Rocks
There are plenty of rocks in this country, and not just on the ground. Some are in people's heads, and some are in place of heads. It's been a frustrating few days.
On Monday, we (me, Amos - a herpetologist here, and Michal - a postdoc) were supposed to leave here at 5:45am to go to Eilat to meet at 8:30am with the regional ecologist with the group who oversees wildlife and with the local ranger. Then we'd go to the field and set traps for catching lizards the next day. Michal and I were supposed to travel down with Amos, who has a lot of experience with these lizards, and stay with an ornithologist in Eilat. The next day, Berry was going to come down and pick us up after a half day in the field, and return to Sede Boqer with the 6 lizards we caught. All of the vehicle shuffling was necessary because, while I have valid driver's licenses on 2 different continents and an international driving permit, I don't have permission from the university to drive their cars, and Michal's permit has expired.
So, at 6:00am I got a call from Amos - the battery in the Land Rover was flat. So Michal and I walked over to his place to give it a push start. When we got there, Amos was on the phone with the security company. Apparently, when the battery goes flat, you can push start it, but the alarm goes off. So, we went to get one of the other Departmental vehicles to jump start it. As soon as there was juice in the battery, the alarm went off and kept going off. Fortunately, it isn't one of the security systems that cuts the fuel, it's just loud, especially at 6:30am in a residential neighborhood. But it does somehow keep you from starting the car. So, there we were, with a blaring alarm, and no running engine. The security folks said, go ahead and push start it, and once we got the car running, they'd use their remote system to deactivate it. Well, we hooked the two trucks together, and pulled the dead one until it started, at which point the alarm kept blaring. When we called the security company again, they said that they couldn't see they car on their system - drive it around a bit. So we drove around Sede Boqer at 7:15am in a University Land Rover, with the alarm going off. No luck, so we had to drive 10km away, to the top of the ridge before they company could turn off the alarm. Fortunately, no cops to ask why we were driving around in a car with the alarm going off. We finally left town at about 7:45, much too late to make it to our 8:30 meeting in Eilat, which is about 2 1/2 hours away.
We called the folks we were supposed to meet to let them know the story. This set off a whole new tirade about how unreliable we are, and how we're trying to trick them into doing something. I don't know what, but we were surely guilty. This was the beginning of 2 hours of phone calls bewteen us, Berry, the ranger, the ecologist and national headquarters in Jerusalem. At one point, about 90 minutes into the drive, it began to look like the ranger was going to refuse to meet us, and he had called headquarters in Jerusalem to tell them to tear up our permit. Several phone calls later, we were back on track to meet with him, though he was still steaming.
We got to the meeting place which was a turnoff on the main highway, about 15km north of Eilat, in the middle of nowhere, next to a sculpture that was the barrel from a cement truck turned on end, and with a crashed out car wreck on top of it. Apparently this is Israeli propaganda for what happens when you drive over the speed limit. The ranger showed up after about 20 min, and there was a lengthy discussion (in hebrew) about how distrustworthy we are, and how we shouldn't be allowed to do anything. The result of this was that we were forced to write several amendments onto our permit and sign (in hebrew), saying that we wouldn't even breathe near Eilat without telling the ranger and ecologist at least 1 week in advance, and asking their permission. (I should note that the ranger looks just like one of the guys from ZZ Top, or at least what they'd look like if they had been wandering around in the desert for 30 years or so.) The other result was a big change in travel plans. The ranger wouldn't let Michal or me do any collecting without Berry or Amos present. Amos had planned to leave that afternoon to go back to Sede Boqer because he was scheduled for guard duty at the front gate from 6-11pm. Berry had planned to come to Eilat just in time to pick us up for a late lunch (that is, after our day in the field). So Berry took over Amos' guard duty, and Amos stayed in Eilat for another day. I don't think Berry was happy about this.
So, now at 11:00 am, we headed to the site - right across the highway. There should be photos posted here somewhere so have a look. It is an area that is to be turned into an airstrip sometime in the future, so you can imagine that it is pretty flat. It was mostly rocks. Imagine an airport tarmac covered with about 2 feet of rocks up to about basketball size, and you'll have a pretty good idea of the area. It was about 1.5 by 4.5 km (about 1 by 3 miles), and stretched from the highway to the Jordan border. I'll digress from the disasters a minute to say that the area we were in was genuinely spectacular. The border between Israel and Jordan in the Negev goes right through a rift valley and is surrounded by impressive, and massive mountains. I'd guess the valley is about 15 miles wide or so. The mountains form a wall on either side that is thousands of feet high, hundreds of kilometers long, and very beautiful in a stark, desert sense. The valley itself is interesting. The Israeli side is very rocky, and the Jordan side is very sandy. Apparently this is because the Jordan side has shifted several hundred kilometers to the north, so the rock is quite different. There was no way to capture the scenery in a photo because you are surrounded by massive mountains on all sides. Very impressive.
Back to lizards. We drove around on the dirt roads on the site, and looked around for lizards, with the ranger following us, of course. It's hard to pick out lizards in a sea of rocks. They tend to blend in. It's even hard to pick out burrows, especially when they only occur every 500 meters or so. We spent about an hour before finding our first lizard. We hopped out of the car and set up the first trap. I should mention the weather conditions here. It was about 40C (about 105F), with a steady, 40km/h wind. Not quite hurricane Ivan, but not pleasant, especially in an area with a lot of sand (the rare ground that wasn't covered with rocks, was covered with sand). After driving around for several more hours, we had found 3 other burrows, and placed our traps. We only saw one actual lizard.
The next day, we were back out on the site at around 9:30am, with the wind still blowing. It was a little cooler, however, which was probably a bad thing because this species likes to be hot. We spent about 2 hours driving back and forth between the 4 traps, waiting for lizards to come out. The method is that once the lizard comes out past the edge of the burrow mound, we pull the net over the burrow entrance, and chase the lizard. This requires that lizards come out of their burrows. around 11:30, we saw the first lizard (the one we'd seen the day before). We carefully crawled up to the end of the rope, about 50m from the actual lizard. We had carefully place the end of the rope behind a tree (the only one for several hundred meters) to block the lizards view of us, and to allow us to get a little closer. Unfortunately, the howling winds had blown the rope off of its anchor rock and out into the open by 4 or 5 meters. Amos crawled toward the rope while Michal and I kept watch. We watched as the lizard poked up its head, saw Amos, who was still 3 meters from the rope, and went into its burrow for the rest of the day. We know this because Michal spent 2 hours sitting under that acacia tree, which doesn't really provide shade, watching the burrow entrance. Amos and I spent the rest of the day driving back and forth between the other burrows, and occasionally looking for others for the next trip. By 2pm, we'd given up, packed up our nets, and headed back to Sede Boqer empty handed.
It's going to take a fair bit of work to get the 8-12 lizards we need.
On Monday, we (me, Amos - a herpetologist here, and Michal - a postdoc) were supposed to leave here at 5:45am to go to Eilat to meet at 8:30am with the regional ecologist with the group who oversees wildlife and with the local ranger. Then we'd go to the field and set traps for catching lizards the next day. Michal and I were supposed to travel down with Amos, who has a lot of experience with these lizards, and stay with an ornithologist in Eilat. The next day, Berry was going to come down and pick us up after a half day in the field, and return to Sede Boqer with the 6 lizards we caught. All of the vehicle shuffling was necessary because, while I have valid driver's licenses on 2 different continents and an international driving permit, I don't have permission from the university to drive their cars, and Michal's permit has expired.
So, at 6:00am I got a call from Amos - the battery in the Land Rover was flat. So Michal and I walked over to his place to give it a push start. When we got there, Amos was on the phone with the security company. Apparently, when the battery goes flat, you can push start it, but the alarm goes off. So, we went to get one of the other Departmental vehicles to jump start it. As soon as there was juice in the battery, the alarm went off and kept going off. Fortunately, it isn't one of the security systems that cuts the fuel, it's just loud, especially at 6:30am in a residential neighborhood. But it does somehow keep you from starting the car. So, there we were, with a blaring alarm, and no running engine. The security folks said, go ahead and push start it, and once we got the car running, they'd use their remote system to deactivate it. Well, we hooked the two trucks together, and pulled the dead one until it started, at which point the alarm kept blaring. When we called the security company again, they said that they couldn't see they car on their system - drive it around a bit. So we drove around Sede Boqer at 7:15am in a University Land Rover, with the alarm going off. No luck, so we had to drive 10km away, to the top of the ridge before they company could turn off the alarm. Fortunately, no cops to ask why we were driving around in a car with the alarm going off. We finally left town at about 7:45, much too late to make it to our 8:30 meeting in Eilat, which is about 2 1/2 hours away.
We called the folks we were supposed to meet to let them know the story. This set off a whole new tirade about how unreliable we are, and how we're trying to trick them into doing something. I don't know what, but we were surely guilty. This was the beginning of 2 hours of phone calls bewteen us, Berry, the ranger, the ecologist and national headquarters in Jerusalem. At one point, about 90 minutes into the drive, it began to look like the ranger was going to refuse to meet us, and he had called headquarters in Jerusalem to tell them to tear up our permit. Several phone calls later, we were back on track to meet with him, though he was still steaming.
We got to the meeting place which was a turnoff on the main highway, about 15km north of Eilat, in the middle of nowhere, next to a sculpture that was the barrel from a cement truck turned on end, and with a crashed out car wreck on top of it. Apparently this is Israeli propaganda for what happens when you drive over the speed limit. The ranger showed up after about 20 min, and there was a lengthy discussion (in hebrew) about how distrustworthy we are, and how we shouldn't be allowed to do anything. The result of this was that we were forced to write several amendments onto our permit and sign (in hebrew), saying that we wouldn't even breathe near Eilat without telling the ranger and ecologist at least 1 week in advance, and asking their permission. (I should note that the ranger looks just like one of the guys from ZZ Top, or at least what they'd look like if they had been wandering around in the desert for 30 years or so.) The other result was a big change in travel plans. The ranger wouldn't let Michal or me do any collecting without Berry or Amos present. Amos had planned to leave that afternoon to go back to Sede Boqer because he was scheduled for guard duty at the front gate from 6-11pm. Berry had planned to come to Eilat just in time to pick us up for a late lunch (that is, after our day in the field). So Berry took over Amos' guard duty, and Amos stayed in Eilat for another day. I don't think Berry was happy about this.
So, now at 11:00 am, we headed to the site - right across the highway. There should be photos posted here somewhere so have a look. It is an area that is to be turned into an airstrip sometime in the future, so you can imagine that it is pretty flat. It was mostly rocks. Imagine an airport tarmac covered with about 2 feet of rocks up to about basketball size, and you'll have a pretty good idea of the area. It was about 1.5 by 4.5 km (about 1 by 3 miles), and stretched from the highway to the Jordan border. I'll digress from the disasters a minute to say that the area we were in was genuinely spectacular. The border between Israel and Jordan in the Negev goes right through a rift valley and is surrounded by impressive, and massive mountains. I'd guess the valley is about 15 miles wide or so. The mountains form a wall on either side that is thousands of feet high, hundreds of kilometers long, and very beautiful in a stark, desert sense. The valley itself is interesting. The Israeli side is very rocky, and the Jordan side is very sandy. Apparently this is because the Jordan side has shifted several hundred kilometers to the north, so the rock is quite different. There was no way to capture the scenery in a photo because you are surrounded by massive mountains on all sides. Very impressive.
Back to lizards. We drove around on the dirt roads on the site, and looked around for lizards, with the ranger following us, of course. It's hard to pick out lizards in a sea of rocks. They tend to blend in. It's even hard to pick out burrows, especially when they only occur every 500 meters or so. We spent about an hour before finding our first lizard. We hopped out of the car and set up the first trap. I should mention the weather conditions here. It was about 40C (about 105F), with a steady, 40km/h wind. Not quite hurricane Ivan, but not pleasant, especially in an area with a lot of sand (the rare ground that wasn't covered with rocks, was covered with sand). After driving around for several more hours, we had found 3 other burrows, and placed our traps. We only saw one actual lizard.
The next day, we were back out on the site at around 9:30am, with the wind still blowing. It was a little cooler, however, which was probably a bad thing because this species likes to be hot. We spent about 2 hours driving back and forth between the 4 traps, waiting for lizards to come out. The method is that once the lizard comes out past the edge of the burrow mound, we pull the net over the burrow entrance, and chase the lizard. This requires that lizards come out of their burrows. around 11:30, we saw the first lizard (the one we'd seen the day before). We carefully crawled up to the end of the rope, about 50m from the actual lizard. We had carefully place the end of the rope behind a tree (the only one for several hundred meters) to block the lizards view of us, and to allow us to get a little closer. Unfortunately, the howling winds had blown the rope off of its anchor rock and out into the open by 4 or 5 meters. Amos crawled toward the rope while Michal and I kept watch. We watched as the lizard poked up its head, saw Amos, who was still 3 meters from the rope, and went into its burrow for the rest of the day. We know this because Michal spent 2 hours sitting under that acacia tree, which doesn't really provide shade, watching the burrow entrance. Amos and I spent the rest of the day driving back and forth between the other burrows, and occasionally looking for others for the next trip. By 2pm, we'd given up, packed up our nets, and headed back to Sede Boqer empty handed.
It's going to take a fair bit of work to get the 8-12 lizards we need.
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