#29 - TALES FROM THE FIELD #1

Some of you have attended my lectures on my travels in pursuit of tarantulas. I never collect. I find, observe and photograph. And I'm known to scare up a few snakes along the way. You may have also seen my videos, either on my YouTube Channel, many of which are short clips of snake wrangling or tarantula spiders. I hope to add some from my recent Sri Lanka expedition soon. Others of you may have purchased my one hour documentary on our team's 2006 field trip to Costa Rica from Andrew Smith's Love Tarantulas. It's only five bucks. Give it a go.

Our field trips consist of four man teams with a roster of five. Each year one is not involved. Andrew Smith is typically the de facto leader and my teammates also include Paul Carpenter, Guy Tansley and Mark Carpenter. These trips typically last three to four weeks and as I am the sole American they take on an air of classic British wit with deadpan delivery of sarcasm and self-deprecation. They love to "take the piss" out of each other and their big American companion is an easy target.

Four blokes spending three weeks or more together is bound to create tensions that are eased by humor (or do you say humour?) and relentless sarcasm. Trekking jungles is hard and sweaty work and we are very serious about our tarantula hunting. But during down time over a few beers, or whenever you get the chance to poke fun at a mate, sharp-tongued wit is unleashed with a fury. In short, we have a blast.

But certain stories always stick out in my mind. Some may be "you had to be there" to be found amusing, but I thought I share some memories of our experiences outside of fieldwork.

The first tale is from my first trip with the team. It was 2006 and Costa Rica. I cannot tell you how excited I was to be going on a tarantula adventure with Andrew Smith. When his Tarantula Classification Guide was released many years earlier I paged through it incessantly and wondered who this Andrew M. Smith was. We would meet in person for the first time at the ATS conference in 2003 in Carlsbad, New Mexico. He was the keynote lecturer and delivered one of his many fascinating lectures on Poecilotheria. He was with his American mate, the late Michael Sullivan, and I bought a copy of his Tarantulas of USA & Mexico out of the backseat of Michael's dusty 4x4. We would meet again soon thereafter when he once again spoke for ATS, this time in Phoenix. We had become fast friends who have enjoyed many a whiskey and cigar together. He asked me to join him in Costa Rica and I jumped out of my skin. I was going to travel with a legend and I couldn't have been more eager and excited. Of course, we are now dear mates who have spent many hours together around the world and at his home in southeast London. But then I was a bit starstruck.

Jump ahead to my arrival in Costa Rica. Through a booking error I arrived a day after the team so they had already had a day to sort our rental car and some provisions. When I arrived at the airport in San Jose I met Paul and his brother Mark for the first time and the four of us piled into the little hired car. I deferred to my new English mates and climbed in the back despite being by far the tallest and heaviest. I kept mostly silent as I was the new guy and wasn't going to force my strong and obnoxious American personality on then from the start. They know me differently now ;)

Costa Rica drives American style so right hand driving was a bit foreign for Paul and Andy tried to use his multitude of maps to navigate our way out of the capitol and to the northeast where we wanted to begin. We had not chosen a base camp and we made every decision on the fly throughout the field trip. But Andrew had maps, notebooks, journals and his omnipresent pipe and scarf and we rolled up and down winding roads trying to make progress away the urban center of Costa Rica. Mark and I were wedged in the backseat with one or two of my bags between us. My legs were bent however I could get them and my knees seemed to be in my chin. I felt a pain in my right foot and wondered what was digging into me, but I could barely move my long legs. I'm 6' 2" and on this trip I probably was about 240-250#. What they would call seventeen and a half stone. The ball of my right foot became more and more cramped and pained. The floorboards of our silver Daihatsu or whatever it was were definitely attacking my foot. I tried to shift my body over so I could reach down and explore. I felt a bar of sorts and grabbed onto an aluminum handle and pulled up an ice axe. Here I was sweating my cornfed American arse off in the claustrophobic rear seat of some Costa Rican rental, and for some bloody reason we had an ice axe in the car. We were thousands of miles from the flippin' Andes!

Andrew then regaled me with a tale of Martin Filmer, from whom he had learned the "ice axe" technique for digging out embankment burrows for tarantulas. Andrew had come to the balmy tropics with something made for vertical ascents of frozen waterfalls, only he had cut part of the handle's length off to make it more compact and easy to swing repeatedly to entrench soil. A sawed off ice axe, if you will. Suitably educated, I placed it where it wouldn't assail me and began wondering about these three pasty Britons. My thought was interrupted by the ringing of a phone. After a confused delay I realized that it was my cell phone vibrating in my pocket. It seemed I had joined a local network and was about to receive an expensive phone call. It was my friend Glenn who was watching my dog and parrot and keeping an eye on my shoppe. I had another friend named Keith who would work for me from time to time and he was caring for my reptiles, amphibians and tarantulas. Glenn was just calling to check in, but now that I knew I had cell reception I started a conversation about where we were going to stay not only that night, but make our first base camp. We were headed in the direction of La Selva Biological Station and I began riffling through my Lonely Planet guide looking for accommodation. I was the only teammate who spoke any Spanish and I did my best using my cell phone to see if anything nearby could provide lodging for three Brits, one American and a sawed-off ice axe. As luck would have it, I found La Quinta Sarapiqui, an excellent eco-lodge and a place that will again be my first base when I return to Costa Rica with my stepfather in early December. We would find this a glorious place to stay and it had a library of field guides and identification posters hanging all around the common area. The breakfast buffet was delicious and I tried to eat my weight in the most amazing pineapple I've ever enjoyed. The grounds were teeming with wildlife. The staff put out fruits at feeding stations and attracted a dazzling menagerie of colorful birds. Emerald basilisks prowled the stream edge and brush surrounding the lodging. I chased many up a tree or under the porch of a cabin. Dart frogs, both green and black Dendrobates auratus and "blue jeans" D. pumilio could be found on the grounds and the wooden walkways over the adjacent ponds revealed caiman. They even had a makeshift butterfly flight. Geckos darted about catching nocturnal flying insects while we played card games, dominos and had our evening cocktails. By sheer luck I had found us nice clean rooms with hot showers, good food and drink and creatures galore. Eventually feeling came back to my right foot.

We worked out of four base camps across the country during our three week stay. From each would we drive to a new target location. One day we saw a green iguana run across the two lane road and then soon saw that it was being chased by a domestic/feral cat. I had whoever was driving slam on the brakes and ran into the road after the iguana. Oncoming traffic appeared in the corner of my eye as I scooped up the wriggling three footer. Once the cars passed we posed for a few photos with the lizard before scooting it in a different direction than the cat had ran off. Later we were working a road with Aphonopelma seemanni burrows and Paul went behind a tree to urinate. He screamed, "Michael! Snake!". After making sure that Paul hadn't begun to pee, I ran behind the tree and pulled up the five foot Central American lyresnake. It had a few ticks that I gently removed, and despite the fact that it was beginning to go into a shed it was remarkably placid. After I had my photo taken with my new friend I took photos of both Paul and Andrew holding it. It wasn't until they were done that I admitted to them that it was a rear-fanged venomous snake and a very large one at that. They were not amused by the timing of my confession at all.

More Tales to come ...

MJ