Start new baiting study, see how termite mounds may affect diversity of ant communities. One field assistant is wearing a Boston Red Sox hat – nice to see Sox fans are everywhere! Partly cloudy skies this morn, cooler. May be a sign that that rains may be arriving soon. Work on Abstract to submit for oral presentation at Entomology meeting in South Africa. Go for a run around the station, exchange enthusiastic “hellos!” with Mpala schoolkids walking back to the village.

Hear about giraffe damage to one of the exclosure plots (=large ‘cage’ of wires and posts cemented in ground to keep out big mammalian herbivores). Somehow it got into the exclosure and then got tangled up on the way out (maybe spooked by something?), knocked over the posts and took out big swath of wires.

Epic night drive! Out for awhile, and haven’t really seen anything. Friend comments “Games drives are so hit or miss. So often they are a big bust.” Not more than five minutes later we see the silhouette of something sitting on the side of the road. It’s not moving, but appears to have the outline of a hyena. As we approach, it slinks cat-like into the grass. And it’s got a really long tail. Turns out we’ve spied a leopard! It moves slowly and we get a good long peek at it. What a beautiful creature. We drive a bit farther, and the driver jokes, that she hasn’t seen a lion for awhile, and we’re only stopping for lions. The friend manning the spotlight sees something – we ask, “Is it lion, we’re only stopping for lions…” He responds “No, it’s a leopard.” Ha ha, we think, really, what is it? We drive after it, and it’s another freaking leopard! It’s a juvenile, and we get pretty close to it. We start making dying animal noises, and it stops and looks at us for awhile. We follow it as it takes us for three or four loops around a large bush, and then loose it in the brush. Awesome!

We head back towards the station along a river that parallels the river. It’s a full moon tonight, and we can clearly see a spotted hyena taking a drive by the water. Driver asks me, can you stick your head out of the window, the front left tire feels a little squishy. Yup, it’s loosing air. We go on for awhile, and it’s getting worse. So my friend gets out of the vehicle to check it, but asks if we can see any animals nearby. We don’t so she jumps out and confirms we’ve got a flat. As she’s opening the door to get back in, she sees two big red eyes staring back at her. Two big red eyes on a massive head. Two big red eyes on a massive head about 20 feet away. Turns out what we thought was an innocent Bushbaby (small monkey) was actually a ridiculously large buffalo (notorious for charging, asking questions later). The guy on the spotlight said “the eyes were so bright I assumed it was a Bushbaby, a Bushbaby on a rock. The eyes started moving up and down, and I thought it was jumping on the rock. But then I saw the rock was moving too…”

Well, now we got a flat tire, a driver who’s recovering from being totally freaked by a buffalo, and as it turns out, about three or four buffalos nearby. We drive a bit farther down the road and have no choice but to change the tire. My two friends change the tire while I stand through the hatch and man the spot. One friend is worried to jack up the car any farther because we’re already unstable, but the tire’s totally flat and we can’t dig to free it, so we jack it up some more. In ten minutes or so we got the new tire on and safely jimmied out the jack. Safely make it back to the station and relive the events of the evening…