33

Lost and Found

Nothing looked familiar. I was on a path, but I had no idea which path or where it led. I was lost. The surrounding vegetation looked like everywhere else in this rainforest—lianas dangling from the canopy, twisting around tree trunks; spiny palm trees so numerous you didn’t dare grab the closest tree if you slipped in the mud or tripped over tree roots; branches festooned with bromeliads and orchids; a dense understory of ferns and broad-leafed herbs. It was nearly midnight, and my headlamp was fading. At its finest, a headlamp offers a narrow beam penetrating through a sea of darkness. Now the beam was a withering shadow of its former self. No one knew where I was, and no one would miss me until the next morning when I didn’t show up for breakfast. I blurted out a string of expletives, in combinations I had never before articulated. Words I didn’t know I knew. My mind raced back and forth between profound irritation for being so careless—and raw fear. Would I spend the night alone in the darkness, unable to avoid the giant centipedes, marauding army ants, and Fer-de-Lance vipers that might be sharing my space?

It was February 1972, and I was eight months into my dissertation fieldwork at the remote Amazonian site of Santa Cecilia, Ecuador. Until seven years earlier, Santa Cecilia had been a small Quechua village scattered along the north bank of the Río Aguarico. By 1968, Texaco had set up a camp in the area as a base for oil exploration. Once they discovered oil, Texaco relocated 16 km east and founded the town of Lago Agrio. After Texaco’s departure, the Ecuadorian Army claimed Santa Cecilia as its eastern-most base. Between the army base and the Río Aguarico sat the 2-ha compound constructed by Colombian expats Ildefonso and Blanca Muñoz. The couple had fled Colombia with their two young daughters in the mid-1950s, toward the end of the 10-year civil war known as La Violencia. They crossed the border illegally by boat, Ilde with a fresh 25-cm bayonet wound carved across his belly. The family stopped when Ilde had been too weak to go farther—at the village of Santa Cecilia, where Quechuas nursed Ilde back to health. I lived with Ilde and his family in Santa Cecilia at this compound, affectionately called Muñozlandia, with all its amenities—rickety outhouse; fungus-encrusted outdoor shower powered by cold water flowing from a spring along a split bamboo racetrack; roosters proclaiming their triumphs as early morning wake-up calls; and rice served three times daily.

My advisor, Bill Duellman, had secured funds for John Simmons, an undergraduate herpetology student at the University of Kansas, to be my trusty field assistant. John had a good sense of direction, but he was in Quito at the moment. Thus I found myself alone in the forest. Lost.

I shouldn’t have left Muñozlandia that night. No rain had fallen for the past few days, and I didn’t expect much frog activity. I left to avoid drinking a second glass of Ilde’s banana wine. He had hung several bunches of black, rotting bananas from the kitchen rafters and strategically placed buckets to catch the drips. Once the juices had fermented for a week, he strained the liquid to eliminate the rat turds and drowned flies and poured his wine into empty beer bottles. He invited army friends over to Muñozlandia to sample his creation and insisted I join them. I managed to gulp the contents of one shot glass, sweet and thick with sediment, naively trusting the medicinal power of ethanol. When the second round began, I begged off, saying I needed to go out and watch frogs. Predictably, this brought boisterous laughter from the soldiers. Never mind. It was worth being teased to avoid a second shot.

I got lost because of seeing one of my all-time favorite frogs—a Sumaco Horned Treefrog (Hemiphractus proboscideus)—a little off trail. I was downright giddy to find the queen of frog parental care. Females carry up to 30 eggs attached to their backs. Development takes place within the egg capsule until miniature froglets hatch, each attached to the back of the mother by a pair of gill stalks. In time, the stalks and gills are sloughed from the mother’s back, and the froglets drop to the ground. Rather than just measure my prize and record microhabitat data, I scooped her up so I could photograph her later. My dissertation research focused on the diversity of frog reproductive modes at Santa Cecilia, and this frog was truly unique. Where there’s one Sumaco Horned Treefrog there might be more, right? After finding her, I continued to search for another, ever hopeful of finding a female carrying eggs.

Now that I was paying attention to the broader details of my surroundings, rather than individual leaves and branches, I realized I was on an exceptionally overgrown path—likely a former Quechua hunting trail. I took three deep breaths and told myself not to panic. If I continued walking, I might intersect with a familiar path. If not, I could turn around and retrace my steps. I walked for 20 minutes and stopped again. How much longer would my dying headlamp batteries last? Maybe I should stay put. I found a fallen log (mostly) free of ants and decided to sit and wait until daybreak. I admired the horned treefrog in my plastic bag and remembered the first one I had caught, three and one-half years earlier in this same rainforest.

I had been 21 years old, then just graduated with my bachelor’s degree, and was a member of an expedition to survey amphibians, reptiles, and fishes at Santa Cecilia. Bill Duellman had made a scouting trip a year earlier and found a fairly intact forest teeming with frogs, lizards, and snakes. He speculated that the site might prove to be one of the highest diversity areas in the world for frogs, and indeed it was—81 species in an area of 3 km² (for reference, there are 109 species of frogs in the entire United States).

On one particular night, Bill and I were working a trail together, he on one side, I on the other. In my headlamp beam, I spied a golden-brown frog perched on a branch. It looked to be about the length of my index finger, with a flattened body and wicked-looking bony projections on the sides of its triangular head. Add to that horns of skin jutting from the eyelids and a fleshy proboscis, and this was one alien-looking frog! I plucked it off the branch, causing it to open its cavernous mouth and display a bright yellow-orange mouth lining and tongue. By this time, Bill was exclaiming what a great find I’d made, no doubt wishing he’d claimed that side of the trail.

I chuckled at the creature threatening me and asked, I wonder what would happen if I put my finger in its mouth.

Bill snorted, Try it and find out! I did and I found out.

The frog snapped its jaws shut on my pinky finger in a viselike grip. I later learned that Sumaco Horned Treefrogs eat large insects, other frogs, and small lizards, which they restrain with the fang-like odontoids that were now gripping my finger. Bill grinned impishly as I pried open the frog’s mouth and extracted my throbbing digit.

I felt like a fool, but in time I charitably interpreted Bill’s try it and find out! as something much larger than a dare to do something stupid. It was encouragement to take the next step, an invitation to explore.

Balanced on my wet log, I thought about the time I had gotten lost two years earlier, in Belém, Brazil. I was doing fieldwork for my master’s thesis and working as a field assistant for Tom Lovejoy, then a Yale graduate student. Tom’s research focused on the ecology of birds in three types of local forest. My job was to remove entangled birds from mist nets and take them to our bird-banding hut, where Tom recorded data and banded the birds. Cabeça, the driver from the Belém Virus Laboratory, and I had been in the forest on this particular night when I’d heard what sounded like treefrogs bonking in the distance. I didn’t recognize the calls, so of course I followed them. The calls led me to a swamp. And then to a target tree—and then silence. Another called nearby. By the time I forced my way through a tangle of vines, that frog too had stopped calling. I followed more calls to more trees, and then, having been oblivious to my surroundings, realized I was lost. I called to Cabeça. No response. The bulb in my headlamp flickered and burned out. I had no spare. After my eyes adjusted to the near darkness, I stumbled about, looking for a path. My face plunged into one of our mist nets. I knew the nets intimately but was still unnerved by walking face first into what felt like a thick spider web. After barely making out the number on the flagging tape, I knew where I was. I inched along the path to our bird-banding hut, collapsed into a chair, and began to plan my next move. Ten minutes later, I heard Cabeça yelling, Martinha!

I yelled back in my imperfect Portuguese that I was at the bird-banding hut. Within minutes, Cabeça appeared. We threw our arms around each other and then shared his dimming headlamp during our return to the truck. I promised him I would never again go into the field without a spare headlamp bulb. At 22 years old, I was still learning the dos and don’ts of fieldwork.

I had survived that first frightening experience of being lost. Maybe this one would turn out okay as well. Then I reminded myself that in Belém I had someone who had been with me and who wouldn’t have given up searching for me. This night I was alone.

I became acutely aware of the sounds around me—the monotonous buzzes and chirps of orthopterans; the melodious peeps, trills, and croaks of frogs; the annoying whines of bloodthirsty mosquitoes zeroing in for a feast; and the joyous cackling of a spiny rat overhead. I heard the roar of a jaguar off in the distance. Maybe a male looking for a mate? Or was it hunting? Would a jaguar eat prey as large as a 5 ft 4 in biologist? They eat capybara, deer, tapir, and caimans. I thought to myself, I’m a herpetologist, what do I know about jaguar behavior? Not much.

Truth be told, I was less worried about my personal safety than the consequences of not showing up for breakfast. I have always disliked being the center of attention, and I knew that when Ilde realized I was missing, he would have his army buddies out scouring the forest for me. I would be mortified. I had to find my way out of this mess.

Was I 30 minutes or two hours from Muñozlandia? I tried various paths but nothing looked familiar. Suddenly, my dim headlamp beam revealed a large, spiny, lime-green katydid resting on a bright green nettle covered with yellow hairs.

My lower jaw must have dropped a few inches. I recognized it as the same spectacular katydid on the same outrageously outfitted nettle I had nearly brushed against two hours earlier. The katydid was about 7 cm in length, covered with long, sharp spines. I had thought about taking it back to Muñozlandia to photograph but resisted the temptation because of the animal’s nasty spines and the nettle’s equally vicious hairs. The katydid had been on my left side going up the trail. It was now on my right side. I knew where I was.

As I trudged back to Muñozlandia, I kept thinking, Thank goodness I hadn’t collected that katydid! I also felt a tremendous sense of accomplishment at having gotten myself out of a mess and avoided a scene—and with only orthopteran assistance. As parents often tell their children, Sometimes getting lost is the best way to find yourself. Indeed, the experience taught me that I could trust myself to remain calm when frightened. At 25 years old, I had become a seasoned field biologist. I felt newly empowered.

When I finally collapsed onto my mattress an hour later, my damp, musty-smelling sheets never felt so welcoming. At breakfast the next morning, Ilde asked me how my evening had gone. I told him I hadn’t found many frogs except for a Sumaco Horned Treefrog but that I had found a treasure—a spiny, lime-green katydid. Ilde gave me a strange look, nodded, and said, Bueno. That afternoon, after taking photographs and recording field notes, I returned the treefrog to the exact leaf from where I had found her. The katydid had moved on.