Happy Hump-day!

Happy Wednesday everybody!

(posted on Thursday morning here, sorry!)

Quick recap of the week so far.

Lots of camera trap photo-ing on Monday.  Tyler and Ben went into town in the morning, but I decided to stay here and work.  Yesterday morning we went up to the Uhuru North exclosure plot to work with more Barleria spines.  Which were still very sharp, and my fingers (unfortunately) had not developed calluses since Friday.  As far as I understand it, these plots are very similar in the way they're set up to the KLEE plots, except the Uhuru plots are on red soil (and the KLEE plots are on black cotton soil).  Uhuru means "peace, harmony" in Swahili.  It is also the name of one of the major highways in Nairobi, and the first name of the fourth and current president of Kenya.  It also stands for "Ungulate Herbivory Under Rainfall Uncertainty."  I believe the plot we were working in yesterday excluded everything.  Which meant that although there were elephants tearing away at the acacia trees right outside where we were, we were safe.  This is what elephant damage to an acacia tree looks like (this would have happened a while ago; you can tell because the branch that's broken off is pretty much dead):

Poor tree :(

After lunch was a different story because we were done with our work inside the plot.  There was a group of elephants right where we wanted to be working, and we were hesitant to get too close to them (they'll charge you if they decide you shouldn't be there, as Tyler and Ben found out before I got here).  So we decided to call it a day and prep our stuff for Wednesday.  It was the last night here for Jazz, who's been here for nearly a year, so there was a sundowner last night.  We went to Beculi Dam (not actually a dam--no water).

The group

The view

Pretty :)

It was a gorgeous location for the sundowner, and we all just hung out talking and eating popcorn.  After dinner it was time for Disney Movie Tuesday!  This week was The Little Mermaid, which is one of my favorites from when I was little.  So it was especially fun to watch.  

We spent most of the day back up near the Uhuru North plot again today, playing with more spines.  Today was our last day for that, though, for which my fingers are very grateful.  We shared our work space with giraffes, Plain's zebras, hartebeests, and of course, elephants.  The elephants were relatively close when we started and again when we were just about done, but they never seemed to walk toward us at all.  But just to be safe, Tyler drove the truck off the road so that it was pretty close to where we were working.  

Do you see the elephant?

There it is!
(I'm really bad at estimating distances, but this one was not too far away)

 Tyler's also interested in what exactly is eating Barleria, so we set up some stuff to look at that.  Back at the center, there was time for a nap and a workout with Alex before dinner.  Apparently there's going to be a Star Wars viewing tonight, which I will probably join while working on camera trap photos. So that's my week so far, and we're out for another full day tomorrow (packed lunches and all), but I'm not sure what we're doing.  Good night everyone!