Thursday, August 16, 2012

The jag formerly known as Pepito...


Eliana checks out our camera

It was an excessively wet day, but there was a fresh kill a couple of miles from base so Ben and I headed down to set up some Jag Cams. By the time we arrived we were soaked with both rain and sweat. The carcass was in an awkward location, there were no good trees nearby to attach the cameras to, but with Ben’s innovative thinking and machete skills we got them set up (one on a termite nest!). We headed back to base feeling positive that we would get some good shots.

Eliana feeding at the turtle kill

A few days later I headed out with Pepper to pick up the cameras.  I was very excited to find that we got some incredible photos of two jaguars, one was Molly and the other was Pepito. As we looked at the photos though we realised that something was wrong, Pepito was meant to be a male but the photos showed he was clearly lacking male parts! It became apparent that Pepito is in fact a girl. This was a very exciting discovery which led to a frantic renaming effort. We set up a list on the board so people could suggest names. We ended up with a list of names that varied from the sublime to the ridiculous, but after several tense votes and heated discussions we narrowed down to three names, Eliana, Juno and Aurora. When it came to the final vote Eliana stole it, so Pepito is now officially Eliana!

-Rachel, 6-month Intern

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