Gorilla researcher Dian Fossey handed primatologist Kelly Stewart a Beretta and told her to go look for poachers. Woodchuck-like hyraxes tormented ecologist Truman Young on the high, rocky slopes of Mount Kenya. Gas from leaking cylinders ignited and burnt conservation biologist Tim Caro's Serengeti research base to the ground, destroying months of painstakingly collected data on cheetahs. The misadventures of these UC Davis researchers are among the tales published in the new book "I've Been Gone Far Too Long: Field Trip Fiascoes and Expedition Disasters" (RDR Books, Oakland, Calif., 1996). Co-edited by UC Davis anthropologist Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, the book includes stories from 21 biologists and anthropologists who, in the interest of science, have roamed to remote and inhospitable outposts around the planet, often leading to unique and bizarre situations. For example, in Papua, New Guinea, a massive storm-felled tree missed wildlife museum curator Ronald Cole in his tent but crushed the camp's cherished outback monument to civilization, the outhouse. Borgerhoff Mulder herself embarked on a pilgrimage to a sacred site only to find an ancient ritual alternately composed of solemn memory-dredging mixed with slapstick improvisation and chance. Often hilarious, at least in retrospect, such stories never find their way into the dry published accounts of the methods, results and conclusions of research. Apart from entertainment, these stories offer insight into the life of a field researcher.