For the first few minutes of last night's episode of Survivor: Palau, Ian Rosenberger looked like quite the all-star. The former president of the Undergraduate Student Government kicked off the evening by lugging a huge, beach ball-sized clam to the shore and plopping it on the sand. "Be careful," Ian said. "He tried to eat me." The clam was good for about seven pounds worth of meat, according to one tribe member, just enough for everyone in Ian's Koror tribe to enjoy almost a pound each. A catch like this is of immeasurable value in a game like Survivor where protein is scarce.
Just when the tribe was munching on Ian's haul, however, a shark, having followed the scent of dead clam, showed up just a few feet offshore. Ian and Gregg quickly stormed after it with spears in hand, but all Ian managed to cut was his foot somehow. On the other side of the shore, Ian's middle-aged tribal buddy, Tom, spotted a second shark, lunged into the ocean after it and brained it with a machete.
Ian's glorious clam grab was understandably downplayed at this point as the tribe marveled in awe at Tom's fierce survivalist prowess.
"You try to be a provider for the tribe, then somebody has to come along and one-up you," Ian said jokingly later. "I guess the next step is I gotta catch a humpback whale or something and bring it in."
At about the same time, Koror's Ulong rivals were busy congratulating each other for catching a single fish, an accomplishment that, while trivial in comparison to Koror's feats, was probably the team highlight for pitiable Ulong thus far on Survivor.
It was possibly this nourishment gap that accounted in part for Koror's impressive performance in both of the episode's challenges. If the episode started with an air of Lord of the Flies, it climaxed with an air of Little Man Tate for the immunity challenge, which involved a floating, life-sized sliding block puzzle -- a mindbender at which Koror smoked the fatigued Ulong tribe.
Thus, after seven episodes, Ian's tribe is still eight members strong while Ulong, down to two people, is on the brink of oblivion.
