Add up all the hookups and cables for each of these elements and you end up with a lot of bits and pieces, all of which have to be assembled and tested before each show time.

Somehow, though, everything is different when you know company is coming—nothing works! One of our first big surprises—SHOCKS, really—was that some camera location equipment wasn’t very well electrically insulated, and when we tried to use it on a water—saturated river bank, we got some nasty jolts off of it! From then on, no matter where we set it up, there was always sort of a wince when you first connect the cable, “Is this going to hurt?” This never happens in a TV studio, we bet.

So, we choose a couple of accessible, photogenic, and DRY locations, and our company finally arrives. Cristina Cox Fernandes, a researcher studying electric fish, and Mario Cohn-Haft, a student of rainforest birds, who will be our technological trail-blazers for this preliminary program.