I have a deep appreciation for the wasps that stung me on my eyeballs.
As cringey as that may sound, and as painful as it was, I am not under some spell of Stockholm syndrome nor am I abusing my optimism by turning up the brightness on every snapshot of life until it burns through all the contours and jagged edges of my memory.
No, I’m genuinely appreciative of the wasps that stung my eyeballs, the 5’ long marine iguana that almost bit my nipple off, the tortoise that bit my head, and the rattlesnake that almost got me. Their vigilant defenses and physical and/or chemical combativeness are a reminder of how beautifully not alone life on this planet is.
The Dogs of the Sea
Biology is the study of life. Within biology, there are many subfields, and few have enraptured me as much as ecology. Ecology is the study of how organisms interact with each other and with their environment, but to actually do ecology requires we get messy, catch lizards, touch plants, and get close enough to organisms to study them that we, too, are interacting with the biotic (living) and abiotic (non-living or environmental) factors of the organisms’ environment.
I raised lizards as a kid and always dreamed of being a herpetologist, a person who studies lizards. As my mom was a biology professor, she could support my intellectual growth by providing an endless trail of literature I could read and things I could learn that were lined up like M&M’s on the floor leading me to discovery and adventure.
Along that trail of motherly support for my scientific interests, I met Howard and Heidi Snell two unbelievably sharp and kind professors at the university. Howard was himself a herpetologist always carrying in his car a telescoping fishing pole with a tiny string noose at the end of it to catch lizards. Howard had the eyes of a hawk trained for decades to spot the tiniest movement or unusual lump on a rock indicative of a lizard, and Howard would point to a random spot nearby and chant Latin like a wizard conjuring lizards, snakes & turtles into the surrounding environment with their scientific names.
Crotalus atrox!!
*POOF* and a rattlesnake would appear.
When I was in 8th grade, I had the unbelievable privilege of getting invited to work on a land iguana reintroduction project on the Galapagos Islands. Howard was running the Charles Darwin Research Station on the island of Puerto Ayora, and both he & Heidi invited me to fulfill my childhood dream by visiting the islands of legend.
The summer after 8th grade, mom escorted me along the international route all the way to Puerto Ayora. She dropped me off at Howard and Heidi’s house, gave a talk about genomics in Spanish, and then she left.
For 6 weeks, my job was to help take care of 400 land iguanas. A neighboring island, Isla Baltra, was the site of an Ecuadorian air force base and the airport we landed on to get to the Galapagos. During the establishment of the base, land iguanas were eradicated from the island, and the dream of Howard and his colleagues was to breed a massive number of land iguanas, release them to Isla baltra, and reestablish land iguanas on the island.
Four hundred iguanas is a massive scale up from the 30-some bearded dragons I had at home, but the operation was efficiently established and managed by locals who knew a lot more than me. Every morning, I would wake up before dawn, walk to the panaderia to get pan de sal and scarf them down while living the dicho “pan caliente mata la gente” - “hot bread kills people” (because they eat too much). After breakfast, I would show up at the research station right around dawn to follow instructions in Spanish from Marco and Hector, two locals and scientists in charge of taking care of the lizards. As land iguanas are vegetarians, I would chop vegetables, occasionally throw some Opuntia cacti into the mix, and then roll up to the cage to see 400 land iguanas crawl out of their rocks and run towards me.
The cage was, if I recall correctly, a roughly 20’x20’ structure with chicken wire walls and ceilings (ceilings to prevent birds from flying in for a snack), broken up into four 10’ x 10’ rooms containing lizards of approximately the same age and size. I would scatter vegetables equitably around each corral and watch the lizards feast. At one point, we had to survey the population of lizards in each corral. Each lizard was tagged with a number and we had to catch every lizard, measure their body weight, measure the length from their snout to their cloacal vents (their butt cracks, basically), and examine them for any ticks or other signs of pathogens or parasites.
Marco and Hector were beyond supportive. Marco was scrawny but athletic, brilliant and incredibly witty. Hector was a gentle giant, a latino hulk with a loving smile and indomitable joviality. They would show me how to appropriately catch and handle the lizards, something I had quite a bit of experience with already enabling me to help by scampering around the cage to collect each new lizard for measurement. At several points, the lizards I caught would shit all over me, and both Hector and Marco would laugh uproariously. I managed to handle nearly all 400 lizards without getting bit once.
Every morning after feeding lizards, I would wander over to the beach and snorkel. Eventually, I became acquainted with a pack of sea lions. It’s against the law to touch or harass or feed animals in the Galapagos unless you had special permission from the government, and that’s a law I respected. However, it was not against the law for the animals to interact with you.
As I became a regular, the sea lions became more familiar and as I put on my flippers some would walk uncomfortably close to me on shore to smell and look at all the weird, shiny toys I had. I’d jump into the water and a gaggle of sea lions would follow, biting shiny flippers in a playful tug-of-war. When I dove into the water with snorkel and fins, several sea lions would dive in after me. I was big for my age, but the sea lions were massive. They would swirl and twirl around me, inviting me to swirl and twirl with them. I would duck dive, flip, spin, swirl, and twirl, creating a ruckus of fun underwater with these dogs of the sea.
The Giant
About halfway through my 6 weeks, a team of researchers was venturing towards the central heights of the volcanic island to study tortoises. They were interested in learning the spatial demographic ecology of tortoises, or which tortoises of which sizes, sexes, and ages lived where. Which habitats surrounded by what vegetation are used by large, male tortoises? Which habitats are used by yearling tortoises? Answering this question can inform habitat conservation to ensure tortoises at every stage of their life cycle have the habitat they need to eat, survive, advance to the next stage of their lives, and reproduce.
The methods for this research were pretty simple. We would go for hikes that strategically covered a variety of terrain, look for tortoises, and measure the characteristics of the tortoises we found.
Wild Galapagos tortoises on Puerto Ayora live in a tropical dry forest that can often have a tangled mess of grasses and bushes and vines. To navigate that tangled terrain, tortoises simply bulldoze through, creating a massive network of tunnels through the vegetation. My job on this expedition was to help the team locate tortoises. On a typical day, the team would find 15-18 tortoises, but a line I like to put on my CV is that on this expedition we found an average of 50 tortoises each day.
My methods to find tortoises were simple: I was small. Because I was small, every time our trail passed by a burrow in the vegetation, I could get down on all fours and scan the tunnels for any grey shine of a tortoise’s shell. If I saw grey, I would let the team know so they could collect fresh feces nearby (a separate study of whether/not tortoises were dispersing the seeds in non-native fruit), measure and record the height and length and sex of the tortoise and move on. Since I was little use while the team measured the tortoises, I would point the team towards tortoises and then venture on to find more.
As the team measured a trio of female tortoises bathing in mud back down the trail, I peered through a burrow and saw a giant. As I crawled through the wet and muddy tortoise tunnel towards the giant, the giant saw me. I exited the burrow, took a picture of the giant in his kingdom of grass, and then dropped down low to sit politely in the company of the turtle while waiting for the team to walk by the other side of the tunnel.
There were a few moments of peace as I sat and watched the giant, and then things went sour. The giant looked at my hunched over, balled-up tortoise-esque form, and the giant chose violence.
Tortoise violence is different from other forms of animal violence. Tortoises are slow, old, and they don’t have teeth, so they instead play a game of “higher heads”, standing on the tips of their toes and raising their heads high above that of their competitors, biting the tops of inferiors’ heads to let them know who’s in charge. As the giant approached me, he stood taller and taller, raising his head high above mine. I looked up and rolled from being in a ball to being on all fours, unknowingly challenging the tortoise to a battle of higher heads.
The giant lurched towards me at rushed, hurried, painfully slow pace. As he approached, I didn’t want to make any fast movements, I didn’t want to scare him or threaten him, so I stayed still. The giant’s ancient eyes and alien face mad-dogged me with the fury of the ancients, and he raised his head.
The giant’s head towered high above my pathetically low head, so high the giant’s wrinkled grandfather neck was all I could see. So obviously superior, so obviously dominant, so obviously king of his kingdom, the giant turned down to see my pathetic young scalp, opened his toothless, denture-free mouth, and nibbled my head, pushing my face towards the mud. I submitted, I yielded, I begged for mercy and giggled a bit because the nibbling tickled slightly.
The team walked by and I introduced them to the King. Surrounded by towering apes, the King felt humiliated and retreated back into his shell, holding onto his self-confidence by reliving the day he himself towered over an ape. The researchers measured him, and I moved on.
The Iguana that Bit My Nipple
I returned to Puerto Ayora, fed hundreds of land iguanas and swam with sea lions in timeless bliss until the next ecological mission.
A population of marine iguanas thrived on lava rocks near a murky lagoon where waves crashed against the shore on one side and a lush forest of seaweed grew in the waters below. This population of marine iguanas had been surveyed each year to study the demographics, inter-annual fluctuations in body size, and other patterns of ecological interest. My job was simple: I was allowed to catch marine iguanas and bring them to researchers for measurement.
Don’t catch marine iguanas. It’s against the law unless you have permission from the Ecuadorian government, which these researchers did, and if you’re not careful they can bite your nipple off.
Where marine iguanas have never been touched by people, you can walk among them and they will barely move. In fact, on one beach I was sunbathing after a snorkel and a marine iguana jumped on top of me, bobbing its head up and down in a territorial gesture to claim the pathetically white lump of land it stood on. This population of iguanas, however, has been studied regularly and didn’t care for these unwanted procedures. As a consequence, when you walked up to these iguanas they would scurry into crevices between jagged lava rocks and wedge themselves in the cracks by puffing up like pufferfish.
Hector, the jolly latino Hulk, showed me the way. Hector reached inside a crevice, grabbed an iguana by the tail, and played a slow game of tug-of-war. The iguanas had to breathe. Every breath out, Hector would feel iguanas transfer tension to their legs “puedes sentir cuando respiran, y este es cuando necesitas tirar la cola”. Pop! The iguana would pop out of the crevice and with his free hand hector would grab the lizard’s massive neck, chest, and arms to brace the lizard in a stable embrace.
“Bueno, Alex! Cuidado cuando aggoras los lagartos porque estan fuerte. Traerlos a nuestro sitiu y recordar donde les recogiste porque quiremos regresar les a sus casitas. Listo?”
Listo.
Hector took the massive dinosaur towards the scientists with seats, measuring tape, scales, notebooks and pens. I skipped over the jagged rocks, found lizard after lizard, followed Hector’s wise advice for the capture & handling of the lizards, and shuttled the iguanas back and forth from their casitas. It was a hot, tropical day at the beach, so we were all walking around shirtless amidst the swarming sea of lizards.
All was going according to plan until I found Godzilla lurking in the shadows between two boulders. As we needed a representative sample of lizards, it would introduce bias in the survey of this population if I were to shy away from Godzilla because he was too big. Godzilla was easily 5’ long and could bite a small dog’s head off if he weren’t a vegetarian or if he were sufficiently angry. At the time, I was also about 5’ long, so you can imagine the intimidation of trying to capture & handle a lizard the length of your body.
I reached between the boulders and grabbed Godzilla’s gigantic tail. My hands barely wrapped around it, but nonetheless I managed to get a good grip. As Godzilla breathed in, my awareness heightened and it felt as if he were going to push the boulders apart. As he breathed out, I felt the tension transfer to his powerful legs, I pulled, and I inched him out one breath at a time.
As the battle neared its end, Godzilla’s rear legs scratched against the rocks near the terminus of the tunnel, and I looked inside to see Godzilla’s eye looking straight into my soul, fearful yet hungry for vengeance. He breathed out, I pulled, and *POP*!
There was a moment frozen in time in which waves crashed upon the shore with droplets exploding above the rock, suspended in air. I straddled jagged lava rocks shirtless, holding the tail of a lizard the size of me. The lizard’s spine snaked in the air, its jet black eyes scowled, its crusty shed skin sprinkled the air after shaving against a rock, and its mouth was opened wide with unspeakable fury.
The lizard’s spine whipped back in my direction and Godzilla’s furious jaws latched onto my nipple. It was a classic Galapagos stand off - I had Godzilla by the tail, and he had me by the nipple. Blood trickled down my chest as I screamed.
“HECTOR!!! Ayudame!!! Me mordio! Me mordio!”
I run to hector carrying Godzilla between my hands and nipple, barely able to see out of my squinting, grimaced eyes and barely able to breathe because, as I pulled Godzilla every breath he let out, Godzilla shook his head and ripped my nipple further with every breath I took in. I suppose it’s only fair.
As I get closer to the measuring station, I see Marco rolling on the beach in tears, laughing uproariously. I see Hector slapping his knee and pointing at me, and slowly the pain and embarrassment dissolves away into laughter and an appreciation of the hilarity of my predicament.
Hector wiped tears out of his eyes, walked over to the tangled heroes, grabbed the iguana loosely so Godzilla felt he could escape, and he let go. To this day, there is a circular scar around my nipple, a scar I will take with me to Valhalla.
The Tragedy
Near the end of my trip, there was a report of an incident on the neighboring island of San Cristobal. A team of scientists went to investigate the incident, and I was given the somber privilege of tagging along.
We took a small boat as dolphins jumped beside us, a pod of pilot whales casually cruised by, and a feeding frenzy turned the calm seas into absolute chaos, with sea lions and possibly whales and sharks sending fish to the surface where birds dive-bombed the fish from above.
We arrived at San Cristobal and went straight to the beach where the incident was reported. As we approached, the salty air was off flavor and a musk of flesh seeped through your skin.
A few dozen sea lions were strewn about the beach, bloody and dead. Hector and I hauled bodies of these dogs of the sea to a veterinarian who examined them to determine their cause of death. Their skulls were crushed, their bellies sliced open, and their genitalia removed for sale as aphrodisiacs on the Asian market. My hands were covered in blood, my stomach was squirming from the smell of flesh, and my eyes were dripping tears as we carried one body after another from the rocks to the sand. All I could think about was the welcoming playfulness of the sea lions I knew.
To this day, the scene brings tears to my eyes. I’m no stranger to the death of animals. I had lizards eat mice, and feeding the lizards made me sad. I raised goats for slaughter on my uncle’s farm, and I cried with mournful gratitude over the goats. I have hunted deer & elk, and I mourn the animals I hunt. I remember all of them, and the predator-prey connections that bind me to my food persist as Nitrogen atoms in my blood and muscles derive from the things I have eaten. I will always be gratefully connected to my prey, and this connection give me a deeper appreciation for the food I eat and the animals that food came from.
These sea lions were not even given the gratitude of incorporation into the tissues of their predators. They were buried in the sand. The sea lions were not hunted legally, ethically, nor for necessity. They were poached by people whose greed exceeded their respect for the laws of humanity & the lives of the animals. The animals were protected by the law, and poachers violated that law, rupturing their bond with society as well as the trust that exists between protected animals and the humans who appreciate them.
The same species that can swirl and twirl playfully with a stranger they welcome into the pack was bludgeoned in the head by 2x4’s to please the superstitious sexual appetites of distant consumers across the sea.
To be continued…
On the next chapter, I will regale some tales of studying isotope ecology, of rattlesnakes and absurdly large beetles that lurk in the seemingly depauperate arid grasslands south of Albuquerque. I will tell you of a time when I helped a friend do vegetation transects in remote forests throughout the Peruvian Amazon, when ants consumed my pants, wasps stung our eyeballs, a fer de lance whose bite as a 50% chance of killing you tried to jump in our tiny canoe, and more.
In all of these ecological adventures, one comes to appreciate that life is not alone. Ecology is the study of how organisms interact with each other and with the environment, and in order to study ecology one must interact with the organisms and their environment. The data collected by ecologists is messy, but behind every messy data point there is a story. Every lizard reintroduced, every tortoise measured, every iguana caught tells a story of an ecologist immersed in nature, becoming one with the ecological systems they study.
Many ecologists view me as a mathematician because I am quite good at doing math and analyzing data. Indeed, I spend my career analyzing datasets of birds counted over the continental United States, the body sizes of mammals, the viruses found in wildlife all over the world, and more.
However, thanks to the years I spent doing field ecology, I will never forget that every data point in ecology involves a living thing and an ecologist immersed in their subject’s environment.
better than any book i have read... looking forward to the continuing story...
Wow. Thank you!
Thanks to your writing I could smell the scents, feel the elements you described (thanks to some analogous experiences). I am reminded of my own experiences accompanying wildlife biologists in my 20s. I am looking forward to further chapters~