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Outside Magazine April 2002

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Bit (Cont.)


	The fatal Krait

IT WAS GOOD TO SEE JOE AT WORK in the country he'd described so often. He was proud of his Burmese field assistants, on permanent loan to him from Myanmar's Department of Forestry. In a country with few scientists, Joe saw these young men and women as an essential resource for the future. Species inventories are a big part of conservation, and his assistants caught, preserved, and documented specimens year-round. Joe had struggled hard over the past five years to build government contacts—research in heavily militarized Burma is no simple thing.

Returning late at night by headlamp, Joe would unload his catch of snakes and frogs and sit with whoever was still awake, usually Dong Lin and me. During those conversations I began to see the different sides of my friend. Some nights it seemed he felt invincible. Downing Burmese rum, he knew he would rise high enough in the hierarchy of science to put a stop to the "political bullshit" he saw

At 7:30 a.m., Joe lay down. At 8, his hand began to tingle, and he called the group together. The toxins would leave his system in 48 hours, he said. He'd be conscious the whole time.

all around him. Much of what he imagined seemed possible: He'd just been awarded a $2.4 million grant from the National Science Foundation, already a sponsor of his ongoing Burma research, to study biodiversity in China's Yunnan province. He confided a thousand ambitions, certain he'd realize them all.

Other times Joe raged into the night, once about another biologist working in Burma who he believed had blocked the original funding for this trip. Joe had hastily cobbled together funds from his other grants and gone anyway. His tirade explained something. I'd wondered why our expedition had come during the rainy season, when (as was evident once we started walking) we could have taken jeeps along much of the route any other time of the year. Remembering how discovery breeds rivalry and how scientists can turn research into races, I sat in a small dry spot surrounded by what seemed a world of mud, an understanding comrade to Joe's fury.

Still other nights Joe grew melancholy. For years he'd focused only on science, he said; he'd been too single-minded, traveled too much, even for love. Now, though, he'd started a relationship with an ornithologist back home. He wondered if he should devote less time to snakes.

Managing the people and logistics along with his research on this trip was clearly taking a toll. There was a lot to worry about. Among the multitudinous supplies we'd brought were drying ovens and pounds of newspaper for the plant specimens, snap traps and mist nets for the mammals and birds, gallons of alcohol to preserve reptiles and insects, a generator and its gallons of fuel to recharge batteries for cameras and computers and to run the blacklight for attracting insects. Ninety-odd porters hauled the equipment of ten academics. Many of the inevitable problems were handled by a Burmese guide, but Joe had to think about them all. In addition, he'd paid $44,000 to a well-connected expedition coordinator to cover the in-country expenses, yet somehow such basics as rice and bottled water were in astonishingly short supply, so Joe kept spending more, out of pocket. Nor was there any sign of the two military doctors and radiophone the government had promised. Joe guessed the real cost of the trip was probably a tenth of what the expedition had put down.

Then there were the scientists. Each of us wanted to work at our own pace and had our own agenda. Personalities often clash in the field, and for Joe, feeling responsible for the group's harmony must have been one more stress, along with our long daytime treks and his own additional nocturnal collecting. I noticed the accumulating effect on him during a walk on September 10, the seventh day of the trip. Joe was moving sluggishly, and each time he paused to pull a leech from his leg, his fingers were visibly shaking.

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