Our trip is officially over and we have arrived home safe with no broken body parts or missing luggage, yay! My luggage was searched in Savannah, but nothing was removed which is strange because I had about 4 pounds of material from endangered animals (all of which was ethically collected, just to mention).
So now we have returned to the regular world, and I at least, have been bombarded with phone calls and emails from friends and family wanting to see pictures and catch up on a month of stories. Instead of emailing everyone individually, I figured I should just blog about the remainder of the season and post some more pictures. However, upon returning to the real world from a private island, I find my head in a cloud of responsibility and longing to return to the lemurs (and my team mates), I'm finding it difficult to concentrate, so please excuse my incoherent writing.
Mating season this year was completely irregular: we had multiple females mating at the same time which is almost unheard of in Lemur catta, and to top it off we found some interesting behaviour between males that is so new and rare we are going to publish on it! For a primatology dork like myself, that's a pretty big deal! When mating season finally ended we were allowed to have lives again and went crab catching and canoe tripping, and toured around the island to various memorial sites and features, we even got to check out the archaeological excavation site (which made me happy that I didn't pursue archaeology!). We also got to feed the hornbills which was amazing, play with a baby and adult gopher tortoise, tour through the zebra fields, beach comb, we were haunted by ghosts, and so many amazing things that I can't be bothered to write them, I think it's picture time!
And for my fellow researchers: Scaffolding, Scotty doesn't know, Slingblade, Face-mount, and Pillow fight, here's chapter 3 (the magic number) containing funny quotations:
"KD brings the family together, fuckin' living in poverty"
"Chicken in a biuuuskit"
"Aww, poor Sheryl"
"So uh... Carey... you in estrus yet?"
"We're poking you for a reason, you fucking giant!"
"Who wants to shave me?"
"Ari has an efficient body"
"I done gone forgot to brought my shaving cream"
"Little Piggy to Little Eagle, we have a fly in the punch bowl"
"You could be a moist towelette, or a sanitary napkin, or a Biore pad..."
"What did the fireman say to the ocean? Baby, I could never put you out"
"Hi, my name's Beth. I'm French so I don't shave"
"Let's start off with a beer and see where it leads to" followed by "You're going to wake up with a mouth that tastes like poor decisions"
"Kraft Dinner is a substitute for happiness"
And of course, don't forget to bring a towel! Trifecta five!
A zebra
Feral pigs
Melia holding my thumbs
Deliliah chowing down on a banana
Babies investigating my camera
Moon rise over the Atlantic
Funky the kudu
Scott feeding some wreathed hornbill ladies
Jackson's hartebeest
Gopher tortoise
My little love: gopher tortoise baby
Dinner (before they were dinner)
Canoe crew jumping picture (fail)
The trifecta!
