Day 6 and 7…. People eating ice cream, Toads eating dog food

Sorry I skipped a day…. Yesterday was intensely hectic. I will start with the day before yesterday, though not much happened, so don’t worry, you didn’t miss much ;). We slept till 1, trying to make up for the 3:30 a.m. food run escapade, and woke up in time to eat breakfast, get dressed, and catch a ride over to Tupper (main bldg in PC) with Ximena. She was giving the formal lecture that day, and it would be the first time that Lynne and I would see her formally speak. She’s very good! Unfortunately, she put pictures of Lynne and I in the presentation. Much later that night, when I was down at the school looking at the toads, I met a guy and he was like, “Oh, there was a picture of you in the lecture today, you’re the toad girl!” Yes folks, I am the toad girl, I admit it and accept it full-fledged, but I’m sorry, you can’t kiss me, I’ve already found my prince. :D

Anyways, after the lecture, we hung around and attempted to ‘socialize’ with other STRI people…. No such luck. We ended up talking to Sara and Marta the whole time. We went out for ice cream in this nice little historic area with a bunch of the bat lab people, and some other friends of Ximena and Rachel. It was a lot of fun; the ice cream was delicious, and we walked around this really pretty area looking at city and the Panama Bay (part of the Pacific Ocean). There was a monument to the French attempt at building the Panama Canal as well. It was a beautiful area at night, but I think it would have been more fun during the day, so I could take better pictures.



That night I stayed at the school while Lynne went out to record alone. I fed and recorded the remaining 3 frogs (Draino and Rocky escaped; we found Rocky quickly, but no sign of Draino). I chatted on Skype for a while, so I wasn’t really paying attention to the toads. We got our work done and were home in bed by 1:30.

The next day (yesterday), I was feeling guilty about not watching the toads, so I woke up early and went down to the bat lab to watch the videos. 2 out of the three toads ate on the tapes! I was soooo excited! This means my novel item experiments will work out.  While making notes on the tapes and doing some other computer stuff, Rachel came in and asked for some help; one of the lab rooms had flooded. I quickly grabbed a broom and Rachel, Marta and I swept water out the door for half an hour. Turns out that the water heater busted…. Unfortunately, it’s the water heater for our apartment. No hot water for us for a while! Luckily, this is about the only place where it’s OK not to have hot water.

While we were sweeping, Ximena showed up, and we were chatting for a bit. I ran upstairs to get Lynne for something, and we all talked for a while about the projects. Then I ran upstairs, changed out of my pajamas (which I still had on since I didn’t think I was going to be doing so much so quickly!), and ran back downstairs in time to check my email and wait for Marta to take me into town to buy toad pen supplies.

The trip to town was long! It was Marta, Sara, Vincent (new guy from Montreal, speaks excellent Spanish!), and myself. We went to Tupper to get Vincent all signed in and official, and so I could pick up our license paperwork and the toad permit. The paperwork wasn’t ready, but the toad permit was! Which made me very happy; now my project was really official!

We headed to Albrook mall, where I bolted to the Apple store to buy a new power cord for my computer. Mine melted into two pieces the night before…. Sigh. $100 later, I have a new cord, and can use my laptop again. Vincent was starving, so we went to Crepes & Waffles again, and ate delicious crepes and drank jugo de guanabana, which Lynne and I are obsessed with. We went to Novey and to Do It center to get PVC for my toad pen, and to the fabric store to get mesh fabric. Now I have all my pieces, I am going to start building my pen today. 

Last night I caught new toad #5 (Wart), and we went out to the field to do some recordings and catch some couples. It was raining, so we didn’t get a huge load, but we got 3 recordings and two couples, which wasn’t too bad. We took them to the lab, worked them up, released them and made it home before 12:30. A successful night, for sure!