Went out with Sergio, Alut, and Joe to tack down the illustrious Jabba–Jabba the monitor lizard, that is. We went out on a palm oil plantation where he was last seen and began to track his radio collar. After some time we narrowed his locationdown to a series of shallow tunnels. Alut and Sergio worked to coax him out, and with a bit of work, he came to the exit of one tunnel, just to run into the next. Again, we tried to bring him to the surface, and finally, he ran out and Sergio nabbed him like a well-practiced dog catcher. Jabba is quite massive, weighing in at 12 kilograms and over 250 cm long.

We removed his tracking collar, noted areas where it appeared to rub his skin (as to improve next time), took a blood sample, and removed a small number of ticks from hm, to which I believe he game us a silent “terima kasih,” or “thank you” in English.

When we let him go, he allowed us to take some good photos, though when we got too close, he attempted to give us lashings with his whip-like tail while growling softly. We left him shortly after to his own devices, and headed back to DG.

I’m finally going to wash my clothes proper today; for the past week, I’ve just been washing them by hand in the shower after wearing them, but that only works so well. It’ll be nice to have fresh laundry.

Since we had returned, it began raining hard from that point on. Due to the heavy rain, most activities in the forest had to be cancelled, as the chance of deadfall becomes much greater. Katey and Peter went to Batu Puteh earlier today and had returned–thankfully with rain jackets–and groceries for the coming week.