Well, the traps had to have been disturbed by people. It looks as though the ranger tried to reset them even though there was no killing agent left. Reset them, replaced a few of the parts that were irreparably damaged, but all is well. The collecting was leaps and bounds beyond what was out two weeks ago, despite the chill and the rain. The tarped light traps collected quite a few moths waiting for me to pin and spread on Monday; and scads of beetles, not quite into the hundreds of beetles phase, they will peak in June. Mostly from hand collecting, the most productive area was right along the water in a shallow back channel amidst soggy sand and organic debris. With one confident step I was up to my shin! I must remember to skirt around these areas a bit more carefully. There were hundreds of beetles running on the moist surface, treading the material only caused more to boil up to the surface. Sifting through the detritus caused even more to scatter in every direction. I needed to keep my lips pursed and armed with the aspirator to collect from the rapid eruption. This amazed me! The numbers are going to peak in June!? I can only imagine how other worldly the surface will look with such dense accumulations of beetles. We had plenty of company. This back channel was apparently the mating cauldron for hundreds, literally, of toads. The water was alive with writhing, leaping, swimming, squirming, trilling and croaking. They were not shy and they meant business. Moving from partner to partner in rapid copulation, they were so worked up that the toads were still quite noisy and boisterous mid-morning! We collected until midnight, managed to lose our trails in the flood debris and shoulder height knotweed. The island isn't that big, but it's amazing with how distracted one gets hunting a bug how off track you get without any real trails to follow; you easily lose site of where you've been and where you want to go. The knotweed grows incredibly fast and thick, in two weeks time we will need a machete to carve our way to where the traps were set. I was up with the birds, decided future sleep was impossible and just broke camp before 7am and wandered about listening to the raucous. Gah! I am not a morning person, but the air was cool and crisp, ripe with the clean green smell of all the recent rains, a light veil of fog hanging in the air. This kind of morning could transform me into a morning person. On the trip, we listened to the first 3 1/2 tapes (out of 15) of The Autobiography of Mark Twain by Charles Neider. Unabridged. And they mean unabridged. Anything included in the book is read, from the dust cover, acknowledgements, editors notes, Twains foot notes. I was laughing for almost the entire time we listened. Twain has a rather odd wry humor. An incredible perception of his own life and memories, which he openly admits in the beginning that the things he remembers most vividly tend to be things that may not have actually happened. This is another book I should buy to read at my leisure. With so much driving time between sites and the return home, a book on tape is a great way to fill the time. Another side highlight on the way home. Stopped at a frozen custard stand; I ordered the pistachio custard. Super yummy, light nutty flavor, rich creamy texture, tons of whole pistachios mixed throughout and topped with hot fudge... Oh my, this was tasty!