Catcher in the Cynadon

ed. note: Written while staying at Lewa, a reserve about an hour North of Mpala.
The courses I've had in Kenya are very, very different from the courses I've had at Princeton, but there are still parts that are similar: reading scientific papers, taking notes and discussing them; spending late nights scrambling to finish all of the assignments; wondering why it is again that I never make time to clean my room. And, similarly, the field research I've done here, although it's in Africa and there are giraffes watching me work, is in some respects like the lab work I've done on campus. There are all the routine observations that need to be made, doing the same thing the same way each time, and carefully recording everything. Serious science has to be this way; standardizing sampling methods and taking thorough field notes are crucial to actually getting results. It is a pleasure to be able to look up from my work and just see African plains, but it is still more work than play.
Today, though, we got to help with a preliminary study to scope out the area for grasshopper species, and that was different. After we had finished counting and identifying dung piles in the usual areas, we had to walk in a straight line and count how many grasshoppers jumped out at us. Once we had relayed our numbers back to Fiona, who would do the studies if the area was right and the funding came through, we were free to catch samples. This was definitely not work: crunching through grass up to our waists, looking for a promising specimen to be unnerved enough by our presence to leave his hiding place and fly up in the air. Carefully watching him land, creeping forward, then pouncing clumsily towards him. Hands cupping gingerly, and in my case, fighting back squeamishness as I pulled the 3-inch bug off of the grass stem, pinched its hindquarters firmly between my fingers, and brought back my prize to be put in a plastic baggie along with some dozen of its friends and relations. Often enough there was no prize, the locust would scuttle off before I grabbed it, but that was alright; it didn't have to be recorded for later statistical analysis of how much time it took me to find a large grasshopper, or to determine whether I was significantly bad at doing it. Just shrug it off and go for a new one. It reminded me of when I would go out and dig up worms to look at, or catch buckets of tadpoles to raise, playing with nature for curiosity's sake-- why I like biology in the first place.