Hope springs eternal.....

…..when it comes to trapping mouse lemurs. I’ve been setting out the traps for the last week or so with some success. We place the traps in their designated treatment areas around dusk, so as to avoid a lot of time when non-target animals (i.e. anything other than a mouse lemur) can interfere with the trap. It’s the alluring smell of banana that brings them into the trap--mouse lemurs LOVE bananas (as do field researchers craving fruit.) Every morning around 7 am we go out and check each trap to see if it was successful. Often we have a trail of ants instead of a mouse lemur, but there are those fantastic moments of peeking into the trap door and seeing those big ears and big eyes starting out at you.

The nights have been cold and long, and the mouse lemurs are staying indoors (i.e. tree holes and nests). That’s my theory for why our capture numbers haven’t been off the charts thus far during this first week of trapping. It’s been interesting seeing where they have been—definitely more so in the pristine corners of the grid system, as would be expected. With warmer weather moving in, we’re keeping our fingers crossed for mouse lemur extravaganza.