Changes

A lot of things are changing for us right now. Firstly, we have our friend Brendan Doyle here acting as our Field Manager. Brendan has come to help whip us into shape:) We thought we were working hard before!! Seriously though, so far he has been a huge help, and we expect to be closer to business much much faster with Brendan's help. Brendan is in charge of getting our communal buildings finished and he is also helping us with our media pieces (we will be posting a real Facebook page soon!) and also just general business consulting which he is a pro at. Thank-you Brendan!

In other news........Diesel has been lobotomized! By this I mean he has been neutered, but really his only thinking organ up to now was his testicles and he was going to get himself killed by the neighbour's dogs or the big trucks due to his propensity for impregnating the poor neighbour female cats........so on Tuesday Brendan and I took a road trip to Belize City with all of the animals in tow! They all got their shots, deworming meds, and Diesel lost his tomcathood. He is already a different kitty. Sleepy, hungry, and purry, just the way we like him.

Cool Critters!

Every day we are finding interesting new critters! As the seasons change, the animals change too. This guy to the right is some kind of Praying Mantis, which we hope you guys can help us identify! So far we have only seen one individual, but it was probably the coolest insect either of us have ever seen. Like many of the insects we are finding, this guy had a leaf body! Good for blending in to his leafy environment.

This lizard to the left is my personal favourite. It's a Yucatan Banded Gecko! This is a terrestrial gecko, much like the leopard geckos you can find in pet stores at home. Over the Easter weekend I took the neighbour kids down to the stream for a herp walk, one of their cousins was visiting and he was really into snakes and wanted to find a snake. We didn't have any luck in the snake department, but we did find this gecko running across the orchard at the bottom of the hill. I kept him overnight for a good daytime photo shoot, and then let him go the following evening.

The Hercules beetle!! Mat was out bbq'ing one night when this giant heavy beetle flew into the garage area and crashed onto the table. In this picture you can't tell how big he is, but believe me he is huge! About the length of my hand, and really heavy. Amazing!

We are always finding spectacular moths here, but can rarely identify any of them. We are in desperate need of an entomologist at our place! This is one of the more beautiful ones we have found to date. The colours in this photo don't do him justice though - the wing bars are a deep vivid green and he has bright pink edging on the inside of his wings.






We had one of our workers build us a cement wall to help us prevent erosion on one corner of our house. The water cistern is there so it tends to fill up quickly in heavy rains and spill down the bank, creating a lot of erosion. The cement wall and drainage canal Erwin built works perfectly, but one thing we did not imagine was the build up of frogs in this new location!! One night during heavy rains a chorus of about 6 Baudin's Treefrogs started up, waking us from a dead sleep. The cistern is right at the back of the house beside the porch, which is right beside our bedroom window. They make these really loud honking sounds, both of us had dreams of traffic jams before waking up and realizing it was just the frog chorus. Good luck trying to sleep through it though. Mat and I ran outside in the middle of the night in pouring rain trying to catch these guys, put them in a big garbage pail, and move them down to a lower drainage area.......but to no available. But they kept disappearing under the porch! I still don't know where they went. Somehow even the one guy I did manage to catch and put in the pail busted out of the pail despite having a sealed lid on it. Like magic. We were no match for these frogs. Eventually it stopped raining and the frog raucous subsided and we drifted back to sleep.........

Bat fish

After many weeks, we finally have a winner for the unidentified weird fish we found on Caye Caulker! We thank Terry for finally identifying our strange little fellow!

It turns out that our fish was a Shortnose Batfish (Ogcocephalis nasutus). There is not much online for this genus or species. If you want to read more on this topic you can start with http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/55874/batfish! Have fun!

Thank you Terry, awesome!!!

Beautiful waterfall

We are starting to take a little more time and explore our surroundings. TREES is situated in the middle of a series of beautiful National Parks and Forest Reserves. These parks and reserves are perfect for our guests to explore the natural wonders of Belize and great places to see and research the amazing fauna and flora biodiversity found here.

Last week we went to Billy Barquedier National park. This 1500 acre park of pristine jungle terrain is about a 15-20 minute drive from our house. This beautiful quaint and little used park was established in 2001 in order to protect the Barquedier watershed which provides two local communities with water. 

This park has nice trails set in a jungle setting, following a river for about 20 minutes until they meet with a beautiful waterfall. A perfect place to go for a swim on those really hot Belizean days. Vanessa, me and the dog all really enjoyed this new coolspot. While maybe not as Blue Lagoonish as the Blue Hole National Park, this watering hole and waterfalls and free of the bustle and hustle of the other park is a great little place.                                                                 

                                                                               It is a beautiful little hike to the waterfall!            

                                                                           

 

The trail ends up on a beautiful waterfall, great place to freshen up!  

 Here Vanessa is enjoying the beautiful view of the waterfall, minutes before she plunged in!

 

Eva found herself a little hiding spot to escape the heat of the sun behind a Cahoon Palm leaf.

We highly recommend this beautiful little NP only a short drive from TREES.

The Caretaker house

This is the last post for now about the new building additions. We are working feverishly to complete the main student building which will include the lab, library, kitchen, eating area and lounge area. We have a new addition to the team, Brendan, one of Vanessa's childhood friends has arrived on Thursday and has come to help us out with the beast!

So that building, right! The caretaker house was the first house we brought on the property. It is called the caretaker house because we brought it in quickly thinking that the old caretaker that was already on the property would be staying here. We felt bad for kicking and old man out of this property were he had been for 7 years, so we brought it the house. We soon discovered that he actually had land in the country and lots of friends and contact and wanted to start his own thing again. Something is weird in this story and we think we are missing a couple pieces of the puzzle but many neighbours have told us that they highly suspected him of being a con artist and he was somehow trying to acquire our piece of land or that of the neighbours. Anyhow, all ended well and this is how we ended up with the cabin!

The cabin as many cabins do came on flatbed on the highway followed by some heavy machinery to put the cabin in place. They arrived at dusk and somehow managed to place the cabin in its spot in the complete dark, without any lights, flashlights, trucks lights...no lights! I am starting to believe that many Belizeans have mustered the ability to see in the darkness. After about 1.5 to 2 hour ordeal in total we had our new cabin. Over the next couple of weeks a crew came around and add the electricity, septic system and plumbing and the house was fully operational.

The cabin coming in on the flat bed

Vanessa discussing with the neighbour about the new house! Will they will be able to do it he asks?



The contractors placing the house in the complete dark!!!

While, we did not suspected its use at first, this house has been extremely useful to us. It has allowed us to receive friends, families, workers easily to TREES without having to constantly share a little house. This allows for helpers to come for longer periods of time and has been great. The house is now fully furnished with a bathroom, kitchenette, bedroom and living room. There is a great view of the mountains from the deck where  Toucans and Trogons can be regularly spotted.

For the next little while it is now Brendan's cabin, but when we start operating in September we make this house availble to interns.

 Inside the cabin

There it is the little cabin in the jungle!

So this is it for now, I will keep you posted on the restaurant makeover!

This Week's Animal of the Week!

Hi everyone! We have a new animal of the week for you, a baby White-lipped Peccary, brought to us by Israel (right). He was walking with his friends in the jungle and came upon a large herd of peccaries (these guys can live in groups of up to 400 animals!!); the animals were startled and fled, leaving this little tyke behind. Israel named him Bobby and nursed him until he was 4 months old. At that time Bobby got a little too mobile, chasing Israel everywhere, including onto the highway where he was likely to get squashed. Israel heard it through the grapevine that we had a female peccary (have no idea where that came from) and he thought we would probably take a male! So along comes Bobby in a little sack on a motorcycle, straight to our fenced-in yard.

In Belize there is a big problem of people keeping wild animals as pets; it is illegal, but that doesn't stop people. What's worse is that it is very common that someone tries to sell you an animal that they have caught, which perpetuates this illegal wildlife trade. It is very sad as most of these animals are either endangered, or are very important prey for other endangered animals (like the jaguar). In fact, Israel was prompted to bring this little guy our way because his "friend" found Bobby running along the road when Israel had gone to town, and charged Israel $50 to get him back!

I was surprised and a little scared when Israel brought this peccary to us, as I assumed he was trying to sell it to us as well and I do not yet know what to do in that situation. Luckily, all he wanted to do was give it a good home. I told him that we would not keep him but instead would take him to the zoo, where he can live out the rest of his days with peccary friends. Israel was happy about that, as it was the right thing to do, and I think he understood that it is not right to keep wild animals as pets.

Bobby came to us on Easter Sunday! He was scared at first, but quickly took to his new temporary family. He loves being scratched under the chin! After a few chin tickles he flips right over to enjoy some belly rubs.

This little piggy went to Easter dinner! I was lucky enough to have my parents visit me for 10 days over Easter, when Mat went home to visit friends and family in Montreal. We bought my Dad a Rasta Man hat in Placencia, which he sported for the Easter Holidays!

Here Bobby is enjoying laying between our feet UNDER rather than ON the table, NOT being the Easter Ham!

It was reciprocated love at first site when Mathieu got home, Mat picks him up and puts him on his lap, and Bobby is the happiest little piggy in the world (and Mat is pretty happy too!)

As you can see, this little guy really loves to be comfortable. We didn't even put him there, but rather found him all cuddled up in this blanket on the floor in the laundry room, using a stuffed animal as a pillow :)

Tomorrow we are taking our little peccary friend to the zoo. He will be happier there, as although he loves his human and animal companions, he needs to be with his own kind! The Belize Zoo is a great little zoo, the Best Little Zoo in the World! Their animals are very happy, and all have similar stories like Bobby's: they are all orphaned or injured animals, all native to Belize.

So it is sad for us to say good-bye, because we have become very attached to this little stinky critter. However, there is someone here who will likely not be sad about Bobby's departure: poor Eva! Bobby decided on the third day with us that Eva was likely his Mom, and he has been suckling her ever since! Eva has been a good sport, but she has barely had a moment to herself since little piggly has taken to her. Poor girl! She looks confused. She has no recollection of having this baby. How did this happen??

Good-bye Bobby! We love you and we will miss you! Thanks for giving us these wonderful memories.

New cabins!

Here is Part 2 of the new cabins built on the property. These two cabins are Tobar cabins, these guys were excellent! The cabins are beautiful, really well made, they do not curb corners to save a buck and they were installed properly and swiftly. We are very pleased with Erix's work on these ones.



The cabins have two rooms each and a large 6 foot wide deck with a great view of the jungle. They are excellent to hang out on at the end of the day and have a nice cold beer while looking into the thick jungle.



Mat being silly on the deck!

We will use these cabins mainly as dorms for students, but thy will be used as individual rooms for profs and researchers as well as ecotourists that want to experience an ecology field station. We are now in the process of debating what final cabins will be built on the project grounds for now. Either 2 small individual cabins or another one of the large two-room cabins!



The new Cahune jungle compostable toilets!


Anyhow, part 3, the caretaker and intern house will be the next building posting!


You will have to come and see these cabins for yourselves!!!