June 9th, 2009
Gigi and I woke up around 5am to the sound of a park ranger car approaching which was not good sign. This meant that no bear came to the trapping site and I failed at my opportunity to help trap a bear. Gigi had to leave for an hour to disassemble the trap with a few of the park rangers so I stayed in the van and slept for another hour. It was freezing cold but my North Face sleeping bag did its job well. Upon returning, Gigi , told me that they thought a bear had come to the trapping site since all the apples but the apples in the crate attached to the string that triggers the trap were eaten. I was pissed. I apparently have very bad luck with bears! Go figure!
After the trap had been disassembled Gigi and I started back to Viletta Barrea. Before we returned however, we stopped in at Dr. Palo’s house to let him know how the trapping went. He was disappointed about the bear but found the situation very interesting since the bear must have found the crate very suspicious in order to just leave the 20 or so apples untouched. After talking to him for awhile and confirming that we would meet up with him in an hour to look over a trapping site in the south part of the park, we returned home to Villetta Barrea to shower, eat, and change before going back out in the field.
We ended up meeting Dr. Paolo near the bar in Villetta Barrea and took his truck to the trapping site. I was surprised at how energetic I was after such a long night. At the site Dr. Palo and Gigi showed me the new type of bear trap they are using called a tube trap that was made by Abruzzo National Park’s Forest Service. It was like a large pill shaped capsule with one barred window in the back. The door was left open and a big plastic crate filled with apples hung in the back of the trap so that when the bear tugged on the crate the string would trigger the door to shut and the bear would be trapped inside. The door shutting would then trigger the alarm that would signal the radio and the person monitoring the trapping site. Part of the reason they were now using a tube trap instead of a snare was the fact that Claudio, has been caught about 3 times in the past month/two months. This means he has been drugged 3 times in a very short period which is the highest limit he can take without it causing damage to his body. Therefore, instead of snares they must use a tube trap so they do not have to necessarily drug the bear they just have to open the door and let it exit on its own. They also spread many apples around and throughout the tube trap to attract the bear inside. It was very interesting to learn about.
After checking and baiting the trapping site (we did not activate it though) we started heading back to Villetta Barrea. On the way back we saw Davide and one of the project’s cars pulled on the side of the road so we went to investigate what was going on. It ended up being that Davide, Lorenza, and Giovanni had stumbled upon a wolf carcass that was probably a few months old. It still stank however which was not pleasant. It was cool to see a wolf, however, since it is just about impossible to see them here in Abruzzo in the wild.
Back in Villetta Barrea we all ended up having a big lunch of pasta. Then Palo left and I finally got the opportunity to make my almond and ricotta cheese cookies. This made me very happy since I had not realized how much I missed cooking/baking. After the cookies I did my laundry and waited for everyone to come back for dinner. Our dinner consisted of spaghetti with a ham and cream sauce. It was very good! For dessert everyone had some ricotta cheese cookies which I think everyone enjoyed although it might have been a bit too strong for them since Italians I have learned do not use a lot of flavoring extracts in their baking.
2 years ago