It's time to take a break from all the plant science for an exciting animal encounter. Rather, many animal encounters! As my dear friend and I drove across the southern United States on Interstate 10, we had to stop at a few roadside attractions. The first non-scheduled stop was in western Louisiana, where a billboard advertised "Pet baby alligators!"
It turned out to be a park alongside the highway. This is Bubba: They had another alligator, Hampton, who was found by the dumpster at the Hampton Inn in town. They also had a snapping turtle and 2 adult (!) alligators, who were supposedly hibernating but had their eyes open. I learned that adult alligators only eat from June through August, and the babies are born in September.
Our next animal encounters were more commercial, but not any less exciting. In fact, there was a lot of excitement because we visited an ostrich ranch... ostriches are scary! They peck and follow people along the fence, making it difficult to get close enough to feed them.
The ranch also white-tailed deer, goats, mini donkeys, and rainbow lorikeets. All of these animals were exciting to feed. The deer were the most gentle and the lorikeets landed on my head and ALMOST made off with my sunglasses! Photos to come...
I have the solemn task of honoring the various animals and plants who gave their lives during the duration of my experiment. The plants were always intended to be sacrificed at the end; the animals were accidental victims of the circumstances. A few poor bodies drowned in the water-filled tubs that the plants were in; at least one lizard and some ladybugs met their ends this way. I suspect that a few ladybugs were attacked by ants and carried off, though I believe most flew away of their own accord. And sadly, a few unsuspecting frogs may have died from osmotic shock. A couple of times there were live frogs in the freshwater tubs, but twice I found dead frogs in the super salty water. They likely hopped in for a refreshing bath and didn't realize that they were losing their own water through their permeable skin. I don't know much about frog skin, so perhaps this wasn't the case. However, I apologize to the frog gods for the accidental death of two frogs.
I would like to share some results from my Florida experiment. Without going into all the nitty gritty details, I can show you some clear differences between my treatments. Check it out: On the left, plants are growing tall and happy. On the right, plants are not as tall and not as happy. Plants on the left are in freshwater; on the right, very very salty water. These are only 2 of my 27 tubs, so there is a spectrum of heights and leafiness but this is a pretty nice visual!
Actually there's a frog in my tub! Tub of plants, that is; not my bathtub. This little guy pictured here has been hiding out in the shady, cool tub of water that happens to be holding some of my experimental plants. I was curious about what kind of frog it is. Florida has lots of native frogs but also is now home to an invasive frog, the Cuban tree frog Osteopilus septentrionalis. And you thought there were enough Cubans in Florida!Supposedly this species has been in Florida since the 1920s; individuals probably arrived as stowaways on ships. How do I know it is a Cuban tree frog? There is a definitive test: touch the top of the frog's head and feel if the skin moves when you push it around (you can test this on your own head; your skin should move). If the skin does not move, it is a Cuban tree frog. This frog had skin well attached to its head, and it felt pretty weird to touch.
My tactic to attack the aphids was simple. Start by smashing between my fingers as many aphids as possible, then bring in reinforcements in the form of ladybugs. About a week ago, I released ladybugs onto the plants to eat the aphids. It was obvious that they were doing their job; I got to watch as aphids crawled away when the big bad ladybug appeared on their leaf. Of course a few ladybugs flew away, but the majority stayed on the leaves or the base of the plants where I put them. A week later, one ladybug remains. I don't know why that one decided to stay when all the others took off. It is possible that ants who were tending the aphids attacked most of the ladybugs and this one has just been lucky. I caught two ladybugs mating, so it would be great if there were ladybug larvae hanging around! Unfortunately, the aphids are coming back. Yesterday I covered all the plants in soapy water after removing as many aphids as possible. Soap supposedly repels the aphids, but I'll have to do another aphid inventory to see if this works...
I have an aphid infestation. So far, it is not too bad in the sense that they have not taken over EVERY plant, but they seem to be targeting the black mangroves and the rare tea mangrove. NOT GOOD. Plant-eating aphids = my enemies, particularly when they are my research plants. Gardeners have tricks like spraying them with a hose (didn't work) and spraying them with soapy water or even pesticides, but I don't want to apply that stuff and inadvertently mess with my seedlings' growth. Enter the biological control: ladybugs. Garden stores sell ladybugs as a natural pest control. There are a bunch of different species of ladybugs (which are really beetles, for you non-entomologists out there), and some eat aphids and some eat leaves and some eat mildew or bacteria, so I am just assuming that the garden store sells the kind that eat aphids. However, it turns out that garden stores around here don't sell aphids. It is actually easier for me to order them online from Home Depot and have them shipped, because the closest ladybug store is an hour's drive away. So in a few days, I will release ladybugs onto my plants and hope they get the job done. In the meantime, I will be crushing aphids with my fingers, unless a hurricane gets to them first.
It's time to talk science. I am studying the rare tea mangrove (Pelliciera rhizophorae), and trying to understand what makes it rare.Very little is known about the ecology of this plant, so there are a lot of unanswered questions. Leaves of the tea mangrove have little glands on them, and no one knows what they do. Possible uses for the glands are: salt secretion--some of the other mangrove species secrete salt out of specialized glands, allowing them to live in salty environments that most plants can't tolerate; extrafloral nectaries--I'll get back to this; mite domatia—little holes that mites can live in, and in return clean the leaf surface of fungi and parasites; or nothing--random glands on leaves seem to be characteristic of tropical plants so maybe they don't do anything special. See the photo below; look at the white stuff on the leaf.
I think the glands are extrafloral nectaries. The plants are not secreting salt and don’t live in super salty environments anyway. I have looked for mites on many leaves and they aren’t there. Plus, the holes aren’t really big enough, even for mites. When I look at leaves out in the field nothing seems to be coming out of these glands. However, I am currently growing one specimen as a houseplant, and I was surprised to see white goo coming out of the leaf glands! Hooray! They ARE doing something. But what? I started collecting the white stuff, which actually hardens into a little ball, but it will take awhile before I have enough of it to chemically analyze and figure out what it is made of.
The point of extrafloral nectaries is usually to recruit an animal (such as ants) to take part in a mutualism. The plant provides a nutritious substance such as sugar or protein or lipids, and in turn the ants protect the plant, attacking any other herbivores that approach. A classic example of this is the Bullhorn Acacia, which recruits ants with protein-lipid goodies called Beltian bodies, and the ants take care of any threats to the plant, including herbivores and other plants growing near the Acacia! I often see ants on individual trees of the tea mangrove, and ants are even present on the plants I am growing at the lab in Florida. The reason I am convinced that the glands are extrafloral nectaries is that one day I saw an ant crawl around the plant and stuck its head into each gland on each leaf, like it was looking for something to eat! I have seen other obnoxious herbivores hanging out around the leaf glands, and my hands have also become covered in ants when they provoked a leaf for too long.
I probably don’t see the white goo on leaves in the field because the secretion gets used/eaten quickly. I was able to capture it on my houseplant because there are no insects inside to gobble it up. I don’t know if there is one or multiple species of ant that are usually associated with the tea mangrove in the wild, so I’ll have to make some ant collections next time I travel. For now, I’ll focus on collecting leaf liquid!
In my last post I mentioned a few of the food items I tried in Florida: fried alligator and fried pickle chips. Today I would like to discuss another two: candy apples and boiled peanuts. I always thought candy apples were a myth. I am familiar with caramel apples, the delicious caramel-coated concoction popular in autumn, at apple orchards, and around Halloween. You can buy them at Disney World and at Whole Foods, which is pretty much Disney World for foodies. So when the books I read as a child (such as The Berenstein Bears’ Go Trick-or-Treating) showed bright red candy apples in their illustrations, I assumed that was an embellishment because red is a much more interesting color than brown.
It turns out I was mistaken. Bright red candy apples DO exist, and I bought one at Fort Pierce’s monthly Friday Fest. It was red, hard, coated in cherry-flavored hardened sugar, and leaked red coloring on anything it touched. It was not possible to bite into the apple because the coating was so hard, and licking it brought to mind the old Tootsie Pop commercial where the owl asks, “How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?” Now I am wondering if this is a geographical phenomenon. I have a low sample size, but the person of East Coast origin I asked had seen and consumed candy apples before, but another Midwestern acquaintance had not, and like me, thought they were a myth. So let me ask you, dear readers: have you ever had a candy apple? Where? And why do they still exist?
The second delectable is definitely a southern thing. Boiled peanuts. They came in a Ziploc bag, and it turns out they were boiled in that very bag. They tasted like baked potatoes and had none of the oily, salty crunch I look for in peanuts. But apparently they are very popular here. You can even buy them by the can in the grocery store.
Being surrounded by my study organisms, and growing the plants in a climate they can tolerate, is the main appeal of working in Florida. However, this has some not-so-obvious perks:
1. Beach biology. The other day I woke up and saw turtle tracks on the beach from my window. I checked it out and can confirm that a turtle nested there. Will I be patrolling the beach at night with a red-colored light in 55-60 days, watching for little turtle hatchlings? You betcha.
2. Cost of living. I am renting a 2 bedroom beachfront condo for less than I rented a viewless studio in Oakland. And the water is swimmable!
3. Florida food. Local delicacies include fried alligator and fried pickle chips. When in Rome, right? Fried alligator is pretty good, like a less slimy calamari. And fried pickle chips should be on the menu everywhere. Take sliced pickles (like you would find on your hamburger), fry them up like potato chips or french fries, and voila! A delicious, vinegary, vegetable-based appetizer!
4. Endless summer. You may think 90+ degrees is a little too much, but for all you California residents who had nothing in the way of summer this year, a couple months of heat doesn't sound so bad, does it?
Why would anyone in their right mind want to spend time in a hot, humid, muddy, bug-infested swamp? This is a question many of my friends and admirers have asked. If you have spent time in mangroves, salt marshes, bogs or other swamp-like environments, it is possible you love them but more likely that you hope to never go back. However, you will be missing out if you never go back. Allow me to explain.
Mangrove forests are unlike other tropical forests in that they are depauperate of plant diversity. In the Americas, a typical mangrove forest has one to three tree species and a smattering of other types of plants such as vines and epiphytes (plants that live on top of other plants, such as bromeliads that grow on tree trunks). Because there are only a few woody species, there tends to be little or no understory. This means you can walk into a mangrove forest and feel like you are in a cathedral, with the branches of trees reaching high above you and nothing obscuring the view for what feels like miles. This makes it difficult to find a suitable ladies' room sometimes,
If the cathedral view is not enough, these forests are full of wildlife that you would rarely see other places. Because you can see farther than in other types of forest, it is easier to see and hear birds, plus if coatis are running through the forest far away from you there is a better chance of seeing them. Parrots squawk high overhead, announcing themselves as they fly by. Toucans rest in tree branches. Hummingbirds and mangrove warblers flash their bright colors in surrounding trees, but you won't see the snakes until they're close. A couple very cool tree frogs (e.g. hourglass; see previous post) hang out on trunks or leaves.
Then there is the adventure aspect. You never know when you might sink into the mud up to your waist, so stuck that you have to take your boots off to get out. You may come across a nest of africanized honey bees and have to sneak away quickly and quietly. There might be a thunderstorm with lightning crashing above and rain pelting down. Or on a calmer day, there is always the creaking sound of dead trees swaying in the breeze, just waiting to fall down. If you can ignore the heat, protect yourself against the bugs, and don't mind getting muddy, mangroves are very rewarding places to explore.
Yesterday in small town Florida, I happened upon the Orange Peel Gazette, billed as "the hottest little paper in town." In between its covers are 12 pages of ads and jokes. No kidding. Local advertisements and one-liners. That's it. Here are some of the better ones:
When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds.
Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.
Proper attire is required in the cafeteria at the University of Maine. To enforce that rule, the management posted this notice: "Shoes are required to eat in this cafeteria." Next to it, a student added, "Socks can eat wherever they want."
Check out this news story about my research on the endangered lupine, Lupinus tidestromii. It's not mangrove research, but still really cool ecology taking place in Point Reyes National Seashore, California. The research article was published in Ecology this month.
For a more succinct summary, check out this podcast
Many people think they don't know what mangroves are, but you have probably seen them before. The most recognizable ones look like the picture below of Rhizophora mangle, or red mangrove. Other types of mangroves lack these characteristic prop roots, but are still mangroves. Mangroves are a group of plants that are not all closely related, but defined by a few common features: they can grow in saltwater and have special adaptations that allow them to do so; they are trees; they live in the intertidal zone but nowhere else. Mangroves are fascinating plants because they have to deal with salt stress, and the stress of growing in flooded soils where oxygen is scarce.
I am finding more and more that I am frustrated when other people don't work on the weekends; usually this is because I need something done ASAP. About a week ago, I received word that my rare mangrove propagules (which are vital to my experiment in Florida, central to my dissertation research, and NOT easy to get) had been collected. Great! I hired one of the boat drivers who works with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Bocas del Toro to visit some faraway sites and collect 150 propagules (aka seeds) for me. That was the easy part. Next they needed to be sent to me, either to the US, or to somewhere in Panama where I could pick them up. The latter option was better because I could accompany them on their journey and make sure the proper documentation was presented at the appropriate times. However, when I asked for them to be sent on Friday, no answer. No work on the weekends. My anxiety was based on the fact that these are live plants, not dormant seeds, that need to stay moist in order to remain viable. But because they are moist they are more likely to rot/mold/grow fungi and therefore not travel well. So Monday through Wednesday I called to ask where my propagules were, and repeatedly got the answer, "they'll be sent tomorrow." Once again, it is sometimes hard to convey a sense of urgency and actually be understood in Panama. I had to pick up the propagules by Thursday so I could turn them in to be inspected by the Panamanian authorities, get a phytosanitary certificate stating they were clean of pests and soil, etc. and then get on the plane with them on Friday. On Thursday at noon I arrived at the Smithsonian headquarters to pick up my package and behold! They were not there. The person in charge of packages told me the propagules were on a truck that someone had out at the moment, and he would return in an hour and half and could I please return then to pick them up? Now, why on earth were they on a truck and not at the loading dock where they were supposed to be? Though this was extremely frustrating, I could do nothing but wait. Luckily I only had to wait 45 minutes and then I carted them off in the direction of the vegetation inspection people. Their office was hard to locate, and the taxi driver had to call them on my cell phone at least 5 times before we finally arrived. I turned in my precious propagules and waited...I could call the next day (Friday, the day I was supposed to fly home) to see if they passed their inspection. I went to a hotel near the airport and waited. The next morning, just as I was getting ready to call, my phone rang. The propagules received a clean bill of health! Woo hoo! That was what I was worried about--after waiting three months for my collecting permit and four months for my export permit, waiting to receive the propagules and hoping they were still moist--but the propagules were sanitary and I got my certificate stating so. Now all I had to do was board a plane, show the forms in Miami, and I could start planting the next day!
But not quite...at US customs, I showed up to "Agricultural Control" with my plants, expecting them to be inspected. Guess what? Agricultural control doesn't actually DO agricultural control. What a surprise! No one from the US Department of Agriculture is on duty to inspect the quarry of law-abiding, permit-carrying citizens. Sure, they will confiscate fruit you bring in, but to have my permits looked at the propagules had to be sent elsewhere to the USDA inspection station, which of course is not open at 8 o'clock on a Friday night. Great. So I left the Miami airport propagule-less, hoping and hoping that they will survive the weekend AND pass their US inspection AND be returned to me while they are still viable and I can plant them. So now I wait...
Going out in boats is not always scary; in fact sometimes it is more like a nature documentary than a thriller. Here, we explore a river where the rare mangrove Pelliciera rhizophorae occurs.
Imagine being in a small inflatable boat in the Caribbean sea, with rain pelting down and purple lightning streaking across the sky. That was my reality yesterday. It started raining in the morning when our boat trip was postponed due to rain. However, it cleared up later in the day. Five of us went out in the boat; three were dropped off at a small island to search for a specific intertidal snail, and two of us went to the mangroves. It started pouring as I was standing in the forest recording data, but I managed to bail most of the water out of the boat by the time we got back to the island to pick up the rest of the group. Then the rain became a thunderstorm. We pulled our snorkeling companions out of the water and waited under a thatched roof hut...the rain continued pouring down, thunder rumbling and lightning striking uncomfortably close by. We crossed the island to wait near the boat. By then, the island's caretaker (the island is owned by a German man who was not present) joined us and we all waited under their glass-roofed boat launch. The rain came harder and harder, the thunder rolled loud enough to wake the dead, and a howling wind started up. We huddled against a wall, wearing our lifejackets to insulate ourselves against the wind in hopes of staving off hypothermia. We waited half an hour or forty-five minutes, then realized we better get going before sunset. We armed ourselves with buckets and bailed a huge amount of water out of the boat. The rain had let up, so I thought we were homefree. But though the sky was clear and beautiful behind us, it was dark and stormy in the direction we were heading. It was only a 20-minute boat ride, so it couldn't be so bad, right? The rain wasn't bad at first and neither were the waves, but as we made our way across the bay--that is, we became the only object in a large expanse of open water--we saw lightning across the entire sky. Purple lightning! I don't know what made it purple, but it was a brilliant violet color. As long as it was horizontal, I thought we would be fine. All of a sudden I saw vertical lightning, hitting water way off in the distance. We were only halfway to our destination, and though the lab was in sight it felt like it took forever to get there. As we approached the waves became bigger and bigger, crashing into the reef. Finally, we arrived. Back at the lab there was no power from the storm. At least we had hot water so we could warm up from the wind and rain!
Today while I was running in the late afternoon, I saw a large animal coming down the road toward me. At first I thought it was a big dog. Then I thought it was a bear. Then I realized it was neither, and must be one of the animals that occur only in the tropics such as a paca, tapir, or capybara. It was large, rotund, and black. Upon my return to the lab I consulted mammal reference books, and I narrowed it down to a tapir or a capybara. Unfortunately it happened so quickly and early into my run that I cannot remember what the nose looked like...the most distinguishing feature between a tapir and capybara. Everyone at the lab thinks it was a capybara (which are cuter, by the way) because they have never seen a tapir here. However, as more and more surrounding forest is cut to make way for shipping containers at the Caribbean terminus of the Panama canal, animals that have never been spotted at Punta Galeta are being seen. One person saw a large cat (panther, perhaps?) and a fellow runner saw an animal with a tapir-like nose. I will have to spot the dark stranger another time to come to a satisfying conclusion.
Two-toed sloths are less common in low elevations than their three-toed counterparts (the earlier sloth video is a three-toed). You can tell them apart by their eye patches; three-toed sloths have circles around their eyes and two-toed sloths don't. Both have three claws on their hind feet; it is the front feet that sets them apart. Their claws allow them to grip tree branches and hang upside down without expending energy. Although they are not graceful walkers, sloths are excellent swimmers! Two-toed sloths are aggressive, so I avoided provoking this one. This is a sloth doing what it does best:
It is an hourglass tree frog (Hyla ebraccata). It lives in areas with heavy rainfall and its geographic range extends from Mexico to Panama. The name comes from the dark hourglass pattern on its back:
I thought this particular frog might be a prince, so I tried to kiss him but he would have none of it. Don't tell my boyfriend.
Here is a riddle: if you have a boat on the Pacific coast of Panama, and a marine laboratory on the Caribbean coast, how can you get the boat to the laboratory?
Could you rent a trailer from one of the yacht clubs on the Pacific coast, take the boat to the Caribbean, and return the trailer? Could you drive the boat through the large waterway that connects the two coasts, also known as the Panama Canal? Could you borrow a trailer from the Caribbean coast, drive it to the Pacific coast, and drive back with both the boat and the trailer? Could you take one of the eight boats at the Smithsonian lab further up the coast and transport it, over land or water, to the lab without a boat?
Answer: None of the above. For reasons I do not understand, the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute is incapable of using any of these transportation solutions. The marine lab is left without a boat, and researchers such as myself are left unable to do our research that requires boat transportation. If not for the large ships lined up to enter the canal and the oil refinery nearby, I would just paddle myself to the site in a kayak. Unfortunately, it is pretty far, the water can be choppy, and I don't have a kayak available any more than a larger boat. This has been the case for two trips I have taken to the lab in question in the last six months. I don't know if this is a reflection of bureaucracy in general, the Smithsonian specifically, Panamanian culture or the American government. Regardless, the idiocy of the situation is infuriating.
This morning I awoke at 6:10 to a torrential downpour. Of course this is not an unusual occurrence in the tropics during the rainy season, but it was alarming because we needed to be on an 8:00 flight from Bocas del Toro to Panama City, then take a taxi to the international airport in Panama City in time for Sierra’s 11:54 am flight. My flight to Miami would take off an hour later. We had plenty of time scheduled to get between airports, but the rain, thunder and lightning made it unlikely that we would take off on time from the Caribbean island we were on. When we left the Smithsonian station to go the airport, it took a few minutes to find a cab; this was enough time for our luggage to get soaked. From previous visits, I found it ineffective to call a cab early in the morning, especially because there are usually more cabs than any other type of car in Bocas del Toro. When we finally did get inside a taxi pickup truck, it also picked up 2 children in school uniforms. Then it stopped again and picked up 2 more. We were riding in a school bus taxi! In Bocas del Toro, taxis only cost 25 cents for the locals, so it makes sense that children would ride taxis to school. But what didn’t make sense was why, every few minutes, our taxi driver felt the need to bark like a dog. It was a pretty good dog impression and had I not seen his mouth moving I would have thought a dog was trying to go to school too.
The fact that students take taxis to school is not because there are no school buses. In fact, there are tons of American school buses driving around Panama. They are not yellow, but usually painted with a multitude of brilliant colors and portraits of famous boxers, Jesus, or family members of the driver. They often have bright flashing lights and plastic fins on top, which might make them look like some sort of strange sea monster if they were submerged in water. These are the local city buses. They are referred to as the Diablo Rojo, possibly because of the way they drive with no regard for other people on the road, lane lines, or the copious diesel exhaust pouring out of them. I have never been on one, but I have narrowly escaped being hit by one in my rental car multiple times. After years of riding a school bus in the US, I have no desire to be crammed onto a sticky bus designed for small children. I think the key lies in the fact that most Panamanians are rather short and thus are appropriately sized for the buses. It seems to function enough so that in Panama, taxis serve as school buses and school buses take adults to work.
I have seen a bunch of cool animals in Panama, including a jaguarundi, coatis, lots of crabs, birds, insects, spiders and sloths. Here are some photos:
This is one of my favorite animals, a three-toed sloth. They are easiest to see in Cecropia trees, though they eat many other types of leaves.
This is a green kingfisher that flew into a glass door. It was a little confused for awhile and may have had a minor concussion, but Loes nursed it back to consciousness and it was fine.
This is a Junonia evarete caterpillar. It specializes on black mangrove (Avicennia germinans) leaves during the rainy season (this photo was taken in January).
This is a hummingbird in a cashew tree. The fruit of the cashew tree is edible, but the nut must be roasted because it is toxic if eaten raw.
This is a new friend I made. =) He was wearing a collar, so I didn't take him home. Special thanks to Sierra Flynn for taking some of these photos!
The other night I stayed at a hotel in Panama City. It was a very nice hotel, and I got a good deal for it online so I figured my field assistant (Sierra) and I would stay in a nice place before heading back to research stations. One of the draws for me was that it had a pool, of course. It turns out that the hotel didn't just have a pool, it had a water park. Sweet! For some reason pools in Panama tend to close around 5 pm, so we had to wait until the morning to go. Supposedly it opened at 10 am, but when we walked down around 9:40 a guy at the entrance said it was open and we should go in. The only people inside seemed to be working there, but we couldn't really tell. We walked around the water park, and it was very much what you might expect from a Latin American city: all the stuff inside looks like it hasn't been updated since at least 1983, and they have cages with monkeys and parrots and toucans. The actual water slides didn't have water running down them or jets where water would come out...just a plastic slide ending in the pool. Probably not so effective. We made our way over to the Lazy River and decided to give it a try. We grabbed innertubes, hopped in and made it about 10 yards when a group of young men called to us to say we couldn't use the lazy river because it was being cleaned at the moment. Why they waited to tell us this until after we were in the water, I don't know. There was literally NO ONE else at the park and ~5 guys were just sitting there watching us. So then we got out, and one walked over and shook our hands and (speaking in spanish) wanted to know where we were from, etc. Ten minutes later it was 10 am so we could go in the lazy river. First of all, there was no current. So getting down the river meant we had to paddle our innertubes with our hands. Second, although the guy had been cleaning it, the water still had tons of leaves floating in it, in addition to something that looked suspiciously like a mushroom. We went around the river in our innertubes and realize that we were being watched by pretty much every male employee at the water park. Finally we reached the point where we could get out and we left...still no one talked to us. On the way out we saw a couple of ten year-olds and figured out that maybe they were the targeted age for the park. Very bizarre.
This Fourth of July, I will be feeling very patriotic. Usually I like the fireworks and festivities surrounding the anniversary of our nation’s independence, but I don’t always have a particular reason to feel patriotic. This year, a month in Panama was enough to do it—make me miss the good old US of A. The reasons? Lots…number one: everyone (men, women, old, young) stares as I drive by. I’m not sure what’s behind the staring; it isn’t necessarily that I’m a gringa because I have had a couple of people wonder if I was Latina or American before talking to me. But I do know that Panamanians begin staring from a very young age. In the U.S. it is considered rude to stare, and those who are staring do not make eye contact with their target for very long before turning away abashedly. In Panama, however, people stare for much longer than is socially acceptable and are not ashamed when you catch them at it. In fact, they seem to like it. This is very uncomfortable for you when you are being stared at; you think you catch them and they just keep looking at you. Then you turn away abashedly because you don’t know what to do. It is quite confusing and I don’t know what they mean by it. These people would be very good at psychological interrogations, I think.
Number two: The honking drives me nuts. In Panama, honking is accepted as a general greeting toward anyone on the street, whether they are driving, biking, walking, or just standing. It is customary for a driver to honk when he is passing someone. This is pretty reasonable, as it is good to know when someone is approaching. However, if you are the only pedestrian on a two-lane road where cars are very uncommon, it is quite easy to tell if a car is approaching. After all, you can hear it from at least half a mile away. Thus the driver does not need to honk loudly at ear level just as he passes you, unless he is a hearing specialist and wishes to recruit more clients by ruining the hearing of everyone he meets on the street. During rush hour, which happens most of the day in Panama City, people think honking will help them get places. Newsflash: it doesn’t. Taxis are particularly guilty in the honking matter: honking means, “I’m here! Want a ride? Let me stop my car in the middle of the road while we negotiate the price and hold up all the traffic behind me.” More honking ensues.
Number three: The street signs, or lack thereof. None of the roads are marked with their names. And when there is a sign, there is not much hope of knowing which road it refers to because all the roads have multiple names. I rented a GPS to help me navigate around Panama City and Garmin must have made up some of the road names because they cannot possibly be real names. Frangipani Road? Boyd Roosevelt? Is that someone’s first and last name? Boyd? The GPS often wants to take me the wrong way down one-way roads, or through locked gates that there is no hope of me penetrating. So it takes three times as long to get anywhere, but I still feel better off using the GPS than not because at least it hasn’t gotten me lost in any bad neighborhoods. Outside of the city, the highways at least have mileage signs every so often. But these are put up by the rental car companies, not the government. And there are random off ramps that are unmarked, so you just have to guess if you should go straight or veer right and hope the road leads to where you want to go. I have driven a lot in the US lately and there are warnings for every exit miles and miles before.
Number four: The lack of lane lines on the road. Because there are often no lines demarcating lanes, it is common for a two-lane road to become three lanes, or four lanes if people decide it is time to drive on the shoulder. In some places with a lot of trucks, it is courteous to pass on the shoulder to keep traffic moving. I started to understand why there are no lane lines when I saw the Highway Authority hand-painting yellow lines down the road. They laid a rope about 30 yards along the road and painted yellow dashes across it every few inches. Apparently Panama didn’t get the memo that now we’re in the 21st century and there are machines that can paint lines on roads. It’s a lot safer for the workers and makes nicer lines.
Number five: Doing science here legally is quite difficult. It used to be that a scientist could apply for a research and collecting permit in English or Spanish, get the permit and it would be good for year. Not many people ever asked to see the permit, but it is good to comply with the laws. Since the new president came in last year, permits are now only good for six months but it takes four months to get one after applying for it. That means you can be granted a permit and have it for two months before it is time to apply for a new one; since they want a progress report with the new application, you better hope you have something to report after only two months. The application also has to be in Spanish; this fortunately is not a problem for me but there are many scientists who do research in Panama and do not speak Spanish. I don’t know how they are getting their permits. I applied for my research permit months ago and have been waiting for it. I also applied for an export permit at the same time, because I wanted to bring samples back to the U.S. Of course to bring anything to the U.S. I would need an import permit, which required that I go to the closest US Department of Agriculture center to show my ID. It wasn’t very close, but I drove to the USDA center in farmland California, showed my ID and got my import permit ten days after I applied for it. Ten days total. Not even ten business days. There was also a convenient online application process and I could check the status of my permit online. In Panama, there is no online application process, no way to check the status, and no way to expedite a permit. It takes at least four months, which is TWELVE TIMES as long as it takes in the U.S. Now remember that Panama is a country the size of South Carolina with only three million people living in it. Sure, there are a lot of scientists who want permits to study the tropical rainforest and the interesting wildlife therein, but the U.S. has many more people doing research and many more permits to grant, of the collecting and importing and exporting nature. So why on earth does it take Panama so long to grant a simple permit?
It is an hourglass tree frog (Hyla ebraccata). It lives in areas with heavy rainfall and its geographic range extends from Mexico to Panama. The name comes from the dark hourglass pattern on its back:
