Big croc

big croc
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

I had a request for a photo of a big croc. This male is a bit over 4 meters long (about 14 feet). The Toyota pickup in the background gives a bit of scale to the photo.

Datalogger retrieval

logger1
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

So, sometimes interesting things happen while doing research at the croc farm. Yesterday, a crew came by to film the retrieval of a datalogger from this 2.8m (a bit over 9 ft) female saltwater crocodile. Apparently they were monitoring body temperature for something. Anyway, they drugged the croc, and pulled her out of her cage. The plan was to take her someplace quiet, and film one of the guys (Adam) as he reached down into her stomach to retrieve the datalogger, which is about the size of an egg (a chicken egg, that is, not a croc egg). It was quite a production.

Okay boys, let's take her someplace private

logger2
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

The boys moving the drugged croc to a better place for datalogger extraction.

It's where?

logger3
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

It took 4 guys to lift up the croc and position it like this. The ropes are there to protect both Adam and the croc. The ropes on the jaws are mostly to hold the mouth against gravity - since the croc is fully knocked out, her top jaw would flop down onto Adam's arm if it weren't opened. And she's strapped down partly to protect her - if she were to wake up, her reaction would be to roll and that would probably result in her ripping her own jaws off.

So, with the animal fully anesthesized, it was time to reach in for the logger. The question of the moment: is Adam's arm long enough to reach the bottom of the stomach?

Well after reaching in, he found some grass, a few smooth stones, and no logger. So we started pushing at her abdomen to move the stomach around to make it easier to reach. Still no logger.

Where's the logger?

logger4
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

After about 20 minutes of poking and prodding, and Adam up to his shoulder in the croc's mouth, there was stil no logger. Did the croc regurgitate it? Pass it? Or... wait a minute... is this the right croc? Oops. Um, could you, um, get the croc in the next cage, please. Sure enough, once the right croc was found, the logger came out easily.

Now, I could take the high road here, but that's no fun. A word of advice - if you're going to stick your hand down an adult crocodile's throat to retrieve a datalogger, make sure you've got the right animal.

secret Lighthouse urinal

Lighthouse urinal
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

(Okay, this one goes back a few months to my trip to Namibia, but it's tells a good story)

Can you spot the urinal in this photo? This is part of the men's toilet at the Lighthouse Cafe in Swakopmund. To the left is the stall for the seat, to the right is the sink, and this wall has a hidden urinal. Do you see it yet? Yes, this lovely, tiled creation is the urinal! Almost makes you feel bad for drinking that last Tafel, but not until after your business is done.

blue-tongue

blue-tongue
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

I found this juvenile common blue-tongue (Tiliqua scincoides) on the walkway outside my apartment this morning. He was small (about 8in total length), but healthy looking.

blue-tongue 2

blue-tongue 2
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

You can see why they're called blue-tongues.

light

light
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

mantis

mantis
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

This little guy was waiting for me outside the animal care building last week. The photo doesn't quite do justice to the glowing green of his eyes, or his size (he just about filled my hand).

croc number 4

croc number 4
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

One of the crocodiles I've been working with this month.

Adelaide River flood

Adelaide River flood
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

Some of the debris left over from the recent floods in Adelaide River (with Steve for scale).

March trips

It's been quite crazy around here lately. I've been working on a project looking at crocodile digestion. Actually, it is quite similar to the experiments I did in Israel, only with crocodiles. We're working with little guys (about 80cm or a bit over 2 ft), so not too much danger of losing limbs, though they do have sharp teeth and very strong jaws. Anyway, I've been doing lots of sampling from them over the last 3 weeks, so I've been a bit busy. For the first week, it was twice a day, at 8am and 8pm for a bit over an hour, plus the hour and a half beforehand getting ready, and the 2 hours after processing the samples. It made for some very long days. During the second week, it went down to one sample per day, but then I had to start analyzing the samples. That involved driving them over to another part of town, and putting them in a liquid scintillation counter. The guys there have a flash new machine, which they haven't yet figured out how to use. So I've spent a good part of the last few weeks helping them figure that out, and calibrating the thing. It's finally giving numbers I can believe, and the data look quite good. For the next couple weeks, the crocs are having a break, and then I'll do the second round.

Immediately after I finished the first set of samples for the crocodile experiment, I went on another trip to Wave Hill to check on the dataloggers for our rock slime study. That trip was pretty uneventful, but nice. Steve and I went and had a bit of a look around that area, including stopping in to Kalkarindji, a community near the field site. That's where I took the photos along the Victoria River, where we had lunch and a bit of a swim. On the way back, we stayed in Katherine. We had run into a bit of rain along the road between Top Springs and Katherine, but thought nothing of it until the next morning when we saw the headlines of the NT News. Apparently, a couple hours after we left Darwin on Friday, it started raining. A lot. By Sunday, there had been over 30cm of rain (a foot), and the highway had flooded in 4 places. By the time we'd heard about it, the water had receded a bit, but it was still very high. You can get a bit of a sense of what it was like by the photos of the Adelaide River bridge below. All that bamboo was washed there when the river overflowed the bridge. There was even one section of the highway that looked like it had been picked up and placed parallel to the highway. It was a bit eerie actually, because it was about a 50 meter section that was just over to the side of the road. Weird. Since that weekend, we've had another 20 cm or so. needless to say, everything here is pretty wet. One nearby community, Oenpelli, had over a meter of rain in a week, which is a lot of rain, even for someplace like this. They were pretty well under water for a few days. At least we have missed the two cyclones that have been spinning over in Western Australia. Well, sort of. It was the precursor to cyclone George that dumped all that rain on us last weekend.

So, below there are some photos from the Wave Hill trip, and the deluge.

bluefaced honeyeater

bluefaced honeyeater
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

Adelaide river flood 2

Adelaide river flood 2
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

crimson finch

crimson finch
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

eucalypt

eucalypt
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

cow pie

cow pie
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

This cow pie was being slowly covered by termite mound stuff (I'm sure that's the technical term) - you know, the weird, hard muddy sawdusty stuff the termites make their mounds out of.

water hole

water hole
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

red rocks

red rocks
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

mushroom

mushroom
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

flower

flower
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.