Call of the Jaguar-Epilogue: Journey From Army Ants to Jaguars

The trip out of the Pantanal to the airport in Cuiaba (where I flew to by mistake at the beginning of the trip) took about five hours and comprised of 15 or so shaky old wooden bridges with missing planks here and there. Fortunately the rivers below were not that deep except they were occupied by masses of sunning caimans. Peter Crawshaw camped out here with George Schaller over 25 years ago to count the numerous capybaras, but we were not able to see a single one on my way out on Aug 11^th.

But I felt good. I had seen jaguars! In many ways this is a big improvement from my trip to Belize five years back. First, the only wildlife I saw in Belize was howler monkeys and ants! And Second, I had that ridiculous episode with the Millers.

My experience with army ants was rather fascinating. Due to the lack of (at least viewable) wildlife in both Chan Chich, Lamanai, and the Cockscombe (!), I took an interest in the ubiquitous leaf cutting ants while in Belize. At every sunset, these tiny ants would start moving along the forest paths. They go up century old trees, cut a tiny piece of leaf and then carry them down the trees and walk hundreds of meters to their nest to grow fungus to produce food. They form green moving highways. I saw on a number of occasions, when a piece of leaf was too heavy so the carrrier ant had trouble erecting it, other ants would come to its rescue by helping pushing the leaf upright so the carrier ant could continue its journey. Such was the cooperation of the ants and no wonder they were able to build palaces that are comparable in size to what humans build. As Chairman Mao used to say: “To unite is power”.

After Stuart left early I remained in Belize hoping for my ever more remote Jaguar encounters. When that hope looked too dim, I decided to pursue my other interests –ancient Mayan cities. Tikal lied just across the border from the Lamanai Outpost lodge where I stayed, so I decided to visit the largest Mayan Ruined cities in Tikal of Guatemala.

The night before I went, I discovered a book in the Dining area of the lodge, called the “The world of Ants” by French Entomologist Remy Chauvin. I was immediately absorbed by such words: “An entomologist is not inevitably the harmless eccentric found in the school prize books of my childhood, with long hair, clothes flying and a big hat with a few butterflies or beetles pinned to it; often he was pictured contemplating rather abstractedly through a magnifying glass some minute insect, at the base of a flower corolla. Around this picture would be set the famous dictum: nature is most to be admired in the smallest…).” I delved into it until the generator at the lodge turned off and I retreated to my oil-lamp-lit hut.

I was fascinated by this book and started to understand the ubiquitous leaf-cutters that I had been observing every day. I fell asleep contently, looking forward to getting up at 6.30am next morning for Tikal. I was woken up by some intense itching, and started scratching my skin. Mosquitos must have been attacking me but I was impressed by how they managed to reach nearly all parts of my body under the blanket! I used the opportunity to go to the bathroom and it was 4.30am. While I was sitting on the toilet, with the dim light from the oil lamp, I raised my head and got a fright! I saw the entire bathroom wall covered with ants!

For the rest of the two hours, I wrapped myself up in the sheet and lied still till the wake-up call rang. I got ready very quickly and checked the bathroom again –the ants were mostly gone with the exception of a few. I met up with my driver/guide at the reception. I told him about the ants and the mosquito bites. He looked alarmed: “These must have been army ants! And you were on their way!”

I counted 168 ant bites. The ants apparently inject a kind of acid into anything they come across which cause the itching that I experienced. The itch took quite a few months to ease away but the marks from the bites did not completely disappear until over a year later. The long lasting memories of these bites served as a reminder for me to find this book by Mr. Chauvin urgently as soon as I got back to London. I searched it on Amazon.com and was thankfully rewarded with the only copy (used) there was to find! Despite that the site said that this fascinating and humorously written book published in 1970, was going to be republished, it never happened, to my great disappointment.

Army ants, or military ants, are remarkable creatures. I now often have visions of the ant queen wrapped up inside a big ant ball rolling forward, ready to devour anything they could tackle on their way –other insects, rodents and even piglets! Fortunately or unfortunately, I never encountered them again in my later visits to wildlife reserves, not even during this trip to the Pantanal.

But hats off to Mr. Chauvin! Because of you, I have gained so much respect for the ants and their world. I often wonder how much of our netherworld belongs to ants of various kinds…

Still, I am more pleased that five years later, instead of leaf-cutters or army ants, I saw jaguars –what beauty and power! If I did not see any jaguars with the ultimate jaguar biologist this time, how and where else would I ever see them?

I can’t thank Peter enough for his organization and time. And I promise to return.

As soon as the cell phone signal was back, I was also pleasantly surprised to discover that my poor husband had been waiting for me in Buenos Aires! Off we went to see the Tangos!

(Afterwords: BA flight back to London was cancelled on our way back from Buenos Aires, so we had to go through New York with American Airlines. 36 hours later we were back.)

POP GREEN AND LONDON UNDERGROUND

Being Green is now POP. The ex-future president Al Gore has added allure to this otherwise often sniffed-at cause, previously championed mostly by bearded environmentalists. The likes of Zac Goldsmith has brought even more glamour to being green and everyone is seemingly jumping on the bandwagon. Or at least in appearance.

This makes a veteran Green freak such as myself rather more proud. I was green since I was a teenager, many years ago, way before the word Green existed in its current meaning. I understood intensely the problems of overpopulation in China since I was in high school, when China started applying the one child policy. I vowed to never contribute to this overpopulation mess by having children of my own unless I must do, for the love of a man. I strongly believed and still believe now that China would never be a match to the other great industrial and developed powers of the world unless its population size is dramatically reduced -where on earth would China be able to find all the natural resources needed to sustain the appetite of a huge population of 1.4 billion with the same standard of living as that of Europe, even less the US???!!! It is scary for me to even imagine that day coming, with several hundred million cars that go around in circles in a great number of densely populated cities in China. To be frank, the China I grew up in under Mao was far far less polluted than now-we used to see beautiful blue autumn skies. With China’s modernization came industrialization, whose inseperable twins are pollution and resource depletion. I dread to go to my home town Beijing now as the air is foul and blue skies have altogether disappeared. The Chinese government is trying to clean up and doing everything they can, but with 1.4 billion people on the road to modernization and westernization, what can you do????

I have chosen to live in the great city of London, where there are at least some control on carbon emissions. We do not even own a car here. I love the London underground despite its exuberant fees which the next mayor should cut by at least half to encourage more use of public transport. One can have a glimpse of Londoner’s life through the underground and feel in touch with reality. Just yesterday, there was an announcement in the London Underground, as quoted in the free Lite newspaper, to this effect: “If you see a German standing and if you have a free seat next to you, do not offer it to him. Take it yourself”. This is London! One can not- not love it!

Despite my happy sacrifice of personal conveniences for the health of the planet, I am not sure that the whole issue of Green awareness is getting anywhere in terms of action. Of course Al Gore’s Live Earth Concerts attracted a lot of folks and raised quite a bit of money. But where is the action in the daily life of 6 billion homo sapiens, growing fourfold since 1900 and to reach 9.2 (to be conservative) billion by 2050!

I can’t say for the British, the Europeans or the South Africans. But I can say that every Chinese is acutely aware of the problem of overpopulation and pollution in China. Yet, how many are willing to forego the pleasure of proudly owning a brand new car which shows off one’s hard earned social status that comes with the acquisition of the vehicle?? The car manufacturers are certainly not there to discourage folks from buying any for the sake of the Chinese environment?! Not a Japanese carmaker, not an American Carmaker and not even an European car maker! And even less a Chinese carmaker who is on the race to become the cheapest and most profitable carmaker in one of the largest markets in the world!

Pity those last primal forests around the world- they will be made into quality tables, beds and shelves to adorn the houses of the newly rich Chinese and Indians. Yes there is illegal trafficking. But government policy is one thing and law enforcement is yet another. And the health of the planet is still very very far from the agenda of world leaders judging from both points.

Even with government policy, how do you police six billion people (and increasing exponentially)? And on a personal level, why should someone like myself continue to care when other homo sapiens who have offsprings do not?!

And even the most benign intentioned green person such as myself has her dalliances. Yes I do not own a car in London, but I take the planes a lot. I hate planes still I like to be in interesting places, particularly where there are ancient civilizations and big wild cats. I am more than happy to forego the process of taking those dreadful flights-if you can tell me how.

In the meantime, I continue to take my London Underground.

BUENOS AIRES STYLE AND BEAUTY

I can not get style sense out of my life. Some find it interesting; some find it incomprehensible and yet others find it contradictory. For a woman who spends a large part of her present life in a remote area of South Africa, and living among tigers & African wildlife there, the image one most likely conjures of me is someone with plain t-shirts, sneakers and unkempt hair. Interestingly, I was mostly in that gear when I first started working in the fashion business in Italy, right after business school in the US.

I always loved fashion, or rather, style and beauty. Cats and many animals are beautiful and that is one of the reasons I love cats. In the period when China was most boring in terms of style, I used to sew and later design my own clothes when everyone else was still wearing blue and green Mao uniforms. I even got bashed in university for wearing something too “risqué”. I tried to enrol in fashion school after I moved to Europe but was found to have no great talent in this field. Therefore I decided to pursue fashion from business perspective after a MBA degree.

One of the leftover style sense from business school at Wharton was T-shirts and sneakers. But not all T-shirts are the same and not sneakers are the same. However, after I was asked a few times if I was a student by kind and often doting Italians, I decided to invest in a totally different wardrobe to match my newly acquired position as Licensing Manager of Fila Sports. The transformation made all my Italian friends proud and I indeed blended into Italian society very quickly, with my honey brown sheep skin coat, and fine wool Etro scarf, etc.

I found Italian fashion beautiful and classy, one of the reasons I wanted to work in Italy and in Italian fashion. Italians are stylish, almost all of them are. Italians proudly told me: “We (Italians) are all artists!” and I agree with them. There is intrinsic style in the everyday life of every Italian, and they do not follow fashion. But after spending some time there, I started to notice something similar between the Italians and the Chinese, not least in their personality and cultures, but also in style. Granted the Italians are artists and have great sense of style but I had a hard time telling them apart from their back. They all loved the English country style- Barbour coat is a prized item. They loved a good pair of Levis too. In the end, I could conjure up the stylish but typical Italian look much in the same way as I could conjure up a typical but unstylish Chinese look from before the 1990s.

London was therefore an eye opener in the true sense of fashion. One can not ignore fashion and style. Not much of a TV junkie, I can not say anything about the TV but what to buy and what to wear is almost in everyday’s and every paper and magazine. The iconic Kate Moss, born in the year of the Tiger much to my delight, is followed intensely by women of all ages. So is Vicky Pollard. London is indeed the centre of fashion and style, and in fact, individuality. I rather admire the girls bearing their long legs in the starkest rainy winter day, wearing the smallest mini one can find.

But it is in Buenos Aires, I find style, beauty and creativity. The majestic palatial buildings from a bygone age of prosperity often evokes in me a great sense of pity and longing-I wondered what was the root cause for its decline. The inimitable Tango only deepens that sense due to its sensual beauty yet dignity and grace. And the fashion designs! They are just unmatched. The items (clothing, jewelry, décor items etc. ) are often beautifully crafted, yet simple and creative, which evokes an long Italian tradition. Despite my life at a wildlife reserve, Buenos Aires and its designs are just something I can not bypass. Fortunately (or unfortunately), the pesos have been devaluated so shopping in BA continues to be a pleasure this August.

This is one of the few small luxuries I still keep, since I started the Chinese Tiger Reintroduction project which has practically consumed my whole life. Since I spend a lot of time at Laohu Valley Reserve in South Africa, so as to not let those beautiful pieces go waste, I now dress up for TigerWoods, Madonna, Cathay and 327 every day! These beauties surely appreciate the Buenos Aires Style since 327 and Cathay had a good Tango lately!