Rescuing the mountain chicken: 02/04/09

Tomorrow is the big day – we are going to out Fairy Walk to catch frogs for transport back to Jersey. Scriber came over to the house to discuss the practicalities of getting the frogs out – catching the frogs is one thing but carrying them out safely and carefully without stressing them too much is another! These frogs can easily weigh 1/2 kg each and have very powerful legs and could easily injure themselves inside boxes or bags. So the frogs will receive very special treatment.

First they will be placed in individual cotton bags – each one sewn for us by two friends of Wendy’s back in Jersey who with just one day’s notice had produced an amazing 50 bags! Then they have to be carried out of the forest. One possibility would be to use a donkey with boxes carrying the frogs but it was decided that this was not practical, given the difficult terrain. So the final decision was to carry them out in their cloth bags on poles. This should be an interesting sight seeing us trooping out of the forest!

Scriber also mentioned that the Minister had been interviewed on the local radio station about the Mountain Chicken project and told us that members of the public had been phoning in asking questions and raising concerns. Gerardo suggested that perhaps we should arrange some sort of public meeting so that anyone could put questions directly to the Durrell team – this is a suggestion that will be put to Gerard Gray in the morning.

We explained to Scriber that we were planning to go to Pelican again tonight and if we found any really sick animals, to bring them back to the transit facility to treat them. He was concerned about bringing in very sick animals and the possibility of infecting any animals that could be clean from Fairy Walk. Although Javier assured him that this would not be a problem, as all the animals would be treated immediately upon arrival in the facility, rather than upset the Forestry team in any way, we agreed to move one of the treatment ponds to the house.

So we managed to load the treatment pond onto the back of Scriber’s pickup truck and re-locate it to the balcony of our house! It looks vaguely reminiscent of a scene from one of Gerald Durrell’s books here now!

We then set out to collect another car load of leaf litter and managed to tie this trip in with a drive to view the volcano at slightly closer quarters – although the summit was cloaked in clouds, it was a clear day and we had a fabulous view of the ash covered slopes. We also managed a very quick detour to the beach close by – the black sand was stunning, the cliffs were beautiful and the sea was a beautiful blue - it was late afternoon and it would have been lovely to sit and watch the sun go down but we were on a tight schedule as usual so could not stay.

We set out with our new team member, Andrew, for our regular visit to Pelican along with guide Blacka. Our aim tonight was to continue the trials of treating animals in the field and to treat again every animal we could find. As before, we had a few re-captures and a few dead ones to bring back with us. It was good however to find a couple of new animals, which were sampled, chipped and treated as in previous trips. However the number of animals in this ghaut is ridiculously small.

Tomorrow we will visit Fairy Walk along with a large team from Forestry to bring out the first 24 lucky frogs that will be taken into captivity. There is a lot of excitement for this visit and a high level of expectation. There are also mixed feelings between the desire to see lots of frogs from what is still the best wild population and knowing the sad destiny of seeing this population suffer what the rest of the island has already undergone. Gerardo mentioned the incredible experience he had always known of hearing males calling in the ghaut and how you used to be able to point with your torch and see several frogs. Javier had the chance on the first trip to experience this and everybody is saying "we'll get frogs!". It will be a long night tomorrow – we head out there at 6pm and will be out until the early hours of the morning!