DIARY - VAN DEUSEN Masba Creek Camp 10 May 1964 (Sunday) Altimeter 9:00 A.M. 1890 Ft.; 9:30 P.M. 2020 Ft. Clear most of day; a little valley cloud in A.M. Temperature holding in low and middle 70's. Four Melomys came in from our new traplines set on the path to and along the small, quiet forest stream about half a mile south of camp. No bats in our 3 mist nets yet; this quite surprises me. Stan Grierson photographed the large frog and the olive python that we brought in last night. One of the men from a local village (he also helped me put up the mist net across the small stream last night) caught a Melomys by hand in the rain forest this morning and brought it to me at the skinning table. We put it in our holding cage for small mammals, and later Stan made several photographic studies. Ru Hoogland collected a wild banana today. This species splits open flower-petal fashion; it is small and large-seeded. The python measured 10 feet one inch! Davida and Tobram skinned and cleaned it for the collection this A.M. The head and the VENT areas are left intact and injected with formalin solution. I collected a mass of worms from the stomach (preserved them). Stan asked Kim to cut the skinned out body into sections and boil them for 45 minutes. Tonight we had python steaks for kai-pan fried, like fish. Python has a faint taste, like chicken, but it is tough and stringy. Ken and Stan went at it with a will! Kim, who has been with me on three expeditions, looked on with a