Bobby Bok wrote:Don't make it any worse than it already is!
OK, but you have also done feats that happened just to you, and noone else... Remember, a few years ago Jeroen
and you were given precise instructions regarding our best (that is, the most easily accessible)
V. ursinii site, you
arrived there too late in the afternoon, it was just before sunset, and you decided to just take a very short walk, with
no real chances of finding anything at all, just to see how the site looks like... After a few hundred meters you ended
up with an
ursinii in your hand, at sunset... (Beautiful pictures of a happy man B. B. taken by Jeroen...) Well, none
of us (in Croatia) has ever found an
ursinii at a time like that, having walked some mere 300 meters in semi-darkness,
expecting nothing at all... Probably noone else has, anywhere.
Moreover, your find was the first one at such a low altitude (at cca. 1100 m a.s.l.) on this mountain, and it actually
prompted us to (finally!) start searching that low, and even lower... And yes, they do go as low as 950 m a.s.l.
And all that owing just to Jeroen & you having come there hopelessly too late and your hellish personal luck.
(In a scienfic paper, this would be an official acknowledgment, at least... Here it's just a reminder that you're not
saddled with bad luck...)
As another attempt of consolation, could you (or anyone) believe that I've never found a
Zamenis situla, in nature,
and alive? (Only DOR...) And I've never caught a
Platyceps najadum, and have seen only one... And I happen to live
in the Balkans... (Well, actually & formally (scientifically), in Central Europe, some 40 km to the north of the "official"
northern boundary of the Balkan peninsula, as defined by geographers & al., but that's it... no escape, no excuse...)
Seems we all have our (individual/personal) crosses to bear, my friend...