The object of the "Carnivores of Madagascar" project is to study the few largish predators that live on Madagascar, most notably the fossa (pronounced foosa), a remarkable creature that looks like a weasel doing a good impression of a cat. Evolutionarily speaking, that's not far from accurate. Fossas are vivverids, of the same family as weasels and ferrets, but have evolved to fill the otherwise vacant large-predator niche on Madagascar. They have retractable claws, a remarkable set of teeth, and a spine like a slinky. In fact, my personal nickname for them is "Nature's Death Slinky". They're the only predator I'm aware of capable of chasing a lemur from tree to tree. Pound for pound, you won't find much on Earth that's more dangerous. Fortunately for us, they're about three feet long, plus tail.
We were the fourth of four teams to join the project, so by the time we arrived, many of the local predators had already been captured, sampled, and given stylish radio collars allowing us to track them. The head of the project was Luke Dollar, who'd been there all summer, and the summer before as well, and has been studying Malagasy life for years.
August 5-6
The fifth I spent in transit, flying over the Arctic Circle to Paris. I noted in my journal a strong feeling of physical disconnection; an inability to viscerally grasp the fact of my being seven miles in the air, thousands of miles from home, in a tiny flying cylinder, and dressed for the African jungle. My deep and profound insight into the matter came while I was passing over Wales, when I realized that in, say, 1300, for a Welsh person, London was an exotic foreign city, and seeing someone who'd been to Paris would be a once-in-a-lifetime event. That in mind, my inability to really feel the reality of my world-shrinking situation was more understandable. The other realization I came to en route was that the Keanu Reeves vehicle Sweet November was an atrocious movie, but this didn't rank high on the insight scale.
On the sixth, I arrived in Paris, spending my ten-hour layover in the city, which was substantially like every other American tourist's day in Paris, apart from an interesting apartment fire I watched.
August 7
Late the previous evening, I flew from Paris to Antananarivo, arriving the morning of the 7th. Once there, I met up with John, Alanna, and Warren, the three youngest members of the expedition at 17, 21, and 16 respectively. When I met them, however, I was unaware that they were the youngest, and wondered whether they were a representative cross-section, and I'd wind up as the old man of the party. These fears were, as the photo shows, groundless.
First row, left to right: Pierrot, Radu, Luke, Rolande, Robin. Second row, counting the group of four in the middle, left to right: Alanna, Yoshi, a staff member whose name I'm forgetting, John, and myself. Last row: Liza, Warren, another staff member whose name I can't remember, Jeff, and Pete. Now you know who I'm referring to for the rest of the story. I feel very guilty over not remembering the names of half the staff.
Alanna and John are brother and sister, and Warren's just a guy cool and lucky enough to do a trip like this in high school. We made a trip to the Croc Farm, an Antananarivo tourist trap that's well worth the relatively minor expenditure involved.
At the Croc Farm, we visited their small reptile house, their very small gift shop,
then headed to their restaurant, where I had fried crocodile with rice and a sort of sweet onion side dish. It was delicious; the crocodile had the consistency of chicken, but a distinctly fish-like flavor, and the onions made a perfect accompaniment. The best part of the croc farm, though, is their menagerie. Aside from the eponymous crocodiles, of which there were plenty, they had an ostrich pen, despite ostriches not being native to Madagascar, and two cages of fossas! Of course, the two cages contained a total of three fossas, but one takes what one can get. The one cage contained a male fossa, and the other contained a female and her baby. The female is pictured to the right, but don't miss the picture of her child here, as it's just plain adorable. It's like some kind of Pokemon or something.
After the croc farm, we returned to the Antananarivo airport, where we met up with Robin, Liza, and Jeff, made all relevant introductions, and caught our flight to Mahajunga.
Arriving in Mahajunga, we were met by Luke Dollar, the project leader, and his assistant Shawn, who is not pictured above because that photo was taken on the last day, after he'd already gone home. Mahajunga proved to be a very nice city by Malagasy standards, due to the preference of tourists for Madagascar's northern coast. We had drinks at the Piscine hotel (quite pleasant, huge pool) while Luke explained the project to us. As we drove off towards the forest, we were stopped by a cop. This turned out to be an exercise in the cop showing off how important and manly he was. Once he got the payoff he was looking for, we proceeded on to the forest. On the way, we passed a lot of ex-forest.
This is what slash-and-burn agriculture turns rainforest into. Everything visible in this photo, as far as the horizon, used to be forest.
Upon arriving at the camp, we had dinner and Luke filled us in on relevant camp rules and warnings about what forms of local flora and fauna were dangerous. He was briefly interrupted by the arrival of a truckload of Germans, who'd taken a wrong turn on the way to the next camp down the road, where a German team was studying mouse lemurs. Finally, we picked our tents, unpacked our sleeping bags and fell asleep.
