A visit from the Malmokkie

Spider Water in the Desert

This morning when I woke up, the world was white. Snow white, except it wasn't snow. It was a sort of a floating mist coming in from the sea. Now, I'm not a barking kind of dog, but somehow I felt like barking at this mist. It's a funny thing. The sound sort of just dies in front of your nose. 

I've heard from somewhere that this mist is called the malmokkie. Now I am a specialist dog on fauna and flora and not a weather dog, so I stand to be corrected. Please, if someone knows more about whether this weather phenomenon is called the malmokkie or not, please let us know.

What I do know is that this apparent malmokkie is the reason why the vegetation and wildlife flourish in this desert. The mist wets the plants and also condensates on spider webs, forming lots of tots for the spider and other passersby. 

Be that as it may, I am glad I don't have to lick spider webs to survive and after breakfast (thanks yet again to Elmarie and team) I hopped on the Hilux of a very interesting man. Interesting but strange; he makes a living out of snakes, other reptiles and amphibians. Yes, you've guessed it. Marius Burger he calls himself, but I call him the Snakeman. 

Snakeman is with us to help with DNA barcoding on specimens in his field of expertise. All you need is a tiny tip of a snake's tail and you can barcode him. Now you just have to catch the snake to get a tip of its tail. 

So we set out to find the perfect spot to set a trap. It works a lot like big game capturing, just on a smaller scale. First you dig a hole. Apparently that is a thing that dogs do, so I did that. Then you plant a bucket in the hole. Hmmm, that sounds like a song. Oh no, wait, the song is the other way round: There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza..." 

From this bucket you picket a stretch of damp course in one direction, then two more, each at a 45 degree angle to form a Y. At the end of each stretch comes another bucket to serve as a pit. Along the picketed damp course you randomly install funnels as well. So the snake comes sailing along until it hits the wall... or rather the damp course. Then it slithers up or down against it, either entrapping itself in one of the funnels or falling into a pit at the end of the line. Apart from snakes, you can trap anything from lizards to field mice to centipedes as well. But hey, that's great; the aim of iBOL is to barcode all forms of life on earth, so we'll do them all. 

And now the traps are set and the sun is setting. I can't wait to see what we're going to get. But to know what the score is, we'll have to wait 'til morning. Talking about score, these scientists are better than the Proteas in a 20Twenty game. They tallied up another 142 species today, bringing the total to 639 for the trip. Side bets please on the total.

I'm confident that we'll break all records here. I'm also confident that we'll change the words of the song tomorrow: There's a snake in the bucket, dear Liza, Liza...

And that's Buddy tuning out until tomorrow. Don't forget to listen to all our doings on RSG at 7.45.