Before
coming to Palo Verde Biological Station, our last stop on our 3 month journey,
whenever we asked people how it was they would say, “It’s nice, the food is
great, but there are just lots of mosquitoes...” which was a response we would
just shrug off in the moment. It was not until we arrived in the Guanacaste
region, experiencing a complete temperature increase from the previous site of
Monteverde that I realized our last stop would be very different compared to
the previous stations. We arrived at the station just as the sun was setting
and in the distance we could see the beautiful colors of the sky as the day was
coming to an end. Once I saw this I was ecstatic because in our previous sites,
the sunset was not really visible and I had missed the hour long summer sunsets
we have in Northeastern US. When we arrived, the mosquitoes were not
particularly noticeable, which was quite odd to me recalling all the previous
comments about Palo Verde, but once we got into our rooms we were greeted by
another common resident of Palo Verde. Once we put all our stuff down and began
to settle in, my roommate noticed something crawling on her bed, thinking it
was a spider she got closer, and to her surprise it was a little scorpion. As
someone who pretty much has night terrors about bugs being in my bed, I was
unsure of how I was going to handle the next three weeks. To make the situation
even better, I then found a scorpion on my bed as well. After removing it and
attempting to calm myself down, the following night sleep was quite restless
due to my paranoia of another scorpion returning even with my bed net all
tucked in.
After that first night and realizing
everything was going to be okay, my restless nights soon became nights of deep
rest as long as I checked my bed every night. Although I still have some
apprehension about finding another Palo Verde resident in my bed, it has helped
me get over my fear of insects and other creatures that may come out in the
night. While they may be creepy and unpredictable in the night, they are not
trying to hurt anyone unless provoked and learning to live with them all around
the station has made me more appreciative of them in a way. Hopefully I will no
longer have any bad dreams involving insects or scorpions once I get back home
after those dreams becoming reality. While the scorpions were definitely
present, the mosquitoes were not as bad as I was expecting in the beginning. Besides
the scorpions and mosquitoes, Palo Verde also has a beautiful and very different
forest than those we have previously seen and of course the sunsets that light
up the marsh and sky every night. As the semester comes to an end, I am a
slightly reluctant to leave the warm, breezy days and beautiful sunsets and
have them replaced with cold and snowy days that will greet me when I return
home.
Shannon Law-Clark
Providence College
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