they leapt from tree to tree, the baby of the family clinging to its mother's back. At one point, they began an odd, hooting ululation, which was then echoed by a second chorus deeper in the forest. I went in to see what was making the responding noise, but couldn't find anything. I spent the afternoon kicking myself for not having my camera.
That evening, I was scheduled to do solo telemetry duty above JBB. I'd never been shown where the radio tower for that area was, and on the tiny hill trails in the dark, I got lost. Then, in case that wasn't enough fun, not only could I not find the tower or the people I was supposed to meet, but something I'd eaten that day decided to rack the hell out of my digestive system. I managed to make it back to camp, only to lay bonelessly in my tent between trips to the bathroom, while the rest of the team had a going-away party for Shawn, who was leaving early the next day. Mercifully, whatever was in my system didn't prove to be serious.
August 17
Spent most of this day recovering in camp, reading and writing. Most startling event of the day was when I reached for a twisted vine and part of it moved under my hand. The chameleon I'd disturbed glared peevishly at me with one eye and crawled off upwards to pretend to be a different section of vine.
There was a general sense of disappointment and dejection in camp that day. We all knew that the next day we'd be gathering in the traps, and leaving the day after that. We hadn't caught or seen a fossa, and everyone knew we weren't going to. At dinner, someone suggested we rename the expedition "Chickens of Madagascar", as that was the main species we'd had contact with, feeding the little bastards every day. I myself was feeling particularly let down, as fossas were the primary reason I'd come on the expedition in the first place. The rest of it was great, make no mistake, but I'd been persuaded to come entirely because of my fascination with the fossa, and to come halfway around the world and go home without seeing one seemed almost like a waste of several thousand dollars of my own and my assorted parents' money.