| The Magazine of the CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES |
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FEATURE STORY Angst Aloft R. C. Drewes
If you asked a cross-section of the Academy’s members what their impressions are of our careers as Academy scientists, you’d probably get answers fraught with images of high adventure in the wilderness, risks nobly taken, hardships gallantly borne, and dangers bravely faced all in the name of science. My colleagues and I do march to the beat of a drummer not heard by the majority of our species. For us the thrill of discovery transcends any desire to pursue the sorts of goals embodied in the “American Dream.” Yes, some of the exciting Tarzan-Beau Geste stuff does happen but it’s rare. Believe me, if the day-to-day field work weren’t glorious fun, if it didn’t push some secret button within us, we simply wouldn’t do it. I suspect that popular romanticized views of our field lives and experiences have been greatly influenced by celluloid heroes like Indiana Jones. But let’s compare him to the real thing. For starters, I don’t know a single field worker who would wear a hat like that, except maybe a botanist. And as for the bullwhip, I can just imagine tripping over it in the middle of a swamp. Indiana Jones doesn’t have to sweat research grants; has no worries about disguising bribe money for petty officials under “contingencies” in the budget. In fact, he doesn’t have to make budgets at all! People come to him and say, “Dr. Jones, here’s all the money in the world... go find me the Ark.” He certainly isn’t required to collect endless receipts nor account for petty expenditures. I can testify that obtaining a receipt from an African taxi driver or snake collector is near-impossible. Nor does he need to apply for research or collecting permits for his specimens. Admittedly, the “specimens” Jones collects are of enormous monetary value in comparison to, say, frogs. However, one cannot avoid some skepticism at his numerous “flesh wounds,” which never seem to get infected or reduce his athleticism. How come Indiana Jones never breaks a bone? I’ve broken two in the field—both in Uganda, during different expeditions. A hand bone cracked one night as I fell down the side of a gorge along the Ishasha River. On a later trip one of my ankles fractured as I was chased down a muddy trail by an irate elephant. We learned later this was the only bull elephant in the Impenetrable Forest, a famous, irascible loner who did not like his territory invaded. Needless to say, if he had wanted to catch me, he would have, even with two good ankles. And how come Jones never gets malaria? Or dengue fever? We do—there have been ten cases among current herpetology staff so far. Remember the baked python/monkey brain banquet scene in Temple of Doom? That takes place in India in the 1930s. So how come no diarrhea? And by the way, those wormy things that crawled out of the entreé were not snakes; they were limbless amphibians called caecilians. (see California Wild, Spring 2002). Can you imagine our hero eating nothing but peanuts, plantains, and potatoes with Tabasco sauce for a solid six weeks? This was our daily fare during the 1992 Impenetrable Forest expedition; only later did we learn our host was a militant vegetarian. There are lots of neat period hotels and beds in Indiana Jones’s world—and he rarely seems to sleep alone. But does he ever sleep on the ground? Can you imagine Indy’s tent blowing away in a squall, with him still in it? Or his tent invaded by a column of ravenous safari ants (Dorylus) in the dark of night? Can you see him holding his breath, cowering at the bottom of his sleeping bag, while a pride of moonlit lions brushes against the tent? But then wild animals aren’t really part of his world, except for large, harmless phasmid insects (Temple of Doom) or phony snakes—those serpents in the Raiders of the Lost Ark tomb scenes were mostly European legless lizards (Ophisaurus) with an occasional baby boa constrictor thrown in. In the real field, illness, injury, human-generated irritation and critter-generated fear are all part of the territory, but not the stuff of films. Very occasionally we can get caught up in life-threatening events; for instance, one of us found himself in Lusaka, Zambia, as parts of that city were bombed by the then-Rhodesian Air Force. Years later, two of us were trapped in a small Nairobi hotel during an attempted coup in Kenya and saw soldiers being killed in a fight around the Voice of Kenya broadcasting station a few hundred meters up the road. More recently, one of our entomoogists found himself in the middle of a coup in the Central African Republic and was forced to flee through the forest via another country, sans appropriate visas. Luckily, such events are few and far between. Over the Academy’s 150-year history, just two researchers have been lost through tragic field accidents: Earl Herald, former Director of Steinhart Aquarium, who died scuba diving in the Sea of Cortez in 1973; and Joseph Slowinski, who succumbed to snake bite while in northern Myanmar in 2001. Despite our hair-raising adventures, some of the most memorable moments I have experienced occurred not in wild places but in airports. The real obstacle, the truly difficult interface, is not adapting to an exotic country and its critters and coups; the really challenging part is getting into that country with suspicious equipment, and getting out later with bags and bottles filled with live and/or preserved specimens. Airports and their permanent inhabitants, customs and immigration officials (and in Africa, frequently, the army), together with the airlines themselves and their sometimes ridiculous policies, can conspire to make getting home with your specimens and data intact a formidable challenge. Every Academy expedition always acquires the necessary research and export permits along with any legal documentation for our equipment. But permits and official papers are of little use in attempting to explain to a customs officer what your plans are for the large packet of syringes and needles he has just uncovered, not to mention the pink viscous liquid and suspicious white powder that are really both euthanasia agents. Ultraviolet lights, large packets of batteries of various sizes, GPS units, unusual photographic equipment, and almost anything technologically new can cause all sorts of problems. Even if English were their first language, the customs officials would have even more difficulty comprehending our mission than our own often-befuddled friends do. There are certain preemptive ploys one can adopt. A “hot” music cassette tape (Paul Simon’s Graceland is always popular) or a conspicuous twenty dollar bill on top of your stuff will usually confine a customs agent’s focus to the upper levels of your belongings. Also, top-loaded, tubular baggage like duffelbags are far more work to dig through than standard suitcases. Then there are the times when one is forced to be creative at a moment’s notice. I recall a particularly rigorous customs check upon entering the island of Bioko on our first Gulf of Guinea expedition in 1998. A horde of customs guys were delving through our luggage like safari ants at a picnic. They were just about to reach the syringes and euthanasia equipment when they encountered our rubber bands. We use really large, half-inch ones to capture fast lizards. Without thinking, I grabbed one, and laughing loudly, playfully shot my colleague Jens Vindum with it. Jens immediately grabbed another and shot it back at me, and then the customs officials joined in. The remainder of our belongings passed customs forgotten and unchecked. The airlines also have some onerous regulations involving alcohol. It is against their rules to carry pure alcohol, which we need to preserve tissues for DNA work. On the other hand, it is perfectly legal to carry liquor of any strength. As a result, all of our Africa expeditions are preceded by trips to Costco for plastic gallon jugs of vodka, which we replace with lab ethanol. Having been warned of airport hassles in Ghana, I once tried a modified “bait and switch” technique. The night before leaving I collected a bunch of common local rocket frogs (genus Ptychadena) famed for leaping over 27 feet in three bounds. I carried these frogs conspicuously in an opaque plastic jar under my arm, while the real prizes were concealed in my carry-on luggage. Sure enough, just inside the Accra terminal, a guy with a green wool trench coat and AK 47 motioned me over, pointed at the jar and told me to open it. I suggested that this would really not be a good idea, but he insisted. Naturally, as soon as I opened the jar, frogs were bouncing wildly off every wall. Flustered and perhaps frightened, the security guard shouted “Go! You must just go!” I left the empty jar with him and boarded the plane unsearched. I cannot count the number of times I have sat in the transfer lounge of airports concerned about whether the security x-ray would reveal the little moving skeletons of the live treefrogs in my carry-on luggage. I also worried about the urban legend that the cargo hold of jets was un-pressurized and unheated, as frequently there were live critters in my checked bags. Though I knew it didn’t make economic sense to build passenger planes with separate pressurization areas, and the live creatures always survived, I still worried. Coincidentally, two of my most memorable airport adventures were my very first in 1970, and my most recent in May 2001. On our return flight from the second Gulf of Guinea expedition in 2001, ichthyologist Tomio Iwamoto and I, together with hundreds of our preserved specimens, found ourselves facing the prospect of clearing U.S. customs in Washington, DC. A scientist traveling with specimens always plans his port of entry to be either in his home state or as close to it as possible; local customs can be far easier to clear if they are familiar with you and your institution. Moreover, if you get into trouble, you can always phone the office for verification. This is much harder if you hit customs in the early morning three time zones east of home. My old green duffelbag (which, together with a fear of heights, is the most significant thing I received from my time in the Army) appeared on the luggage belt, and I noticed immediately that something was leaking; the whole bottom of the bag was dark. I sniffed it...formalin! In the field our specimens are preserved in a 10 percent formalin solution which is illegal to transport. So before our return home, we routinely soak the specimens in fresh water, then put them in double plastic bags. While the formalin is technically gone as a liquid (making us legal), it still permeates the tissues of the specimens—as does the nasty smell. I watched in horror while a beagle on a leash connected to a uniformed handler made a beeline from across the room to my duffelbag. Tomio and I had the same dreadful thought...busted! On the beagle came, dragging the customs officer right up to the dark patch on my bag, and took a sniff. The dog’s body seemed to go rigid; its legs began to quiver; it turned slightly to its left and made a small sneezing sound. Then it lifted its hind leg and urinated copiously on my duffel. The embarrassed customs official pulled the dog away and together they disappeared into the crowd. But all these tales pale before my first return home from Africa some 34 years ago. I had already sent all of my preserved specimens on to the Academy from Nairobi, but I did have a small carry-on “sports bag” which contained a number of live lizards and snakes. Each was wrapped in a cloth bag secured by tying the end of the bag into a slip knot. Airline regulations were not nearly as strict as they are today, so I did not anticipate any problems bringing the animals back. I was booked via London with a six-hour lay-over in Cairo, where, determined to get my first view of the pyramids, I took a taxi out to Giza at three in the morning. I wore a long beard and was wearing a barely-cured sheepskin coat an African friend had made, and looked pretty sketchy. Perhaps it was my appearance that caused Cairo officials to interrogate me in a closed airport room for an hour or so when I got back. By the time I boarded my flight to Los Angeles, I was exhausted. This was the first Boeing 747 I had ever seen. The cabin seemed cavernous. With only about 30 people on board it was like a flying barn. I must have looked pretty wrecked because early on I came under the ministrations of a charming stewardess (as they were called back in the dark ages). She showed me how to fold up the arm rests, and I looked forward to lots of hours of sleep. But before stretching out, it occurred to me that I had not given the stowaways in my bags any water since before leaving Nairobi, and I asked the stewardess if she wanted to help. She was delighted and held the door of the little bathroom open while I stuck the head of each critter in the filled basin and saw that each drank. After retying each bag and stowing the sports bag above my head, I passed out, dead to the world. Somewhere over the Atlantic, the same stewardess shook me out of deep, deep sleep and said something like, “Mr. Drewes, I think we have a problem.” Only half awake, I followed her down the aisle. The problem was a woman, perhaps in her early 40s, and very well dressed. She was standing on her seat, white as a sheet, her hands clutching the headrest of the seat in front of her. She trembled slightly and stared straight ahead as if in a trance. I do not recall her ever uttering a sound. On the floor beneath her seat and next to her shoes was my Typhlops. Typhlops are blind burrowing snakes, blunt at both ends, with tiny mouths and strong compacted skulls with which they burrow into the ground. They eat termites, and are totally harmless. At ten inches long, mine was big. Clearly, the Typhlops had burrowed through the slip knot of the bag, fallen out of the overhead compartment, and wriggled its way to the lady’s feet. I dimly recall returning to my seat up near the front of the plane with the fugitive in hand and returning it to its bag. This time I double-knotted it. The stewardess suggested that perhaps he should take charge of the critters, and took the whole sports bag “downstairs.” To this day, I do not know where “downstairs” is in a 747. I remember waking up on touchdown at LAX, and the stewardess handing me back my bag when we said goodbye. I just wish I could remember her name. What a great sport she was! All of my checked luggage came through and was cleared except for a missing map case. This was vital for my future work, and I insisted on describing the case and its contents. When I finally boarded my San Francisco flight, which had been waiting for me—they would do that in those days—I still had my critters clutched in the sports bag. The plane was packed. And I was ushered to the only empty seat right at the back...right next to the woman I had last seen standing petrified on her chair in the 747. She neither looked at me nor said a single word for the entire flight. I pretended to sleep. R. C. Drewes is Curator of Herpetology at the California Academy of Sciences. |
