Three cats in three days

It all started on the 22nd, as I walked out to listen to our trap-transmitters I suddenly felt that someone was watching me (you know this weird feeling one can get sometimes), I looked up and saw the eye reflections of a big animal about 30 meters away. It hunched down as my headlight hit it, I pulled out my Maglite and when the beam hit it , the animal fled. Hard to be 100 % certain in the dark but it did look like a leopard. Weird how small one feels in the dark when there is a large cat sitting at your usual “trap checking spot”. I tried to push it towards the traps… no luck though…

The night after a double trap (two snares at the same trap site) was tripped, both of the snares… It is a great trap site (so good that Guy picked it when we had a bet of which trap would catch the first cat) so I kind of knew what was waiting for me. Too bad that Guy and Nadia had just left and that my Swedish friends hadn’t arrived yet. All alone, pitch black and 16 degrees C below… My heart was as heavy as my load as I climbed the canyon with two backpacks and the hands full of equipment. 

I cursed myself a couple of times for not marking the trap site better when I remembered that it was on the other side of a little ledge, I would literally not see the leopard until he would be within “striking distance” if I stuck to the trail. Well, I left the trail and soon saw the eyes reflecting my headlamp. Don’t know if snow leopards are bolder in the dark, or maybe it was because I was alone but this guy refused to show me his rear end. All darters likes rear ends so I was a little disappointed, instead he barred his teeth and looked quite angry… In the end I got a chance and the dart hit his hind leg. The capture went OK, I skipped some of the samples and measurements and focused on the cats safety. After a little less than an hour he left the site. The cat will likely be named Tsagaan (it means “white” in Mongolian). The day after, Tsagaan Sar (the white month) begun (which is the biggest Mongolian holiday). Further, the cat looked white in the LED light from my head lamp and my nose was a little pale of the thought of darting and collaring him alone in the dark.

On the evening of the third day (the 24th), Jenny and Geir Rune arrived in camp. They had not been here for more than two hours before a snow leopard begun screaming mating calls in the mountain behind camp. The cat came closer and closer and in the end, the valley echoed with the screams. We went out and I could see eyes reflecting my torch (for the third time in three days). Pretty thrilling moment and I think you can understand how the Swedes (or the Swede and the Norwegian to be picky) felt. To make matters even more interesting, we could follow the screams as the cat crossed the South valley, heading south west. I pulled out a map of the traps and showed the others, saying that he is on his way to two of our traps. Twenty minutes later we listened to the transmitters and the closest to where the cat was heading was tripped. 

This felt a bit too much really. Jenny and Geir had been here for maybe three hours now and we had already caught a snow leopard? It wasn’t hard to understand how the talk would go back home “no, trapping snow leopards is a child’s game, don’t know what Orjan is doing out there really… But he drinks a LOT of tea…” 

We packed up and headed for the trap. Something had stepped in it (and made a new scrape nearby) but there was no leopard to be found. Think that he stepped on the cable and therefore wasn’t caught.

We checked the transmitters when we came back and one was silent. I took the bike to check it ( I know what I wrote a week ago but there wasn’t much to choose from, besides I wasn’t alone now). Looks like an animal has played with the antenna and transmitter and finally bit off the cord…

Wasn’t back in camp until two and the day after was Tsagaan Sar so we visited MIdgi and Oyuna for a great dinner (and re-set two traps). We fixed the two last traps today, now we are running on full capacity again (12 snares) and in 8 days we will catch next cat (statistically…)

Feels good to be back on track.

Alone

Guy and Nadia left camp two days ago and since then I have been here alone. Nadia is always fun to have around and Guy is a really nice chap and we have had some great days why it feels even more alone when everyone leaves. Also, I guess that when I write alone, I really mean alone. There aren’t many people at all here and probably no one that I can speak to within a few hundred km… Oh well, in a way it’s good to have some days by myself. I have time to organize and clean up the camp. And myself. 

I was a little worried when I heard that Guy was here. The climate in the Gobi differs a bit from the African but he has managed the cold very well. I think that he found it a bit exotic, especially the morning we woke up and it was seven degrees below zero inside the ger. It is a little exotic to have a 1 cm thick ice layer in the tea kettle in the morning, even for me…

It’s been cold a couple of days but mainly it’s the wind that is worst, I was almost blown over as I came up in a saddle. That day the thermometer said 18 Celsius below but if you take the wind chill in account I reckon that the actual temperature would be somewhere 40-50 degrees below. 

As I hiked up the little hill to listen to the traps last night (at ten in the evening) I suddenly felt as if being watched (you know this strange feeling that you are not alone). I looked up and about 40 m away my headlight reflected into a pair of big eyes. The animal immediately crutched down, I pulled out my maglite and pointed it towards the animal at which it fled. Hard to say for sure but it did look like a leopard to me. The animal came down a little gulley that looks like a good leopard trail. I tried to push it towards our traps but no luck…

We picked up a proper dirt bike (motocross) in UB before we left and it is a joy to ride it! I have been scouting some new areas for trapping and two days ago one of our traps sounded strange. It was more like a double beep than a fast pulse but I had to check and decided to take the bike. This proved to be one of my “not-so-good-ideas” because it got dark before I got there. Man, if it’s hard to ride on the trails in daylight that is nothing compared with night time. The headlight just bounces up and down and it is really hard to see rocks (or the trail for that matter). I realized that a fall would not only mean problems for me but in case there was an animal in the trap, the poor thing might be there for a while in case I crashed. Another point on the list of do’s and don’ts in the Gobi: no more nighttime trap checks by bike when I am alone. 

I drove the bike to Gurvantes today and met Midgi there, think I looked like something from Star Wars with ski googles, face mask, gauntlets, knee protection for the cold etc… Midgi left for Dalandzadgad to pick up Jenny and Geir-Rune, two of my friends and colleagues from Grimso. Both are PhD students, studying lynx and wolverines. They will stay here for about three weeks. I didn’t have any cash in camp so I had to go to the bank and collect some so that Midgi will be able to buy enough fuel for the trip. 

I have a feeling that we will catch a cat on the 27th. We’ll see…

I take it all back

I admit it, I was wrong – Mongolian winters are cold. 

Yesterday a storm blew up and before we went to bed we tied our ger down with some extra weights. Still the wind managed to blow the cold straight into the ger and four times the last night we had to go up to put in more coal and wood into the stove. This morning, one of our traps were on fast pulse and Guy volunteered to check it out. We all thought that something had blown into the trap and that it would be a false alarm but Guy soon came back saying that we had a snow leopard in the trap!

We quickly cleared the table from the breakfast and brought out the drugs instead to load a couple of darts. After dressing up like proper polar researchers we hiked to the trap.

History repeats itself, the trap is close to camp and we caught Aztai in it, just after building it. He seemed to be in good condition, lying snuggled up against a sunny cliff. As I walked up to dart him, he gave me “the evil eye” but nothing more. Our hands seized to work after one or two minutes outside of the gauntlets so we decided to just give him the antidote and let him go. The antidote actually froze as I pulled it into the syringe, despite both Guy and I trying to keep it warm.  

While we waited for Aztai to wake up, we put him in a sleeping bag with a warm water bottle to keep him warm (the drugs lower the heart rate so that the animals may go hypothermic if they aren’t kept warm). Guy used the warm water bottle to thaw out his feet in his sleeping bag when we came back to camp and he says that it works very well. So well that he refuse to give it back now…

To be honest, the cat probably had a much better time when we, embedded in the sleeping bag with a warm water bottle while we were freezing in the wind. He stayed in the sleeping bag for a while after he woke up, seemingly reluctant to leave it but when he left, he seemed to be in good shape. We have some great pictures of him in the  sleeping bag that I hope that Nadia or Guy can post in a little while.

Too bad really that it was Aztai, we have photographed him five times since November compared to 18 for Bummer and three for Superman but I guess that’s the way it is.

I think that the temperature this morning, after being corrected for the wind-chill, must have been around 30 to 40 below zero. We were all pretty cold when we came back to camp but Guy had a smile on his face the whole time it took to thaw him out…

In camp

Home again. It felt like that as I entered the ger, to come home. I would lie if I said that I didn’t have mixed feelings about going back to camp. When I came back to UB and later Sweden it was quite hard to adapt and in a way I longed back to camp but after being home for two months, the thought of eating the same food, not be able to shower and be so far away from everyone felt heavy on my heart. But once here, it feels great to be back and to start up the work again.

I have prepared for an arctic winter, with temperatures averaging 20-30 degrees Celsius below zero (that means COLD for you guys that are used to Fahrenheit) but so far, the Mongolian winter doesn’t seem too frightening. Daytime temperature has been above zero a couple of times. Though, as soon as the sun sets the temperature drops ten degrees instantly. Don’t want to get lost without extra clothes in the backpack here… 

Good thing that I have extra clothes. Unless it gets colder (and I suppose that it might rapidly), I will not use half of the equipment that I brought. Just because I wrote this, I bet that temperatures will drop and I will die in hypothermia… 

Nadia and I have installed ourselves in the Trap camp. When I came to the Gobi, we had three gers. Now, we are living in one small (the one we used

for kitchen earlier), it is packed with things and I think that it’s safe to say that the expression “compact living” has got a new meaning…

We have also collected our trap cameras. We’ve had a few mishaps but in all, eight cameras has been visited by snow leopards 24 times. Bummer has been photographed 17 times, if we don’t catch him soon I will rename him “Major Bummer”. We’ve also taken pictures of a new cat that has an “S”-shaped spot. Therefore, we have baptized it to “Superman”. 

Guy will arrive tomorrow evening and after that, we will be busy deciding trap sites, putting out trap-transmitters to make sure we can hear the traps and then – Build traps!