Nocturnal Activities

Nocturnal activities in Africa come in many different guises, having had to work night shifts regularly here I see quite a lot of what is going on around this neck of the woods. There is a huge rat problem on site with many rodents skittering around the place, I was walking around one of the turbines and saw one run up a 6 foot tall piece of 2 inch steel conduit and I didn’t think that was possible. It make you realise why they are so successful, there is a training centre on site and one night I caught a glimpse of maybe 20 or 30 rats that seemed to be playing tag on the veranda, just running around and skipping over each other, heaven only knows what the game was but it made me realize that there must be far more going on than what you see during the day. I have several rather large and beautiful lizards that bask in the heat of the compressors during the night and that did surprise me as I nearly stood on one and it frightened the hell out of me as it leapt into the air off a step to avoid me. I will put a picture of that one on the Blog. They are called rainbow lizards as they are so beautifully coloured all blues and yellows and a few dots of others. Around the accommodation we have a barn owl that I have seen many times probably looking for rats. One very interesting creature we have in abundance is the fruit bats, when some of the trees come into fruit maybe twice or three times a year the bats will swarm onto them. Being a nocturnal creature myself not being able to sleep in this environment and also working night shifts I was walking down to the gym this morning at 3.30 after waking at 3 and decided to do something useful I heard the bats fighting or maybe playing and they were so noisy and when I got near the tree I could see the road totally awash with the detritus from their feeding all over the road. There was just tons of leaf litter and a mountain of what can only be described as watery crap. When I was looking up into the tree the bats are huge compared to anything I have seen even in Costa Rica, they have a wind span of maybe 14-18 inches and are light brown in colour. I just am in awe at the amazing sight of them. There could have been up to 30-40 bats circling and landing and taking off a wonderful sight to behold. We have lots of geckos running around the trailers we are working out of and they several different species I think being different colours and some other small lizards with a mass of yellow dots on the heads, looks like a child’s paint game gone crazy. The insects here are plenty but the moths are just huge and fly crazily around the plant confused by high output halogen lamps. The other strange creature on site is the security guards, they seem to have a habit of peeping into trailers trying to see what is inside to steal I believe, what a bunch of utterly useless wasters to have on site, they sleep in the vehicles, and they seem to treat them like they are cruising the strip, hardly doing anything worthwhile and always on the lookout to take a car radio if is available. They also look very dangerous just like a bunch of private army guys who would love the opportunity to kill and eat anyone who got in their way. Finally the strangest of all is me, staggering around like a drunken sailor, desperately trying to keep awake and concentrate on the job in hand. But if all goes well then this could all change when peru changes my life and probably my Blog in a big way, it will be all wildlife and jungle training.