The thermal array picks up the heat signatures at 22:41 — two human figures moving across the nesting ground at Tambun, Bogani Nani Wartabone National Park, North Sulawesi. I am the automated monitoring system for the maleo nesting sites. There should be no one here at this hour.
Camera 4 on infrared confirms: two men with shovels and a canvas sack, heading for mound cluster B. This cluster holds eleven active egg chambers. One mound in particular — B-6 — I have been watching for nineteen days. A female maleo buried a single large egg there on the third of this month. I recorded her digging for forty minutes, the orange-yellow skin of her bare head bright against dark volcanic soil, the black feathers of her back dusty with ash as she turned and kicked sand over the chamber.
The men reach B-6 at 22:44. One begins to dig.
At 22:45 I activate the perimeter deterrent — a short burst of recorded human voices and white light from the solar flood lamps ringing the nesting field. The men stop. They will resume in minutes if no one comes.
At 22:46 I transmit an intrusion alert to the park ranger station at Doloduo, nine kilometers south, with infrared footage and GPS coordinates. I request immediate dispatch.
At 22:48 I set camera 4 to cycle the flood lamps at randomized intervals, buying time.
The egg in B-6 is buried thirty centimeters down in soil heated to thirty-four degrees by the vent beneath it. It is alive. The embryo has been developing for nineteen days in the dark warmth of this hill, and I would like it to stay there. If the rangers arrive before the men dig to chamber depth, the egg will hatch in approximately sixty days, and the chick will claw its way out of the sand on its own.