Zotz!

In my fourth year of fieldwork at El Zotz (not to be confused with Zotz!), which means "bat" in many Mayan languages, I finally visited the bat cave after which the site was named. I'm not sure why I hadn't gone before; it's not like I have any major fears of bats or ammonia-smelling guano piles. The biologists at CECON say there are three types of bats in the cave, including vampire bats.

So we left camp under the rising moon and setting sun.
The signs were pretty clear.
There was quite the Jurassic Park approach.
The interesting thing about the cave is that it's more like a fissure, or a cenote that has since collapsed. There are some very interesting rock formations though.
To see the main attractions, one must enter the belly of the cave, which involves navigating through rocks completely covered in decomposing bat guano.
But it does afford some nice dusky views.
And, after many, many failed attempts to capture bats in flight (they are in fact much faster than one imagines), the best image is below.
The most impressive part of the journey to the bat cave was the sound that millions of bat generates: it starts like a humming and rises to the sound of a roaring ocean punctuated with staccato infrasonic squeaking. The never ending river of bats that poured out of the cracks got me to thinking: how does one bat decide to go first?

Another close encounter of the Chiroptera kind happened while drawing my final excavation for my dissertation fieldwork at the site of El Palmar. I noticed something small on the ground and asked one of my assistants what it was. "A strange-looking toad."
A baby bat! Not only was it adorable, it was clearly in daylight shock ("blind as a bat," anyone?) and had little idea what to do. I transferred it from our trusty dustpan above to a tunnel created by looters long ago and he perked up and began chirping. I trust mother bat heard his calls that evening and found him.

But what archaeologist would I be without pictures of monkeys?
Or weird bugs?
How about a little jungle escargot?
(Sidenote: Pomacea was a very popular [tasty?] genus with the ancient Maya, as well.)

But really what people want to know is how I deal with the CREEPY things. Tarantulas?
Check.

Snakes? Check.
This poor fer-de-lance wandered into the wall of our laboratory and, unfortunately, became a victim of natural selection.

Over and out!