Suspenseful Mornings and Froggy Nights

Hola from the La Selva OTS field station...appropriately named, since selva translates to the word jungle! Rainy, humid and straddling a river, this environment lends itself to widespread walks of wildlife wandering about.

In the mornings, instead of rolling out of bed and crossing Forsyth Blvd. to get to class, I roll out of bed and cross a river via suspension bridge! Although, the similarities basically start and end at the verb crossing. The river below the bridge flows lethargically, almost obligatorily so. But, after a heavy rain (which is err day) it gets feisty. The water clouds up, mimicking the sky above, and foam, mud and branches more rapidly whoosh along the way. Also, crocodiles (which I've yet to see) and caimans (a crocodilian cousin that I have seen there!) chill alongside the river, many meters below the bridge.

When many people walk across at once, the bridge's movement reminds me of many people shaking a bedsheet up and down at once (or like that childhood parachute game with large multicolored fabric when you'd make the plastic Discovery Zone-esque balls bounce! Anyone else know what I'm talking about? Bueller...Bueller?). But, don't worry...this bridge had a sturdy build, and it's only a minor sentiment of this sensation. Definitely the coolest commute to class I've ever had.

My favorite thing about being at La Selva has been going on night hikes. During the day, there's no scarcity of animals out: lizards scoot about and picaries (a wild pig of sorts) poke around as well. But, perhaps because they mimic my sleeping habits of last spring semester, the nocturnal animals resonate more with me. On our first night walk, a professor explained how you should hold your headlamp at eye level as you look around. A multitude of multicolored glimmers will appear before your eyes where your light is hitting.

This is not the spark of a hallucination, but rather the sparkling of the eyes of the animals around you. The headlamp light reflect off of their eyes back into yours! Blue, the most abundant, tips you off to spiders, while amphibians are more yellow, and some mammals are red. It's like a dimmer version of Christmas lights...it's Christmas all year in the jungle! (Sidenote: the weather is Costa Rica during Christmas is usually really warm and pleasant, so on really nice days the Ticos will say "Oh this is just like Christmas!" which bewilders us Gringos who confusedly glance around, searching for a nowhere-to-be-seen hint of snow or cold front).

A tree frog chilling on my rain jacket! 

The frogs that we see are my favorites! You can just scoop them right up, as long as you do it quickly before they squirm away! And they're happy to hang around on your hands, as long as they're DEET-free, since DEET will diffuse through their skin and kill them. But otherwise, you're free to look and touch!

Mid-jump! 

An arachnid amigo!