Rain pattered on the leaves above his head, and every once in a while a bigger drop struck his hard hat with a thump. The bellbird had fallen silent, but in the wet darkness crickets and glass frogs had started calling. A gigantic beetle, nearly as big as Trey’s hand, buzzed slowly past. It had two bright green lights shining like headlights from the front of its thorax. The air was growing even colder. Trey knew that temperatures here could dip into the forties at night, a far cry from the sticky heat of the lowland rain forest. Trey remembered the trails from his previous visit—he never forgot a trail he’d hiked—but, radiating out like spokes from the field station, they would have been easy enough to follow anyway. The shotgun under his arm, he searched one trail, then retraced his steps and headed down the next. When full darkness fell, he had no choice but to turn on his headlamp.
