Jim's Blog
Close Calls in Paraguay
First of all a message to Mrs. Gibson down in New Zealand, just want to let you know that your son, Matt, is in love with a Paraguayan gal by the name of Cybil. He's absolutely fine, don't be surprised if he moves to Paraguay ... just joking, about the part about moving to Paraguay.
This morning we sat on stand, nothing came in at all, it was really, really windy, about 40 mile per hour winds, big dust storm coming from the north bringing hot dry weather so we left the stand at 8:30 this morning came across huge jaguar tracks fresh from on top of our tracks going in to our stand at 6 in the morning. This is the jaguar we've been waiting and looking for, but, unfortunately, Rocky flew yesterday to a ranch where a jaguar had killed a goat and he's gone with the dogs and Corey and everybody ... so they were gone this morning when this jaguar showed up. We would have had him so quickly ...
We tried to get hold of Rocky to come back, but 8 -our drive, 1-hour flight and when we finally got hold of him at noon it was too late. We are now back hunting again. We saw two Brocket deer this evening, one female and one male. I'm totally eaten by ticks.
I've seen a lot of camen; tons and tons of camen everywhere, and we also saw a big capybara, but I didn't take the shot because it was 30 yards, but it was rear-end toward me. It was a great big male. Tomorrow morning we're going to go out on horseback into some real swampy areas, there are some white-lipped peccary and collared peccary there, and Matt and I are going out in a canoe on a river just him and I trying to get camen and capybara, so that is going to be fantastic. The birds around here are amazing. It's just spectacular country, beautiful.
The report on Len today is that he is not getting any better. They're doing another test on him, but if they can't find something they can deal ... we've still got our fingers crossed, but we're sure worried for him. Yesterday he was lucid there for a bit, and he said everything was perfect for him. So, he's just a man right to the very end. Hopefully it's not the very end for him.
The Next Day
Called home tonight. Len last night they were talking about the last few days of his life and thinking about changing wards for him. Then this morning he was sitting up and his eyes were bright and his color was back suddenly there is hope again. It's just a total roller coaster ride. We're just happy to get every extra day ... that was as of this morning. We are all hoping for him.
Hunting, I got a nandu ... we went out on horseback all morning looking for peccary and Brocket deer didn't see a thing, but went through some amazing swamps on horses. Really cool, wading through the swamps on these horses in the jungle, palm trees, it was crazy beautiful.
Except about 10 billion mosquitoes, they call them quarter-liter's because a quarter of a quart is how much blood they'll take. The nandu is a bird like an ostrich ... (Editor's note: satellite reception was lost) ...
6/17/2010
