My attraction to Costa Rica is linked to its people, landscape and culture, but being a guy with a lifelong passion for wildlife, the wild creatures that call this wonderful little country home are my main reason for living here.
In an attempt to discover everything that I can about Costa Rica’s wildlife and share that information with anyone who is interested, I started Guanacaste Wildlife Monitoring, an organization based on monitoring wildlife with camera traps. As part of my work, I often find myself in far-flung corners of Costa Rica’s wildest places.
In those places I have the opportunity to work with machete-wielding, outdoor-working, nature-loving Ticos. Sometimes when I hop out of the truck and walk up with my backpack full of camera traps, I can see the ‘Oh God I’m not going to be able to understand this Gringo’ look in their eye. For the most part I can use my intermediate Spanish and our common interest in nature to bridge the gap, and we can all work together and even become friends.
Recently, I started a camera trap project in a refuge in one Costa Rica’s conservation areas, which is staffed with park rangers in a department called SINAC. These hardworking folks live onsite for many days in a row, working, eating, sleeping, and living together in a handful of little offices and buildings.
Needless to say, these people know each other well, having to spend every minute together for long stretches of time. So when I showed up to this project with a big smile and a mess of camera traps, it’s like I’m walking into a club that I’m not a member of. As expected, I could see that ‘Oh boy what does this guy want’ kind of look on their faces. But I was determined to fit in with the crowd using my gusto for nature and a lot of hard work.
After some quick introductions, three of us hopped on quads and started driving out onto the forested trails to find good locations for the camera traps and complete a tree survey that they had been working on. Everything was going smoothly for the first hour or so. I was enjoying traveling around the forest.
One of the SINAC guys was very knowledgeable about trees, so I was learning a lot. Everything was great. Then, as we were walking away from the quads to investigate a particular tree, we walked by an arboreal termite mound that had fallen out of the tree and was laying on the forest floor.
As I looked at the termite mound laying in front of me, my brain said ‘Stomp on that.’ I don’t know what the reason was. Stomping on it had no scientific purpose. I think it’s probably the same reason that if I’m standing on a rocky beach or riverbank, I’m 100% going to throw a rock into the water. I think ten-year-old me must still be hiding inside me somewhere.
Whatever the reason, I gave in to the impulse and stomped down hard on the termite mound. Immediately, a black cloud of wasps exploded from the mound and started aggressively stinging me. They stung my face. They stung my arms. They were even able to get me through my shirt. In response, I pulled the old run-away-yelling-while-swinging-your-hat-over-your-head maneuver.
I ran several meters through the brush until I reached my SINAC companion who was busy writing some information about the interesting tree on his clipboard.
He said “What are you doing?”
I said “Wasps are stinging me!”
He said “They’re only stinging you.”
I said “I kicked a … thing!” (While being stung, my Spanish often regresses and couldn’t remember the word for termite mound.)
As I’m being stung and aggressively slapping at myself with my hat, he calmly walks over and starts picking off the ones that were clinging to my shirt and pants. With a bit of a smile he informed me that they were called congos and that they were biting me, not stinging me.
After getting all of the little biters off of me, we took a wide loop away from the bomb I had set off and made it back to the quads. At that point we all had a good laugh at my expense and continued on about our business.
About three hours of jungle-touring later we were driving on a trail where there was one of the biggest termite mounds I had ever seen clinging to some vines next to the trail. The lead quad, with my wasp buddy driving it, slowed to stop next to the termite mound, looked back at me and with the noise of the quad’s engines too loud to talk, pointed at me, pointed at the termite mound and did a headshaking don’t-kick-that motion, laughed and zoomed off.
At that moment I realized I had probably earned some version of the nickname ‘the guy who kicked the wasp nest’ to an entire office of SINAC guys.
About the Author
Vincent Losasso, founder of Guanacaste Wildlife Monitoring, is a biologist who works with camera traps throughout Costa Rica. Learn more about his projects on facebook or instagram. You can also email him at: vincent@guanacastewildlifemonitoring.com
