Mud and Humidity

We decided to depart from our standard methodology this experiment and substitute a cross-bow for our classic machete. It took very little discussion for the group to agree to this change in protocol.
So the project is a look at how solitary wasps colonize new nests (because Javier is really into bees/wasps, that's him setting up one of our understory traps), and how the community of wasps in the nest change over time. We thought that La Selva would be a good place to do this because we're going to be here a while. The huge size of this station also puts additional resources at our disposal (such as a guy with a cross-bow). We were able to have the wood shop guys build us some traps, which are blocks of soft wood with a bunch of holes drilled in them. We then hired Rigo and his bow to help us mount them 30 meters up into the canopy. We weren't able to get them up as early as we would have liked, being as we were in the middle of a Noachian flood, but we still hope to have good colonization.
Yesterday when the storm let up it began to bake. Walking out to the study site, we were all dripping sweat. We smelled bad and it was really muddy. The undeniable awesomeness of having a cross-bow in our study made up for it.