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Ticks, Policemen, and Motherhood

Experiences in the Dry Chaco of Argentina

As a young biologist I had the privilege to work with herpetologist and friend Lee Fitzgerald, who taught me to love herpetology and fieldwork. Along with my husband Felix Cruz, a lizard herpetologist, we experienced many fun and some not so fun experiences in the field. While developing my doctoral thesis, our work was centered in Grand Chaco, in particular the dry Chaco region in Salta, Argentina. Our field sites were near the small town of Joaquin V. Gonzalez, in the center-west of Salta Province. During those days, in the 1980s, piercing and tattoos were not very popular in Argentina, especially not in the Salta forest. So imagine my surprise when I experienced a piercing experience: I discovered on my nipples and behind my ears huge ticks embedded in my skin. Waves and waves of ticks invaded our boots looking for interesting corners of our body. These were my first experiences in the dry Chaco, an adverse place but at the same time, a beautiful, amazing, and interesting region to study animals, especially amphibians, with so many biological peculiarities and adaptations for life in this dry habitat.

These experiences working in the Dry Chaco during my doctoral research influenced me as a biologist and as a person. During those years, I shared trips to the field with fellow biologists. Most of our activity took place at night. Since we studied adult amphibians when they were active and calling, we began our work at dusk and arrived at our study sites late at night. Then, very late at night, we would wade up to our waists in temporary pools full of water. We could hardly hear our voices because of the loud calling. It was like a stunning choir of frogs and toads crying out for help to find mates. These were special moments, motivators and triggers in our desire to understand more about the behavior of these amphibians.

On one of these trips, we had an experience that terrified us but also taught us two things. We were working in a pond on the side of the road. It was packed with amphibians noisily calling after a heavy rain—one of those rains that, in the Dry Chaco, appear suddenly and generate a kind of hypnotic state in these amphibians. In the midst of the darkness, lights appeared in the distance. The lights soon became a great light concentrated on us. It was a truck with several reflectors. Five people exited the truck. They were uniformed police, who pointed their weapons at us and questioned us about what we were doing, late at night. We explained that we were studying amphibians, and this calmed the policemen. Perhaps because our story was unexpected, they showed interest in our work by watching and asking questions and then finally left.

We were a little stunned by the experience, a mixture of fear and paralysis, but the resumption of amphibian calls brought us back to the work we had come to do. A couple of hours passed, and we again saw a light that was small in the distance but as it got closer it seemed like a fire that would soon swallow us. Our adrenaline levels increased. I think all four of us had the same thoughts—should we defend ourselves or run away? Suddenly, the policemen stopped the truck and called to us. We approached and saw that in a box in the back of the truck there were several dozen very large toads jumping and wriggling. The species is very common in the Chaco Seco, both in the countryside and in the towns, particularly in places that are illuminated; at night the toads are seen surrounding the lights and feeding on insects. The locals call them Rococo Toads, respected because, according to the countrymen, they clean up vermin. (At that time this species was designated as Bufo paracnemis; it is now Rhinella schneideri.) These policemen had thought of us and wanted to collaborate in our study … relieve our work, so we kindly accepted and loaded the dozens of large Rococo Toads into our vehicle. We took them with us to the modest hotel where we were staying that night. This small group of Rococo Toads became part of the community of amphibians that surrounded the hotel, feeding at night on the insects that surrounded the lights and cleaning the area of vermin.

This experience taught us two things. On the one hand, for a biologist, especially a woman, it is often complicated to work in remote places, which might not be sufficiently far from human influence, because there are potential dangers. It is important to consider this aspect and organize the work with well-established associates and manage logistics appropriately, including permissions and contacts. On the other hand, the fieldwork also taught us about the kindness of local people, their empathy, and their willingness to share all those riches that the land offers them and that sometimes city life does not allow us to appreciate or enjoy.

During those years we also grew as a family, with two boys (Luis and Lucas) who accompanied us to the field. I remember sampling tadpoles in muddy lagoons and the boys wanting to help— their boots stuck in the mud, crying and crying (they were two and four years old), carrying their small sampling nets and helping mommy (me)—while mommy cried as the tadpoles escaped in shoals to opposite ends of the lagoon and daddy tried to calm the children so we could continue the sampling. These were the first years of family life, trying to combine my passions of field biology and experiments with my family.

My work experiences are intermingled with the challenge of motherhood. The latter included leaving my small children and traveling far from home for fieldwork, sometimes healing my children’s stomach pains over the phone—the typical things that working mothers must go through. I think these experiences as a biologist, combined with my role as life partner and mother, have helped me learn to ask more questions and think about them, sometimes with resolution and other times without resolution—but always thinking of possible alternatives. Combining my experiences as a woman, mother, and partner with my professional motivations, my curiosity is channeled toward new projects to discover new things. And that inspires me.