Costa Rica, Pura Vida

For the past week, I have been slowly adjusting to my new home in Costa Rica. My body is still not acclimated to how insufferably hot my house gets by 8-9am; the heat waves radiating from my awesome tin roof make for a pretty rude awakening. I've also been fighting an ongoing war against the little creatures (read: cockroaches, carpenter ants) that scavenge my kitchen for food scraps. However, with enough OCD cleaning, they seem to be backing off. We can only hope.

I haven't been working much in the field yet because our vehicle is out of commission. It broke down the day I arrived, so I've only worked two nights in the field...and by work, it was only three hours of looking for froggies instead of the usual six. However, we did find, just as we were wrapping up, an otherwise beautiful Scarlet-webbed Treefrog (Hypsiboas rufitelus) sitting atop a palm frond. Unfortunately, it had a serious case of chytrid fungus on its skin. Poor little guy.

On a brighter note, this little one, and presumably its family of five, decided to visit me at my office today (or rather, I saw jumping little red things and decided to catch one).

Strawbery Poison Frog (Oophaga pumilio)

I've got more than 50 frogs whose Latin names I need to memorize. This little one isn't too hard to remember since, clearly, it's just a poisonous strawberry with blue legs. Yet of course there are a ton of other interesting wildlife to lolligag at, so hopefully I'll get to learn their names too (birds are a bit impossible, but I think I'll be able to cover the herpetofauna at the very least). If only I could finish my office/lab work...