Emeterio

Nickname: Ñahui. (Pronounced “Nyawi.” The Quechua word for “eyes.”) He acquired it because once, when he was drunk, he requested that they play a Quechua song called “Ñahui” over and over again.
Age: 50
(Portrait by Gabe.)

Ñahui is the caretaker of Oso, our Short-Eared Dog. Oso was confiscated as a puppy from a local’s illegal collection of wild animals. Short-eared dogs are a very rare species, so the chance to see and study one at CICRA is an amazing opportunity. Ñahui loves Oso like a four-legged child. At several dinners, I’ve caught him covertly rolling up half of his own portion of meat in a napkin as a treat for Oso.

Emeterio is forever young and he dances until the bitter end of every fiesta he comes to, outlasting many a younger reveler. He is also always willing to help out in any way he can. On various occasions, he has carried gas tanks and suitcases up CICRA’s 250 stairs for me (against my protests), and he recently hiked all the way out to my experimental site to help me clear a treefall with our machetes… a task that certainly was NOT in his job description as a mammal researcher.

When he was younger, Emeterio used to be an illegal logger and he can tell amazing stories about it. Once he and three friends went out into the rainforest for a four-month logging run. They were often very hungry and low on food; they ran across an (empty) encampment of an uncontacted tribe; once they slept on a beach and saw jaguars pace past during the night. At the end of their trip they floated their logs all the way down the river to Puerto Maldonado, but when they arrived, officials confiscated all of their wood because it was illegally harvested. He says larger-scale illegal operations get away with it all the time by bribing the authorities, but he and his friends were poor and therefore lost all of their four-months' work.

Random fact: Emeterio is now playing for the opposite team. Not only is he working to conserve rainforest mammals, but he also travels in his boat to local communities to try and persuade the miners to stop using mercury to extract their gold. (I think he’s paying for that work out of his own pocket.)