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I love rum – we stayed up late together last night – there was singing and guitar playing and I couldn’t remember all the words to the MTA song!   Today I spent a lot of time in the marsh...more than I like!   Actually it isn't so bad, but it smells bad.   Sometimes it smells like grandpa's pond, but others it smells like rotting horse shit...and then maybe it is...so it isn't always a good place...but I've collected a lot of snails.  And i'm running some feeding and behavior trials on them – so far it is neat because it seems like they prefer native plants to the very closely related exotic that has been increasing in abundance for the last few years.  

Today I saw a cowboy lasso a horse riding fast and swingin the rope...a real cowboy!   I thought of all of the times I wanted to have a horse when I was a kid, then I thought about how these men must have been riding horses all of their lives.   They looked like centaurs...because they were just riding so fast, and the seemed to have such a feel for their horse the moved so well like one animal – not two.    After they got the horse tied up I went to check it out...it was real dirty and fowl smelling...it had gotten into the marsh and gotten sort of stuck - tired out.   But the cowboys got it back...it had been in the marsh for several days...the marsh is really big (350 h.a.)   I went to talk to the cowboys and it made me feel tough!  One of the horses had a big bloody cut on its shoulder...I asked about it and the cowboy said it was the bite of a vampire bat! - YiKES.  Then he laughed at me for tromping around in the marsh…do Costa Rican's tromp around fowl smelling marshes with deep nasty sediment – I guess not.  I could be working on nice, neat terrestrial system…what was I thinking?  Why do I always want to work with invertebrates?

While I was in the marsh I had on sunscreen, but not enough I suppose...so now I have a sunburn and then it will start peeling and I will look like tree that they have here that has green bark that peels off...it is called a gringo que mala tree because of the peeling bark which looks like a sunburn.

One of the students who is working on a project with ctenosaurs (they look like iguanas) got bit today and had to go to the hospital.   Haldre and I made a pact that if one of us has to go to the hospital the other will come along for moral support!

This morning I was rudely awaken by a rat!  A rat.  Can you believe it?   A RAT.   It went running across my back and I thought....what was that?  IT was before 6 so I got up and started stalking around the room which is smaller than my dorm room and has 3 bunk beds in it (so six people and all of their stuff)...so I was tracking this moving thing around but it was just barely light...so I couldn't see it...I thought if someone wakes up right now they will think that I'm crazy  - all wandering around the room in my boxers and speedy shirt!   Then all at once I saw it...and I wanted to scream - maybe that is the right thing to do - but then I thought - it is too funny me stalking a rat around a crowded bedroom!

So I laughed...everyone woke up and we tried to chase the rat out...but it ran up a bed post to someone else's bed - then leapt on to the curtain and ran along the pipes to the next room!  Funny - everyone was really annoyed at our room for laughing so loud so early in the morning...but I said it is better to wake up to laughter than blood curdling screams!