Last October DeeAnn Reeder made her fourth annual pilgrimage to catalog the rich assortment of bats and other small mammals in war-torn South Sudan. The Bucknell University biologist, renowned for her work tracking down the fungus wiping out millions of bats in North America, brought her husband, Tom, and their two teenage kids to help out. Reeder wore biohazard gear while performing bat dissections, but that couldn’t ward off the string of medical disasters that befell her loved ones. As she recalls in her own words, it isn’t easy performing the duties of wife, mother, caregiver, and field biologist—all at the same time—in Central Africa.
One evening we headed out to go trapping. I was in the Land Cruiser with my son and some wildlife officers, and Tom rode behind us on a motorcycle. The road was red clay, horrible. Eventually I noticed I hadn’t seen Tom in a while, ...
