Stories from my life.
From Huben's Wiki
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(→First trip to Ecuador, 1987-8) |
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The soda boats don’t seem to be operating now either. They were 40 foot long dugouts that would carry Coca Cola between major cities on the Rio Napo. You had to bring a cushion, because sitting on the cases of bottles could cost you your virginity (not to mention being very uncomfortable.) At one stop, a very young indigenous child was crying. His older brother grabbed his mother’s breast and squirted his little brother. :-) | The soda boats don’t seem to be operating now either. They were 40 foot long dugouts that would carry Coca Cola between major cities on the Rio Napo. You had to bring a cushion, because sitting on the cases of bottles could cost you your virginity (not to mention being very uncomfortable.) At one stop, a very young indigenous child was crying. His older brother grabbed his mother’s breast and squirted his little brother. :-) | ||
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| + | Ecuador felt quite safe to me, but there were three incidents that were risky. | ||
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| + | * I used to go in to Onore's lab at U. Catolica where he had given me a cubicle to work in. One day I came in quite early, before anybody else, and saw a small box in the middle of the lab floor with a larger box on top of it. I wondered what was in it and why it was arranged that way in the middle of the floor, but as I'm moderately polite, I left it alone. A little while later a very agitated fellow came in: "Where's professor Onore!" I told him that Onore didn't usually come in until 9:30, and asked if I could help him. He said that he'd had a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bothrops_atrox fer-de-lance (Bothrops atrox)], one of the most poisonous snakes in Latin America, in a basket, but that it had gotten out. Fortunately, he had gotten it into the little box, and he needed Onore's help to get it into something safer. Now, I'd had a moderate amount of snake experience, and had never been bitten when catching dozens of snakes, and I had actually brought snake bags with me that I had in the office. But I had only been in Ecuador for 3 weeks when I wanted to stay for a year. If I got bitten, I didn't speak the language well, it was too early for anything to be open, I had no clue where the hospital was and they likely would not have antivenom either. So we waited until Onore arrived. He got out a snake stick and we put it into one of my bags, and everybody was safe and happy. | ||
| + | * I was traveling on a field trip with some researchers, and we stopped in the southern mountains at one of the military check points to show our documents. Ecuador was still at war with Peru (since the 1940s), and so they checked everything. As I was wandering around to stretch my legs, I noticed that they had a mascot: a mountain lion! It was on a wire, pacing back and forth. I saw one of the soldiers walk by and pat the puma! I thought: "Oh, Shit, I gotta pat the mountain lion too!" So I positioned myself where it would pace past me, and as it passed I stroked its back. Yes! Then it turned around, wrapped its paws around my leg and its jaws around my knee: it could easily have crippled me. But I haev long experience with house cats, and I recognized that it was playing. The first rule when cats are playing with you is DON'T PLAY BACK! They will only play harder. So I relaxed, saying "ow" in a low voice and waited. I knew the soldiers wouldn't help: they'd shoot me before they shot their kitty. After a few seconds, the cat let go, and walked away. I made my escape with only some indentations in the skin around my knee. | ||
| + | * I travelled with a pair of Danish botanists down the Rio Napo to their study site on the opposite side of the river from Anangu. They were glad to have me along because they thought my Spanish was better than theirs. In order to go that far down the river, we had to get a permit from the Military, so I made an appointment with the local commander. He invited us in, and then grilled us as if we were CIA! Finally, he signed off, and we took a speedboat the half hour down river to an abandoned oil camp where we set up our tents inside a crumbling building. We hadn't been there a half hour, when he flies in in a helicopter with machine-gun armed soldiers hanging out the doors. Truly a brown pants moment! I wondered if we should try to hide or if we should just stand around and innocently wave. Considering that these soldiers are trained to track people in the jungle, we waved. When he landed, he said he was just checking that we had arrived safely, and the soldiers were very friendly, showing us their favorite survival techniques such as tapping the giant bamboo for drinking water. Then they flew off. I think he was just bored and wanted a joyride on the helicopter. | ||
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==Harvard Stories== | ==Harvard Stories== | ||
I hung out at Harvard, predominantly at the Museum of Comparative Zoology Entomology Department, hanging out with a number of famous entomologists including Stefan Cover, Lynn Kimsey, Scott Shaw, Al Newton, Margaret Thayer, Jim Carpenter, and numerous others. I spent a lot of time working in E. O. Wilson's ant collection room on my [[Evaniidae]]. | I hung out at Harvard, predominantly at the Museum of Comparative Zoology Entomology Department, hanging out with a number of famous entomologists including Stefan Cover, Lynn Kimsey, Scott Shaw, Al Newton, Margaret Thayer, Jim Carpenter, and numerous others. I spent a lot of time working in E. O. Wilson's ant collection room on my [[Evaniidae]]. | ||
