Vanessa's Journal

Feb. 22

Last night, at 1 a.m., there was unexpected activity in my bedroom. I realized a few weeks back that it would be informative for me to be assigning titles to these journal entries. If I were to give a title to this day it would be “Why it is dangerous to keep food in one’s bedroom,” or, alternatively, “The year of the rat.”  Let me backtrack. I woke up in the wee hours of the morning to a strange sound. It could only mean the presence of an animal in my bedroom. I leaped onto the adjacent bed (tripping over various GPS collar equipment) and rushed to turn on the light. At first I saw nothing, but after a few moments, sure enough, there was a small mouse that escaped through the crack under my bedroom door. I was mortified! The ecologist in me was racking my brain trying to remember if mice forage in pairs or groups. I spent a good few hours pondering this thought as I lay in bed hoping another mouse wouldn’t come and nibble on my ear. I also spend a good deal of time building a fortress by the door to prevent this mouse from coming back in. It consisted of various biology books and GPS collar equipment and would actually make for a funny picture if I was not petrified of having my face bitten by a small rodent for the rest of the night. 

But yet, as I thought about the situation, I remembered that this night was the final night of the Chinese New Year holiday (which is officially 15 days long). Every Chinese year is synonymous with an animal, and this year is the year of the rat. Actually, in Chinese the common word for rat is the same as mouse, according to some people. I told Lao Wang about the encounter the next morning and he replied “What incredible luck!”  He thinks that this is a sign that I will have a fortuitous year and that I will have special spirit guides in the form of the rat looking out for my safety and well-being for the next year. At this point in the field season, I am ripe for optimism in any form. Any reason to turn a potentially negative situation into a positive one is welcome, so therefore, let’s all rejoice in my mouse encounter!

Unfortunately, today was a disastrous hiking day and the blame falls on me entirely. Lao Fan was scheduled to be down the mountain today, which turned out to be a good thing, as he ended up having a family emergency with a family elder passing away suddenly. Lao Yang was supposed to hike today but he also had a special family circumstance that required him to be down the mountain. Therefore, it was Lao Wang and I hiking to check the traps. Lao Wang, as incredibly capable and hard-working as he is, had not been to our four new traps before, so it was entirely up to me to navigate to them. It was like the blind leading the blind, and as hard as I wanted it to work, it completely failed. I got unbelievably lost, which is embarrassing, yet true. Poor Lao Wang was trying so hard to be patient with me and make me feel better about what was obviously a complete disaster. Even when we were in the middle of nowhere and I was praying for us to make it back to a recognizable trail before it got dark, he was pointing out animal sings and saying “Vanessa, isn’t this fascinating, this animal made all of these marks on this tree.” I was just thinking to myself, “Yes that it fascinating, Lao Wang, if only we could figure out where in the world we are right now.”  For what it’s worth, we wandered all over the place and I saw more of Jianpengzi than I had ever wanted to see, and despite seeing evidence of numerous animals, we saw absolutely no evidence of giant pandas. We did make it back to the field station before dark, although we were both exhausted by the excessive wandering in the middle of nowhere.  By dinner, it seemed like water under the bridge for Lao Wang and Lao Yang, which made me feel relieved, as it was quite a debacle of a field work day due to my own ineptitude. So much for the minimal human impact in off-trail areas!

The one bright light in today’s events was that we caught the same red panda in the same Jianpengzi trap that we had trapped twice before. It was fun for Lao Wang to get to be a part of it this time. He marveled at how beautiful the red panda was up close. And he was amazed at the fact that this time, when we opened up the trap door and the red panda ran away in the same direction as it always has, it stopped after about ten meters to just kind of “hang out”. Lao Wang and I both laughed, as it really seemed like this red panda had gotten so used to the trapping procedure that it knew that we would not chase after it. It seemed almost habituated to our presence. I was relieved about that, as we really do not want to be having a negative impact on the animals up at Wuyipeng. It was almost as if this red panda recognized me after the third time and seemed relaxed about our close encounter. It’s interesting to me that this animal is on the same schedule that I am, as whenever I check traps every five days or so, it enters the same trap. This red panda is indeed incredibly beautiful and smart, while it always brightens my day to interact with it and feel like we are connecting with some animals up here, even if it is not the giant panda as of yet.