34 Encounters with an ex-boat captain
Not surprisingly, most of my memorable encounters have been with academics. However, some were with others. One was Frank Slaughter, whom I met briefly in the Caribbean.
During my first summer at Harvard (1971), I joined Ernest Williams (my advisor) and two grad students (Preston Webster, Joan Roughgarden) on a trip to the Caribbean. This was my first introduction to the amazing Anolis lizards (Losos, 2011). We visited the Dominican Republic, Guadeloupe (magnificent), Puerto Rico, and Culebra – discovered by Columbus – a small island off the east coast of Puerto Rico.
Culebra was on specifically our itinerary so we could look for Anolis roosevelti, which is one of the largest species in the genus and is called a “giant anole.” [Note: its body length is only about 160 mm (6 1/2”).]
Unfortunately, the U.S. Navy started using Culebra as a target for bombing practice just before the outbreak of World War II. These anoles had not been seen since 1932, but Williams wanted to look for the beast, even though it had probably been blown to extinction.
We arrived in the tiny town of Culebra Pueblo in the late afternoon. The only hotel was full, but we found a small rental unit managed by Frank Slaughter. Frank was colorful. Previously he had been a boat captain and had ferried Richard Levins and Harold Heatwole while they were doing biological surveys on small islands near Puerto Rico.
Slaughter had a way with words. He referred to Levins as a “strange duck” and continued:
“When I was in high school, people were counting the number of hairs on the assholes of fruit flies. And now here was Richard Levins, a grown man, still counting the hairs on the assholes of fruit flies.”
Given that Levins was one of the premier evolutionary theorists of his era, we howled.
Williams asked Slaughter whether he had seen any big green lizards on Culebra. Slaughter replied,
“How big is big? Do you have to reach up to milk it?”
Williams (who was usually formal, and especially so with strangers) was speechless. The rest of us had suppress laughter. All things are relative (including the sizes of lizard), but some are more relative than others.