Don't Lick the Newt

Dreaming of Donuts

2010-08-28T13:43:00.001-07:00

Using the grocery list written on day 6 and 7 of a back country work trip was not one of my brighter ideas. I guess the theory was that if I wanted this food in the backcountry on one trip, then I would probably enjoy it on my next trip, too. Rationalizing aside, I was a little embarrassed when I got to the check out. Pop-tarts? Hostess donuts? Those pink and white animal circus cookies? The list goes on. I think my inner eight-year-old ran this shopping trip.

Now I am back at my cabin, where that unopened box of donuts still sits on the counter taunting me. I think I will stash it in a bear box at the trailhead as a treat for the end of my next trip. It’s amazing how fast the summer goes by. Today is my last day off, tomorrow I head out in the field for a week, and by next Tuesday I will be back in sunny (warm) southern California. It was sunny and warm up here but that was yesterday and the alpine summer is short.

My season started in June. Even at eight thousand feet the snow clung to road sides and blanketed the shady forest floor. Summer had the lower elevations in its grasp, but in the high country spring was still struggling to take hold. In June we worked at seven and eight thousand feet, watching snow melt and green grow. In July summer moved higher, and so did we to nine, ten and eleven thousand feet. Each step higher is like setting the clock back just a little, holding back the warmth of summer just a little longer. I had 6 months of spring this year, moving higher to greet the newly emerged wildflowers and mosquito hordes. By the beginning of August summer, or what passes for summer, had reached even our highest meadows. Now it is the end of August. In the back country I wake up with frost on my sleeping bag (could be time for a tent). Green is turning to yellow in the meadows and a toad is a rare site to see.

It’s been an interesting season. I have slept on the ground far more than in a bed and hiked miles of Yosemite backcountry rarely seen by us bipedal wildlife. I’ve learned a lot, although not necessarily what would be expected. The biology in my biological technician position is fairly simple. The office folk want to know where the toads are. The data monkeys (yep, that’s us) go fetch the data. Interesting, but not highly stimulating on its own. The good stuff is all in the extras: spending so much time searching for toads that you see the unexpected. Albino tadpoles. Cannibalism (the toad tads, that is). Badger. Bears. Mountain king snake. Parasitic orchids. The observations that don’t have a spot on the data sheet, these are what make the field work worth it for me. There is no check box for alpine glow and they don’t want a description of the view in the site notes.

I missed the openness of the desert when I first got to Yosemite. In the trees it’s almost claustrophobic. Green and woody-ness close in from all directions to make a jungle gym of the forest floor. But, the trees do not go on forever. Above ten thousand feet the world opens up again into vast slabs of granite, slopes of talus, and pockets of meadow. This, I like. Go above tree line and suddenly the whole park sits below you, a living postcard of granite, pine, and swirling cloud. I pick out the landmarks. Cathedral peak: I climbed you. Tuolumne meadows: where the ice cream resides. Tenaya Lake: the local beach. The Valley: from this distance the swarms of visitors and their cars are just metallic specs on a grey ribbon of road. Cloudsrest and Half Dome: climbed those, too. Hoffman, Pothole dome, Tenaya peak, Glen Aulin, Mt. Dana, Pate Valley, the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne, May lake, North Dome…. each its own adventure and accompanying story.

Tomorrow I head out on my last trip of the season. That will be it for the Yosemite chapter of this great adventure. Come September 20th the next chapter begins: Graduate School.

yosemite photos

2010-08-25T13:23:00.000-07:00

On the Road Again

2010-07-31T10:27:00.000-07:00

It’s been almost two months since I left behind the warm red sands of the southwest for the cold grey granite of the Sierra’s. With my material goods (those not permanantly ensconced in the parents’ attic) carefully shoved into the back of my car I hit the open road. For forty miles. In the middle of nowhere between two somewheres my tire issued a final agonal breath before defecting into shredded rubber on the side of the road.
Good thing I have triple A, I thought to myself. I fished out the card, unearthed my phone, and then spent almost an hour trying to explain my location to a service representative. We established the fact that I was in Utah in a matter of seconds, but it proved remarkably difficult to convince her that I was not in Salt Lake City. I recited mileages from nearest intersections, closest towns, and major landmarks to no avail. I (loudly) cursed Subaru for putting the spare tire under the floor as I began excavating the trunk. Food, camping gear, ukulele, boxes of clothes made a disorganized heap on the side of the highway. The fuel for my stove rolled down the embankment into the dry ravine below. I had the spare tire out as the triple A lady asked me if I was near the salt lake city airport. I might have gone a little hysterical at this point because I found myself talking with the manager.
And that’s when the boy scouts arrived. A whole troop of them. The troop leaders had the spare tire on in minutes. I have a whole new respect for boy scouts and complete lack of faith in triple A. It’s funny how the world works.
On the road again, this time at 45 miles per hour, I headed for the nearest town (Green River). I pulled into the only open tire shop only to find that they only dealt in big rig tires. Another 50 miles to the next town. I borrowed the phone book and called all the tire shops. It wasn’t looking good. The few that were open don’t have the right tire size. I paced back and forth across the asphalt as I waited for the last shop on my list to call me back. I started thinking about the phone call I was going to have to make to my new boss. Sorry, can’t make it to the first week of work because I am stuck in the middle of nowhere with one tire short of a car. Finally they called me back. They had the tires and for the bargain price of 400 $ they will put them on my car. Great. I hit the road again at a brisk 45 miles per hour and infuriated every other driver on the road (hmmm, only thirty mph lower than the posted speed limit).
With my new pair of tires I rolled through western Utah into Nevada. The red desert dust on my car was replaced by grey. At a gas station somewhere in Nevada a trucker told me my windshield was dirty. A clean windshield is a clean driver, he says. I washed off 400 miles of splattered insect remains and then continued driving. On the 120 I crossed from Nevada into California. The first road sign I encounter proclaims this particular stretch of asphalt to be adopted by Rainbows and Butterflies. Yep, must be back in California.
I drive through Yosemite and marveled at the snow piled 6 feet deep on either side of the road. Tenaya Lake is an iceberg and Tuolomne Meadows is a snow field. I wondered if leaving the desert was the right decision.
I found myself asking that question a lot for the first month of my Yosemite tenure, I still ask it on occasion. I am not complaining, I swear, but sometimes you have to wonder what it would have been like to hike the other path.
So, I guess I need to put a disclaimer here. Apparently I signed some paperwork at the beginning of the season saying I would not talk about my federal government job with anyone in the outside world. Well, the federal government said I was going to have housing at my job and then made me live out of my car for a month and a half. Deal’s off. I will talk about what I want. Of course, I won’t reveal locations of sensitive species or similar information, but otherwise, I feel like I have right to share my experiences. If the government wants to read my blog and fire me for talking about wildflowers and alpine glow, go for it (and anyways, after this summer I don’t really want to work for the federal gov’t again).
Disclaimer over.

Going Green (River, that is)

2010-05-30T13:36:00.000-07:00

Down the Green River. Larval fish traps, seines, dry bags, food, drink, gear stacked in colorful piles in the two boats. We launched from Green River State Park on Monday afternoon for a four day fish trip. Our sample jars covet the illusive (endangered) Razorback Sucker larva, a transparent slip of a fish to-be. We put them in the jars of alcohol to return to civilization where someone with a microscope will announce our sampling success, or failure.
To hunt our miniscule prey we set light traps in the backwaters as the sun goes down. The next morning we pull the traps before the sun returns to draw the quarry from our artificial light. That’s about it for our work day. In between dawn and dusk we motor downriver to our next sites and stop to seine in fishy looking areas. This leaves ample time to play Mexican train dominoes (one of the few games I actually like), wander around in the desert, and lounge aimlessly in camp.
It’s a beautiful stretch of desert: down the Green River through Labyrinth and Still Water Canyons, turning the boats back up stream at the confluence with the Colorado River to return to civilization via Meander Canyon. It’s a different sort of boating now that we have left the inflatable oar rigs at the warehouse in favor of the faster metal, motored boats. Boat driving (specifically the steering part) is a new skill for me, and one that certainly doesn’t come naturally. My apologies to that willow tree.
Finally I felt that I was getting the hang of it all. And here comes the wind to chop the river’s surface into a thousand pummeling waves. And here I am, by myself, trailing behind in the slower (25 hp motor, that’s why) boat. OK, no problem, I got this. Just hit the waves at an angle. But watch out for the sticks and branches floating downstream, you can’t hit those, it’s tough on the prop. Vroooom, thud, vrooooom, thud, vrrrooom, thud, etc as I go plunging into the waves and the flat bottom of the metal boat smacks down into each jarring trough. I got this guys, don’t worry, but how about keeping me in eyesight (the second boat is a 50 hp and leaves me in the dust)? Suddenly, in a particularly windy wavy section my motor falls silent. Alright, out of gas? Nope, just filled that anyways. Ok, give the fuel line a few pumps, back to neutral, hit start, put in gear. I get a grumble and then silence again. Try again, and then again, and one more time because I might have done it wrong the first three times. Nothing. Alright guys, you can come back and find me now… guys? Please come back?
They came back to rescue me, the fuel line had cracked but when replaced we were back on our soggy way.
I think I am just not meant to deal with anything with a motor. I can handle a car, but only because I have been driving since age 16. Make it a (huge) truck and it’s still ok. Put a boat trailer on the end of that truck and it’s alright, as long as I only have to go forward. Backing up that trailer is a whole other embarrassing event. Sometimes it goes so smoothly. I pat myself on the back and say I am getting the hang of this. Then toss in a busy ramp and a few onlookers and suddenly that trailer seems magnetically repelled from anywhere I want it to go. Three tries later it’s where it’s supposed to be and I am wishing I could hide under a rock until my incompetence is forgotten.
Mechanical discombobulation aside, it’s a beautiful stretch of river. Work is less a chore and more of a privilege. I could be imprisoned in a cubicle, confined to a desk, to shuffle papers from one stack to another. I am not. In the day we float through canyons, following the river down through a million years of geologic history. The white, red, orange, purple, and green layers of rock each tell a story of what was there before. Dinosaur tracks marching across uplifted blocks of stone speak of a time before people. Cliff dwellings, perched on the cliff walls like hanging swallows’ nests, are reminders that we are not the first to explore this landscape. And, as I sit on the tethered boat at night, watching the bats dive and weave in the growing darkness, silhouettes lost against the trees and then reappearing above in the yellow glow of the rising moon, I know this is special.

It's getting lizardy, but maybe that's just spring

2010-05-07T09:06:00.000-07:00

If I wasn't feeling like my usual inordinately lazy self I would split this into two posts, and include some complete sentences on the shenanigans associated with these photos. I might have even spellchecked. I didn't. So here are some photos comprising the last two weeks: hiking adventures in the needles district of Canyonlands and then a San Juan river trip from Shiprock to Montezuma Creek.

The work photos go first.

First day on the river. Technically we didn't even make it on the river. After leaving Moab at 5 am and driving through snow, sleet, and hail to reach Shiprock, New Mexico and the rest of the river crew the bosses decided the weather was too bad to work in. It wasn't the snow/rain that did it. It was the wind. We still work in the snow.

Freezing river fashion

Oh, you have got to be kidding! That looks like another storm! I repent for burning all those peeps on Easter, just bring back the sun.

That's a razorback sucker, one of the endangered species we get to play with. Yeah, the pictures a little out of focus, but I couldn't feel my fingers.

Kokepelli (I think) hanging out with a gallery of other petroglyphs in the canyon above our first campsite.

Now, jumping back in time, to my canyonlands hiking trip. There was more sun, but it was also so windy that my tent blew out of the campsite. We returned at the end of our 11 mile hike to find it held down by rocks (thank you to whoever caught and tethered it)

It's a lizard! The weather has turned quite lizardy out here. This is embarrassing, but I an not really sure what this one is. I want to call it an ornate tree lizard (Urosaurus), but it could just be a side blotch and I missed the blotch. It ran away after I shoved the camera in its face.

I'm trying to learn all my desert flowers (since I seem to be failing on lizards, at least the flowers don't run away from me), but haven't got a clue as to what this is. A beer to anyone who can id it.

Common Paintbrush

Newspaper rock, on the road to the Needles district.

Claretcup. Cool trivia: the genus name Echinocereus comes from the Greek word echinos, hedgehog.

Gummi bears in the wash

2010-04-25T19:29:00.000-07:00

I need to outgrow the habit of putting food in my pockets. I got back from another five day river trip today, and like the responsible adult I pretend to be, am doing laundry. The great thing about the spin cycle is that it nicely separates the candy wrappers, soggy gummi bears, nail clippers, twigs, change, and rocks from my pants and socks. The chapstick never fairs as well, unfortunately.
I tried something new on this past river trip. I attempted to record bits of events throughout the day, though out the trip. I attempted. I failed. I made two entries and both are distinctly grumpy in flavor as they were written on days when the wind was threatening to fling me and my boat into the sharp rocks and spiky plants. So, I’ll just record my usual summary of what immediately comes to mind about the last few weeks.
Ummmmmmmmmm…..
Well, the last five days were spent river rafting and shocking fish. The weather vacillated between April and January. The river greeted us with rain and gusts of wind on our first day. I lost an oar (but got it back). I caught it on a rock and sent it flying as I was furiously flailing away from the rocks towards which the wind was pushing me. I have amassed the most interesting collection of blisters on my hands. Everyone else seems to have settled into calluses. Not me. I just get new blisters in new spots on each trip. Eventually they will run out of new territory to colonize and be forced to form calluses. Or so I tell myself.
The high water made the San Juan a much more exciting river to row. Stretches that had been flat water on previous trips presented as washboards of waves and the current made each stroke more of an effort.
I gear boated the first day, which meant that all I had to do was get from point A to B then to C (and set up lunch) then to D and finally Camp (E?) before the shock boats. Gear boating is supposed to be your relaxing day on the river, but the increase in weather had an inverse relationship with my relaxation abilities. (AAAAAH Not the Rock!!!)
The weather was better the following days but still threw windy temper tantrums on a regular basis. We caught the usual cast of fishes: Catfish, Pike minnow, bullheads, and suckers. I was only stabbed by one catfish on this trip. I think I am getting better at this!
There is one good thing about the serrated razor blades that serve as catfish fins. The little buggers practically net themselves. All you have to do is get the net near the catfish and it gets its spiky little self stuck in there. Of course, you then have to untangle the slimy pokey thing from the net which is generally when the stabbing happens. It could be worse. It could be a carp.
That’s it. I am going to have a bowl of lucky charms, fold my laundry, and go to bed. There better not be any gummibears stuck to my sheets.
And a few photographs for you viewing pleasure:

last night on the river, from the camp site.

cool, catfish leeches!

wait... I thought we were hiking to an arch. oh well, this is cool, too. (but maybe we'll take the map next time)

when was the last time you looked closely at a lichen? I suggest you try it. Amazing (and no, I am not on drugs I swear)

Cryptobiotic soil, also AMAZING!

catfish and goblins

2010-04-11T10:57:00.000-07:00

Here I am in Moab sitting down to a lunch of a more than slightly blackened grilled cheese sandwich. The appearance of which, I tell myself, reflects an inability to multitask and not a complete deficiency in cooking skills (or so I hope). Sometimes I wonder at how I used to cook for 40-60 people in the co-op days.
The last two weeks have been filled with lots of desert and river work/fun. I became a gainfully employed “fish squeezer” on March 30th. April first we launched on the San Juan for a week of rowing and fish zapping. We are monitoring endangered species (Colorado pike minnow and razorback suckers) and removing unwelcome invaders (catfish, carp, brown trout, etc). On the last trip I learned how to paddle a shock boat. On this trip I hope to get some practice with the dutch oven. How else do you make brownies on a river?

So, I spend my work week river rafting and fish flinging. When the weekend comes I take a break from this tough life with various hiking adventures. Arches National park is right down the road and someday I might even make it to Canyon Lands. There are great hiking adventures right in town. Petroglyphs lurk around rocky corners and absurdly augmented jeeps roam the landscape like drunken mountain goats.

Yesterday I headed out of town to explore a pair of slot canyons (bell and little wild horse) with a fellow fish squeezer. It’s a non-technical hike (no ropes or skills needed) but we were still a little surprised to find ourselves sharing the narrow canyon corridors with screaming babies in backpacks and several troops of grumpy grumbling kids (there were plenty of happy kids too, but they didn’t make nearly as much noise). The scenery was great, the hike amazing, but next time I think we will figure out which day of the week it is before we get to the trail head ( ohhhhh, it’s Saturday…. Oops).

We finished our hike with plenty of sunlight remaining and decided to explore Goblin Valley State park. It’s truly in the middle of nowhere, but highly worth the visit. I could try to describe it in words, but out of laziness I’ll just upload the photos instead.

On Tuesday morning I will be heading back to the river for a second round of fish filled fun. Is there an aspect of my life you want to hear more about? Want a species list of every herp I have seen so far? Wish I would write more than once every 6 months? That’s what the comments are for!! (hint hint).

back to the blog

2010-03-12T22:56:00.001-08:00

Long time no write. I know, I know, five months without my riveting prose.
What have I been up to since November? Here’s a summary:
I left Utah at the end of October, and via Albuquerque, returned to California. I applied to Graduate school. That kept me busy for about two weeks and then I had to find other ways to entertain myself. In January I went up to Oakhurst (it’s near Yosemite) and became a certified wilderness EMT (oooh, shiny certificate). I spent a month playing with fake blood in the snow, constructing splints out of camp chairs and rain coats. In the event of a wilderness medical disaster I am totally prepared: Oxygen and Transport!!! Oh, wait, that’s urban….
Now it’s March. I’ve just returned from an adventure in Arizona. I saw the Grand Canyon. It turns out that March is still winter at 7,000 feet. We started our hike into the canyon at 8 in the morning, before the sun had a chance to soften the icy bobsled course of a trail. After an hour of slip, slide and splat we graduated to sloshing through mud, the trail finally drying up into proper desert dust at mid day. The river was green, the cactus purple, and the camping great at Indian Gardens. I especially liked the motorized compost toilets. The humming is very soothing.
I currently have a jury summons that is preventing me from making plans more than 12 hours in advance, but at the end of this month I head off for my next adventure. I am heading back to Utah (gasp!), but this time to the fun part of the state. Moab. I am going to be working for the Division of Wildlife doing fish surveys on the major rivers in the South eastern part of the state. Longish story shorter, I am in Utah until the end of May and then I will be heading up to Yosemite for the rest of the field season. Someone needs to count those toads!
I anticipate great story making moments in the coming months. Perhaps a few will even make it to the screen.

farewell to Happy Valley

2009-10-19T20:30:00.000-07:00

Six months ago October seemed an eon away. Now it’s here, bringing cold weather, an end to field work, and my departure from Utah County (a.k.a. Happy Valley).
So, Utah, we say our goodbyes. I know you certainly won’t miss me, that’s been clear since the ice thawed last march. The question is, will I miss you?
I loved the open spaces. The West Desert where the highway was a dirt road and rush hour traffic meant passing another truck every hour. Sure, the entirety of the Wasatch front is slowly succumbing to the mycelium of urban sprawl, but the deserts are still open- home only to eagles, horny toads, and polygamist colonies.
I am going to miss the wildlife: herds of pronghorn watching us barrel down that dirt highway, golden eagles perched on the power polls that seem to extend to infinity, the elevated heart rate that seems to accompany each up-close encounter with a moose. There were the boreal toads we searched for but never seemed to find and endless piles of minnows to be indentified and measured.
Yesterday I went climbing in Rock Canyon. I was down off the route and belaying my climing partner, Kenny, when suddenly there was the sound of slipping gravel. Seconds later a big horn sheep flew down the path, passing a mere 30 feet below our rocky perch. The big horn sheep moved towards the floor of the canyon, meandered through the dry creek bed, and then began to climb the slope on the opposite side. We watched it bounce its way up the rock and navigate the cliff edges until just the bright white patch of its rump was visible on the opposing slope. We rappelled down and then walked back down to the parking lot as the sun began to set across Utah Lake. Pretty awesome.
The job was great. At an hour that the rest of the working world is contemplating a wardrobe of business casual, we are already suited up in waders and baseball caps and tromping through the great outdoors. For the first few months we focused on frog surveys. At the end of July we switched to fish work. It’s a little hard to admit, as a herpetology geek, that the fish work was actually more fun. Herp work is a lot of searching, flipping over rocks, scanning the ground for elusive creepy critters. Fish work, on the other hand, is very active. Electroshocking, in particular, is almost like a team sport complete with flinging nets and flying fish. It’s reminiscent of that arcade game, the one where you try to hit the gophers with the mallet.
The (undeveloped) land was beautiful, the work was fun, and the critters plentiful, but I think it would be very hard to ever call Utah home. Utah might as well be another planet. In a suburban area stuffed to the brim with people I was on my own outside of work. On weekends that I stayed in town I looked forward to work on Monday, not just because I enjoyed my job, but also because there were people to talk with. I used to think that I liked being totally independent, that I wasn’t such a fan of people in general, but, well that’s just not true. I like friends (well, duh), and it’s infinitely better to actually be in the same state as those said friends because no amount of email or IM can equal a hug, a face to face conversation, or just hanging out.
So, on that note, I make my farewell to Happy Valley (officially known as Utah County) and meander my way back to California.
Yay for friends.

Bryce, and then some

2009-08-08T20:36:00.001-07:00

We had issues at work on Wednesday. We left the office all bright and cheery, ready to zap and count fish. Unfortunately halfway through the fish zapping and counting process our fish-zapper (technically called a backpack electroshocker) had a bit of a temper tantrum and would shock no more. Those sculpins and brown trout aren’t going to count themselves!!!
Suddenly finding ourselves as a field crew without functioning field instruments we had a team huddle and proceeded onto Plan B: Windshield Biology. We spent the next several hours scoping out access to streams that we were supposed to survey in the next week. The current bone-dry nature of those streams raises doubts about their resident fish population. Moral of the story, you can’t find threatened fish in streams without water.
Thursday was far more successful: our stream had water and our shocker worked. Our presence must have been the most exciting event in the area because we had a very attentive audience of small children for the length of our sampling stretch. Into our normal regiment of catch, measure, weigh, release we inserted an extra step. A surprising number of fish ended up in the waiting hands of future biologists, where the scaly specimens received careful inspection before bouncing back into the stream.
After work on Thursday I headed down to Bryce National Park with two of my coworkers, Matt and Heather. Bryce Canyon is incredible. In the south west corner of Utah, at 9,000 feet, it sits above the desert. A combination of geology and weather (high number of freeze-thaw days) have eroded the canyons into armies of orange tinted pillars (hoodoos they are called).
Ten years ago we passed through Bryce on a family road trip. It was December, and I clearly remember my dad dragging us out of the warm car, pointing out into the blank screen of snow and informing us that this would be a spectacular site, if only we could see it. Visibility was not an issue this time and it was incredible. Pinnacles and walls in washes of pink, orange, and white stood in stark contrast against the cerulean blue of the sky. Ponderosa and Bristle Cone Pines dotted slopes and perched precariously atop eroding spires, roots curling around air where rock once stood.
We camped in the park, and froze our butts off. Despite our college degrees and designation as “biologists” none of us made the intellectual connection that it might be cold at 9,000 feet. It was a wonderful 75 F in the day and an unpleasant 45 F after dark (hats, sweatshirts, gloves…. all at home in 100 F Provo, UT). In three days we hiked all but one of the main trails in the park (the park is actually not very big) and went on a trail ride. Matt had never been on a horse so Heather and I thought it would be quite entertaining to get him on one. We spent 2 hours meandering around into, and then back out of, a canyon. The horses, well trained in the etiquette of trail horse, were on both auto-pilot and cruise control, concerned only with keeping their nose in the tail of the preceding horse. Matt, on a mule named Chubby, brought up the rear. We all survived our weekend adventure; however, I suspect the Native Aquatics field crew might be moving a little slower than usual come Monday.

Utah adventures continue

2009-08-02T12:16:00.000-07:00

Generally speaking, a lack of blog entries can either be attributed to a lack of noteworthy events or too many noteworthy events in my life. If there is nothing blatantly exciting in my life I have no inspiration. If life gets too exciting I have no time. I would say that my current literary dry spell is due more to the latter, coupled with a healthy dose of extreme laziness.
I am sure I filled June with noteworthy adventures, but none are swimming to the surface of my mind, so let’s just jump to July. What a month!

Red Kayak, White Water, Blue Lake…
In celebration of the 4th of July, a coworker, Heather, and I hijacked (with permission) a pair of kayaks that had been collecting dust and spiders in the lot behind the Division of Wildlife offices. After informing us that these were “lake” kayaks my boss asked us where we were taking them….. Utah Lake, Utah Lake via three miles of the Provo River…
By “lake” kayak my boss was referring to the length (14 feet), completely flat unstable shape, and lack of spray skirt. None of this would have been an issue except we launched ourselves down a narrow (ish) river, with current and riffles. I spent the next 2 miles exploring ways to submerge myself in knee deep, 50 degree water. In the more stable 12 foot kayak Heather seemed to have none of these problems, and spent a significant amount of time watching me wrestle my boat and chase down escaping hats and water bottles. We eventually floated to the edge of the lake where bucolic scenes of beavers, muskrats, and mutant feral ducks were replaced by screaming jet skis, wakeboard boats, and Utah’s standard sized monster trucks. In Utah, entertainment value is directly proportional to the size and decibel level of the motor.

Meanwhile, at work (yep, I actually work 40 hours week) the frog chasing season is coming to a close and I am settling into my new role as professional fish zapper. Electroshocking is a standard method for surveying fish populations. Simply put, to implement this survey technique you jump into a stream and apply an electrical current. Wait! Electricity and water! Woah!
It’s not as sketchy as it may sound. We wear waders (no skin-water contact) and use nets to chase down the fish. The fish are zapped just hard enough for them to momentarily jump and freeze; giving us only a moment to scoop them up before they swim off. It’s fun, like that gopher bopping old-school arcade game, and when you mess up and stick your hand in the water… Zap!

In other news, I went rafting down the San Juan River in southwestern Utah, and it was AWESOME!
Here are some photos:
River House ruins.

The flotilla, I captained the small blue one.

Rana pipiens (leopard frog)not actually from this trip, but I thought it was a neat picture.

donkeys in the desert.

Me, displaying some awesome river fashion (I lost my big hat on the 4th of july adventure and was trying to make do with a bandana)

I spent half an hour watch a half dozen lizards use an ant's nest as an all-you-can-eat buffet. The winged reproductives (alates) were leaving and the spiny and side blotch lizards were going nuts. I was sitting two feet from the nest and they hardly looked my direction as they snatched up tasty little ant snacks.

...toad... awww isn't it cute?

Pottery shards, the crunch of history in a footstep (just kidding, but we did see a lot of these, and if you weren't careful you could definitly walk right through them with out noticing)

Monarch's cave ruins

Petroglyphs at procession panel. The one in the middle nicely portrays my feelings I think.

Jon demonstrates proper use of binoculars- for lizard identification.

The Leopard lizard was a little irked that I noosed it, so it chomped the noose.

2009-05-26T20:52:00.001-07:00

This past weekend I went to Great Basin National Park, in Nevada, to participate in mountain kingsnake surveys. Below are pictures of some of the scaly critters we found. The red, black, and white striped one would be the kingsnake.

The view from the campsite. The wildflowers are very impressive right now.

Desert Horned Lizard

Mountain Kingsnake

Gopher Snake

Work is going well. We have switched from hunting spotted frogs to searching for the slightly cuter Boreal Toads. Look at that cute little toad face...

Other noteworthy tidbits…
I took the Biology GRE in April and have signed up for the General GRE in July, so it looks like I really will be applying to grad school this fall.
My vegetable garden is actually growing, and I am immensely proud of it.
I went trilobite hunting this weekend. I got to bash open slate and find nifty fossils inside. There is something remarkably satisfying about creating large piles of rubble.

work and play

2009-05-19T21:14:00.000-07:00

too much work to write, so pictures instead.

I finally figured out how to work the macro function on my camara!

toads and other photo-worthy subjects

2009-05-13T18:54:00.000-07:00

Here's a stack of pictures from the last week or so of fieldwork.

Four wheelers! This is certainly an exciting addition to fieldwork. I got paid to ride this around looking for toads. What a life!

Spring has finally come to Utah, and it's really pretty.

Playing with snakes. What's new? (Thamnophis elegans)

Great Basin Spadefoot toads.

Scenery shot. Heber Valley, Utah. My "office" for the last three weeks.

It's Boreal Toad breeding time. Notice the egg strands. Very cool.

I don't think this fellow is going to be breeding this year. Found in a pond, somehow still alive despite the pink thing being its lung. Probably was attacked by a bird.

Toad eggs

herons in tree

Working hard, well... they are... I'm obviously not if I'm taking pictures.

2009-05-07T21:05:00.000-07:00

My paper is officially accepted into Copeia!!
Party: my room, with the gecko, and maybe a sleeping dog. It's gonna be rockin'.

Birds are getting busy

2009-05-01T20:38:00.000-07:00

Matt gets the friendly cows and I get the horse that flipped out and charged across the field... no fair.

Seriously? It's snowing and we are looking for frogs? I think the frogs are laughing at us. That's my boss, she doesn't seem to mind the snow.

I rode 30 miles on my bike today. It was a test run to see if biking to work is feasible from my new housing location. It is only 9 miles from the house to the office but I think adding an 18 mile ride to each day would really turn my usual routine of hiking and falling into the water into a full daily triathlon. I am not that hardcore. Thirty miles might sound like a lot, but 30 flat Utah valley miles are roughly equivalent to 5 hilly Bay Area miles. They have a lovely system of bike paths following the Provo River through downtown Provo. After finding this bike path I promptly went 5 miles in the wrong direction because I went upstream instead of downstream. The river flows into Utah Lake, I live next to Utah Lake…. Duh. I guess my inner fish instincts were erring toward salmonid tendencies.
I finally managed to roll home and was greeted by the two large mutts and one small daschund. Evidence of their afternoon of mischief was scattered across the backyard. One recently crotchless lacey thong and a shredded Book of Mormon. Grandparents, don’t worry, neither were mine. I picked up the religious confetti from the lawn (seemed like the respectful thing to do) but left the underwear.
Work is still fun and my waders still leak. It’s been less than two months and I am on my third pair. I would rant longer about the leaks, but the amount of water they let in is insignificant compared to the inflow every time I fall in. I have a tendency to leap first, sink, and then look at my soggy situation. We spend a lot of time going through wet meadows, which could be more accurately described as grassy streams. It is like one of those arcade games where the little digital dude has to jump across floating mushrooms. Grass blobs bob innocently, looking oh-so-solid until you jump on. This is a great balance building exercise; standing one legged on a floating ball of vegetation, arms waving like a windmill, mouth going like a sailor. Based on this description, it’s actually surprising that I only fall in two to three times a day. Falling in would be significantly less annoying if my waders didn’t immediately fill up with enough water to drown a large mammal. Theoretically all those leaks should let out the water, but apparently my waders only leak in the inward direction. I clearly wasn’t paying attention in the physics lesson when they explained this phenomenon (“ wet wader reverse osmosis”). At this rate I will soon perfect my techniques of wader-water-removal Yoga. “Downward Bog” is my favorite. Handstands work, but then all the nasty footy swamp water flows straight into the face. I can accept soggy toes (or perhaps zombie feet…), but I draw the line at duckweed in the hair.
Interestingly, all this time spent looking for frogs is helping me to become a better birder. One of my coworkers was pondering the identity of a marshy bird with a brownish head, black wings, and silly looking long bill.
“Oh, you mean the Avocet? They were with the snowy egret and killdeer…”
Oh, wow…. I guess all shorebirds are no longer “curved bill dowagers”. However, it’s certainly baby steps for the ornithological advancement: anything smaller then a starling and colored brown is presumed unidentifiable. I like the bigger birds, like the Sandhill Cranes we see on a regular basis. They are nesting in the wetlands we frequent and it is remarkable how well they blend in with the reeds and bulrushes. More than once I have been sloshing along, minding my own soggy business, when suddenly a huge bird (we’re talking 8 foot wingspan here) emits the cackle of an angry velociraptor and launches itself out of the reeds towards my head. Pretty cool for something with feathers.

(Sandhill Crane nest, after mama bird went kamakazi-crane and then stood cackling at me from a pond 20 feet away)
Also cool: Osprey courtship.

Geese also seem to have no issues with fecundity. A week later the eggs were replaced with a fluffle (originally a typo, but I think I like the word) of little gooselings, fulfulling my daily quota of cuteness.

2009-04-17T09:23:00.000-07:00

Explainations for the pics... oh I guess I could add that...
1. Hot springs at Fish Spring Reserve in the West Desert.
2. Wetlands in the middle of a desert. See those reeds? those are 4+ feet tall and we walk (or in my case fall) through that. Frogs live here, so do cows.
3. Hatching eggmass, Columbia Spotted Frog. Awww cute little tadpoles.
4. Grass. I was standing up to my wader clad knees in swamp mud, but it seemed like a good time for a photo.
5. Tiger salamander. It had leaches, look closely and you can see them.
6. Columbia spotted frog. Not a great photo, but oh well.
7. Working hard
8. Carp. but check out the scales. see how they are all different. genetic epistasis at work!!!
9. measuring a fish, yeah that's me. carp have spines, so do catfish. makes them really fun to grab out of a net.

Now that’s a bad sign.

2009-04-17T09:08:00.000-07:00

I got home from work last Wednesday and there was a ‘for rent’ sign on the front lawn. Silly neighbors put their sign in our front yard, I thought. Trying to figure out which neighbors to implicate, I grabbed a flyer and was rather unpleasantly surprised to see our address at the top.
Uh oh. I think there is something my housemate forgot to tell me.
I walked into the house and was greeted by a scene of human unraveling that, now as time passes, grows steadily worse.
We got evicted. More precisely, my housemate got us evicted. Apparently the nasty old dog she has violates the housing agreement. I didn’t like that thing anyways! It’s blind, deaf, and putrid, and tries to bite anyone within biting range.
So, three weeks here and now it’s time to find new lodging.
Fortunately the semester at BYU just ended and there is quite a plethora of housing options on craigslist. I have found a new place and am jumping-for-joy excited to move in next week. Four normal housemates, with real jobs, and a friendly dog. It will be a bit more of a drive to work each day, 10 minutes or so, because it’s up in Provo instead of Springville. But honestly, we all know how much I like Springville….
Actually, my Springville dislike has faded a bit as the grass turned green and the tulips popped out of the melting snow. I think I just showed up at a particularly unattractive time of year when the snow was gone but the plant life was still hunkered down in shades of winter grey. Not that there is a lot to do in this town. I was hanging out in the public library because the landlord was giving tours of the townhouse (on two hours notice!) and a local kid began a rather elaborate, and somewhat annoying, series of courtship displays. Perhaps not the brightest fellow, but if he was going to trail me like a lost puppy for two hours I was at least going to get some useful information out of him. Unfortunately, his answers to my questions on fun things to do in the area were not exactly what I was looking for.
Go to the arcade in another town.
Harass cows.
Throw rocks at squirrels, particularly the ones by the high school, those are the best to throw rocks at.
As for “good” restaurants in the area, he was especially fond of the royal pair of Burger King and Dairy Queen.
Eventually it was time for me to escape his hopeful, but somewhat misguided efforts; the library is only open until 9pm. With big blue puppy dog eyes he asked when I would be at the library next. Oh, dunno, could be a while… a long while… which is a bummer because I liked that library.
What is it about Utah? This is the second time in a week a guy has asked me for my phone number. First time was a middle aged guy on a chair lift at a ski place on Sunday. Should go check my forehead… must have single stamped across it.
Work continues to go well. I get grumpy when I have to hunt for frogs in the snow. I think the frogs are secretly laughing at us. Silly monkeys in the snow! The calendar says it is spring but the six inches of snow yesterday night beg to differ.
There are some benefits to cold weather. It keeps me from going outside (because I am a California wimp). I finished the current round of manuscript revisions and resubmitted it to the journal last night. …private happy happy dance…
10 pm and the manuscript was submitted. I wanted to go to bed, but my housemate and I had made plans to go to Walmart at midnight to get packing boxes. Yeah, that sounds sketchy but let me explain: I managed to drag her out of bed to go get boxes in the evening, but when we got to Walmart and asked for the box aisle they told us to come back when they stock the shelves, midnight to 6 am. Apparently the cereal aisle is the best place to get packing boxes, all you want, free of charge. Excellent because she is broke. Except midnight came around and my housemate turned into a petulant two year old who whiningly told me “I don’t wanna go.”
Fine, just fine, I am not the one who needs boxes, but there is no cow’s-jump-over-a-blue-moon chance that I will help her do that on another night!

ahh, Springville

2009-03-27T22:07:00.000-07:00

The following are signs that Springville, Utah is a boring place to live:
1. I am planning to drive an hour to Salt Lake City next Friday night to go to shabbat services because it is something to do, there will be (normal) people there, and drinking is not considered a grievous sin.
2. I read the Provo area classified craigslist adds, delighting in the multitude of ones that read “I am bored, let’s make out” (and that’s just the tip of the iceberg, for an interesting look at local culture, see the M4M section…)
3. Sneaking into a LDS church sounded like fun
4. I thought about responding to some of those craigslist adds
5. I get bored studying for the GRE, try to procrastinate but can’t find anything more enthralling then studying for the GRE
6. I watched figure skating on TV
7. I look forward to going back to work on Monday.

I am sure once I make friends and it gets warm enough to be outside comfortably, living in Springville, Utah will become more appealing. But for now, thank goodness work is really awesome… because Springville sure isn’t.

And, stay tuned for future episodes featuring: polygamist pizza, fish handling techniques, gas station romance, and carp genetics.

I have moved to Utah

2009-03-20T09:32:00.001-07:00

Some mud really stinks. I am not talking about your everyday, take dirt and add water variety: that just smells like wet dirt. I am talking about the black stuff that oozes up around your waders, gurgling as it slowly swallows your ankles, then knees, and then squelchingly threatens to suck you down to some anoxic netherworld. For being mostly desert Utah has a lot of mud. I might be a tad biased in this assessment as my new job involves frog surveys. Aquatic frogs like water and water is a key ingredient in mud. While practicing mud wading I am also gaining new skills like farm animal evasion, barbed wire fence climbing, and fish grabbing. And I get paid for this, sweet!
Officially, I am a wildlife technician working for the aquatics division of the Utah department of wildlife resources. Our main focus is to survey endangered amphibians and nonsport fish in the central region of Utah (which turns out to be most of the state). Occasionally we (there are two techs) are borrowed by one of the other fish biologists when they need extra hands. Yesterday the June Sucker (an endangered fish with a funny looking mouth) biologists wanted help tagging 5,000 captive bred fish so the suckers could be released. Tagging a fish with a coded metal wire tag involves grabbing a fish from the bucket, holding the slimy wriggling thing still, then jamming a bit of wire into it before chucking it into the fish run, and repeat…… for another 4,999 fish. This is definitely a new skill for the resume.
Work is a lot of fun. We jump between tasks and field sites almost daily so I think it should continue to be interesting. The Aquatics division is predominantly staffed by fish biologists and I think I might be the token “amphibian biologist”. We are going to be doing some chytrid swabbing later in the summer and the bosses are thrilled that I already know what a swab is. As the amphibian person I have an excuse for my complete deficiency in fisheries knowledge and skills. So, in trade for being a walking source of amphibian chytrid information I get to learn how to be a fishery biologist, not a bad deal at all.
I made it to Utah on Sunday night and started work at 7am Monday morning. We work 10 hour days (with three day weekends) and I haven’t really had time to experience much of the area. I live in Springville, about an hour south of Salt Lake City. The town itself is flat but the mountains begin along the eastern edge where the houses end. There are lakes on the western side, but I am not entirely sure where…. They take street numbering very seriously here; it is so ordered that I keep getting lost. There is always a Center St perpendicular to a Main St, and all the streets are numbered going off in the cardinal directions from there (i.e. the corner of 200 S and 1350 W). Sure this sounds straightforward but if you need to find 130 E it is probably a dead end somewhere that can only be reached by zigzagging across every prime numbered integer between 3 and infinity. I can see the benefits of the system, but I do seem to spend a chunk of each day lost (which is also because they are doing some major road construction and have closed a few very important streets- and nobody told google maps!).
Things to do, streets to get lost on, and a town house to move into….

2009-02-23T19:33:00.000-08:00

I got a summer job! send me an email and i might tell you where!

New comics posted!

2009-01-10T20:09:00.000-08:00

I have this life goal to create an all herp comic book.
I was distracted by the ants in Hawai'i, but I have finally posted some new cartoons. Go to: http://sweinstein.revealedsingularity.net/ for visual proof of my extreme nerdy-ness.

Pie in the pan, cold chili in the can.

2008-12-04T23:22:00.000-08:00

I started to write this one on the back of my e-ticket reservation print-out while sitting on a beach in Kauai. Roughly three sentences in my efforts came to an abrupt halt when two of the more permanent residents of the beach campground began chasing each other, loudly demonstrating the ways in which a four letter word, beginning in “F”, can be used to express extreme dislike. These are the sort of memorable experiences that are completely lost when one stays at fancy resorts with private beaches, gourmet restaurants, and bed sheets. Never fear, we had a trip full of memorable experiences…. But perhaps I should start at the beginning.
My housemate, Joe (the same one of GI Joe infamy), and I went to Kauai over the thanksgiving holiday. Our attempts to find additional traveling buddies were met with the same excuse from all fronts: “Kauai costs money. I have no money.” You don’t get paid all that much to go play in Hawaiian forests and lava fields all day and thus all park interns are perennially broke. In the end it was just Joe and me, and we planned only as far as the plane tickets and rental car.
By 1pm on Thursday Joe and I had exhausted our plans, having both made it to Kauai and picked up our funny looking, bright red, rental car (a “Caliber”, what were the designers thinking?). Now winging it, we decided it might be a good idea to get some camping permits. Our attempt at being law abiding campers was thwarted when we arrived at the office and discovered that they were observing that federal holiday known as Thanksgiving. Oops, probably should have called ahead on that one. Next stop was food, we had plans to camp until Monday and needed some provisions. Fortunately we scrambled in and out of an ironically named grocery store, Big Save, about fifteen minutes before they closed for the holiday. We couldn’t find any fuel for our camp stove, but we certainly weren’t going to starve immediately.
Stocked with canned chili, noodles, and pineapple soda (a mistake) we were ready to begin our adventure and headed out from Lihue to the south side of the island. One of the remarkable things about Kauai is abundance of chickens. They are everywhere; begging in parking lots, perched on impossibly steep cliff sides, cock-a-doodle doo-ing at two in the morning. We checked out the spouting horn, where waves crashing against lava rock send a burst of spray twenty feet in the air and moderately amused tourist stand behind a protective fence taking pictures. Unimpressed by most things that can be accessed by car, we returned to our car to find an activity that we could drive to and then hike to.

We found a suitable hike down the road and spent the rest of the afternoon scrambling around limestone ridges and gazing down at impossibly blue water. I spotted a shearwater (that’s a bird, folks) hunkered down in a rock hole and that was really exciting, almost as good as a turtle. As the afternoon wore on we grew decidedly, stomach growling-ly, hungry. Upon finally reaching our destination beach we promptly turned around to hike back to food (it was a little late in the day for swimming, anyway). On the hike back it was decided that pizza would be the best way of celebrating the holiday. Unfortunately once back on the road we soon discovered the pizza place was closed, as was every single other eating establishment on that side of the island. I guess that isn’t too surprising given that it was 5pm on thanksgiving. We headed out to a beach at the end of the highway for the night. It was dark by time we arrived so we ate our cold thanksgiving chili out of the can while sitting on some driftwood next to the car. For dessert was the grocery store pumpkin pie, which I must say, doesn’t hold a candle to the one I made the week before.

The pie reappeared for breakfast the next morning at approximately the same time as the rain clouds. The beach was lovely but the surf made swimming out of the question so we headed out for some adventure at Koke’e state park. On the way to the park we stopped at a coffee shop and I had the best mocha of my life. I think it would still have been amazing even if I hadn’t spent the past night in a hammock being eaten alive by bugs (nope, still haven’t learned to set up a tent).
Koke’e state park is up in the mountains on the west side of the island. It offers incredible views of the whole Ne Pali coast and some amazing hiking. We picked a nice easy 8 mile stroll and set off towards the Alakai swamp. I have a lot of pictures from the trail and in nearly all there is Joe, ahead of me up the trail. I generally would not consider myself a slow hiker, but Joe’s casual hiking pace is a speed I typically only assume when being chased by a horde of enraged rhinos. Sometimes he actually runs. I don’t.

Eventually the trail, which was slick and muddy from the get go, was replaced by a boardwalk as we approached the swamp. Cruising across the planks, the mesh nailed to wood clattered and rang; as our feet strummed the boardwalk banjo we undoubtedly scared off every bird within miles. For the majority of the hike in we had incredible views but as we reached the look out at the end of the trail a thick wall of fog blanketed everything. There was a small crowd on the viewing platform looking hopefully into the milky white expanse which, it turns out, should have been a view of half the island. Walking back through the swamp in the thick fog reminded me a little of that part from Lord of the Rings, you know, when Frodo, Sam , and Gollum are walking through the swamp with all the dead people? Good thing we had such a nice, noisy, boardwalk to scare off all the living, and non-living, creatures.

That night we got our pizza and then headed towards the north side because we wanted to hike along the famous Ne Pali Coast the next day. We spent the night in a hostel (bed sheets!!!) and it was probably a good thing we didn’t camp because it was absolutely pouring in the morning. The rain seemed to be letting up by 9 so we headed on up the coast towards the trail. It was closed; something about flash flood warnings. Alright, no hiking on the north side. Swimming was also out of the question as most beaches were sporting waves large enough to crush small cars.
One nice thing about Kauai is that it has a wet side and a dry side. Our rainy side plans had been stricken so we headed back to the dry side. And this is how we ended up a beach camp ground with crazy people. Actually the camp ground was quite full so the few crazy people make up only a tiny, but loud, fraction of its inhabitants. We spent the afternoon lounging on the beach and for dinner had cold pasta boiled the morning before at the hostel. The pumpkin pie made a final appearance and was deemed inedible due to the new found growth of small white bacterial colonies across the surface of the filling. If the scientific world ever runs out of agar I think I know a substitute. The camp ground was packed so we claimed a spot on the sand; the stars were incredible and the sound of the waves softened the shouts of the crazy people, making for an almost good night’s sleep.

The next morning we headed back up to Koke’e park for another gorgeous 8 mile stroll up mountains and across cliff sides. It was stunning, even that part where the trail was washed out and I thought I was going to fall into the valley 3,000 feet below. Out of the park, back down in Waimea, we visited Jo Jo’s Shave Ice for some fruity flavored amazingness. Shave ice (there is no d) is great, but when you combine it with vanilla ice cream I think it might actually become an addictive drug. Just thinking about it…. Need to stop to wipe the drool of my key board….
With plans of attempting another hike on the Ne Pali coast we headed back up to the north side of the island for the night and found a nice beach park to camp in. It was comforting to watch the small children run around with multi colored glowsticks, much nicer then the crazy people shouting obscenities. One small child stole our flashlight, but for the price of a cookie promised to put it down and never touch it again.
In the morning we headed out to the end of the road and were happy to see that the trail was open. We flew home that evening so there wasn’t really time to do a major hike. Instead of the 22 miles we had originally planned we hiked about two, and then found a beach for the rest of the afternoon. The weather was glorious, the water brilliant, and the snorkeling mediocre. The fish were really cool, but the coral was sadly almost non-existent. None of the large number of other beach goers seemed the least bit bothered by this and the water was filled with remarkably pale people snorkeling about in a few feet of water. I suspect that the snorkeling was better out farther across the reef but I was not going to attempt that without fins, a buddy, and a little assurance that I wouldn’t be swept out to sea.
All to soon it was time to return to Lihue, hand back the keys to our awkward little rental car, and catch a flight back to the Hawaiian island we call home. Living in paradise is tough, isn’t it?

Some pictures

2008-11-22T23:35:00.000-08:00

Kayaking to Captain Cook cove for snorkeling

smoke plum from lava entry to ocean. Wow, there are a lot of people! I hate having to share paradise with others!

2008-11-22T23:26:00.000-08:00

Is it wrong to make my own birthday cake?
I think I have replaced schoolwork with baking. In college I used to fill my “free” time with studying and other academic activities. Suddenly free from tests and homework I find myself with hours of open evening time, which are now filled with flour, yeast, sugar, and teetering piles of dirty dishes. I have stopped buying bread from the grocery store ($6 for a loaf of sandwich bread is absurd anyways) and my boss likes having cookies at work so much that he provides flour and butter. Which brings me back to the topic of birthday pastry. I make other people cakes, my birthday is in a few days, and I want a pumpkin pie. So, is it weird to bring my own birthday pie to work? I have already made it, so I guess it would be even odder to make my own birthday pie and then hide it (Pie? What pie? Oh, you mean the one the whole house now smells like…. Right, that pie). I think that settles it, I will have to share my pie, but don’t expect me to sing to myself!
I also made challah, which somehow morphed into challah-zilla in the oven. Not that that is really a problem; I like making bread that covers more surface area than many north eastern states.
On an unrelated tangent I present a short narrative titled “My field partner, GI Joe”:
Joe and I do a lot of field work together. When we go out ant-mapping he always leads. The leader finds the gps points and lays bait cards for the ants. It is generally the harder job, but also more fun (in a machete wielding ,jungle trail blazing, sort of way). I am usually stuck as the follower when I partner with Joe. This means I don’t have to create a trail, but rather have to exactly follow the one my partner laid an hour before.
On Monday Joe and I were assigned to a transect that can be technically described as heavily vegetated. While I settled down for an hour long nap Joe pulled out the machete and dove into the brush. A half hour later I heard him yell at me, sharing the obvious fact that he had made it less than 60 meters into the veg. At 45 minutes it was my turn to dive into the 6 foot tall wall of spiky plant life. Joe’s already stomped and chopped it down a bit, so it’s definitely easier for me…. but…. Joe has an annoying habit of walking straight through brambles. He wears heavy rain pants even when it’s sunny so that he can do this, laying trails of flagging through swaths of saber toothed blackberry vines. My lightweight rain pants would be instantly shredded by these plants, and none of my field pants offer much protection against this evil greenery. Joe marches through the brambles, invincible, and then I follow on tiptoes, wincing and cussing my whole way through.
The leader lays flagging so that the follower can follow it to the bait stations. Good flagging courtesy implies that flagging should be tied somewhere obvious on the path to be followed, preferably at eye level. While wallowing through dense stands of Pukiawe, in which movement is akin to swimming through mattress springs, the flagging suddenly disappears. Dammit Joe!!! While searching the nearby brush for neon blue plastic I happen to glance down at my feet. There’s the flagging tape, tied six inches off the ground. Dammit Joe!!! He got sick of wading through the brush and decided to crawl under it instead. The flagging was perfectly at eye level, assuming the follower was lying on the ground under the bushes. Of course, I had no choice but to follow (one bait station was actually set in the middle of all this) and had ample opportunity to practice my army crawl over the next several hours. I will crawl under Pukiawe, but when the flagging tape disappeared under a bramble, Dammit Joe !!! (When question later, he claimed the bramble was too big to just walk through … what is wrong with going around obstacles?!?). After 6 hours of following GI Joe through Joe’s Boot Camp I emerged out onto the road. During the transect each bramble thorn drawing blood added new words to the lengthening list of things I was going to call Joe when I next saw him. With a final crash I landed back on the road and there he was, sitting in the car. I guess that would have been the time to fling some of those words I had been rolling around in my mouth for the last 5 hours, but that would have taken way more energy then I wanted to expend.
Moral of the story: Get more than 3 hours of sleep on work days or fieldwork sucks!

The lava ate my shoes

2008-11-11T21:45:00.000-08:00

This weekend I volunteered to help a grad student, working in the park, check for nest activity in a colony of Hawaiian petrels nesting on top of Mauna loa. Petrels eat fish and fly all the way up to the Aleutian islands for their preferred meal. This fish eating marine bird happens to make its nests at 9,000 feet in rock crevices on top of a big volcano and, is thus, not exactly your typical shore bird. In retrospect, I am not quite sure what I was thinking when I volunteered myself for this. It was interesting to see the nesting sites and to learn about petrel conversation (they are doomed), but the hike was killer. The first two hours were on a trail climbing 2000 feet up the side of a volcano- not a problem. Then we turned off the trail, onto the lava.
Lava comes in two general flavors: pahoehoe is smooth and friendly,like walking on a rumpled sidewalk. Its angry cousin, a a, has the consistency and stability of fresh sourdough croutons. Fields of a a consist of irregular chunks, ranging from the size of brussel sprouts to beach balls, every edge razor sharp. It destroys hiking shoes with the tenacity of a school of small, rubber-loving piranhas, leaving fuzzy halos of shredded sole around bedraggled boots.

After leaving the trail we spent the next three hours tromping across a landscape that blended the less appealing aspects of mars, Mordor, and the moon. What are these birds thinking? (actually, they used to be wide spread but after the introduction of the nastiest of invasive species (that would be people) it’s nesting area shrank significantly. Maybe this mountain top wouldn’t be the petrels’ first choice either, but it’s so darn hard to get to that it’s the only habitat left undestroyed?). In the early afternoon we arrived at the first of the nests to be checked. The nests are deep burrows in lava crevices. The chance of seeing an actual bird is small, so we were checking for sign: fresh poop, feathers, birdy smell, and cat-eaten birdy bodies. We did this until the sun, and the temperature, began to drop. We headed to a semi-permanent camp supplied with some gear, water and food by periodic helicopter drops. Every time I find myself shivering, in Hawai’i, it surprises me. As it dropped into the low 40s on Saturday night I was really happy that I had long underwear, in Hawai’i.
We were up shortly after sunrise and as I drank my black coffee I silently crossed high elevation, a a covered volcanoes off my list of future field work locations. Nothing against elevation or volcanoes, I just don’t like a a rock.
We checked the remainder of the nest cavities that morning and then set out across the a a flows towards the trail, the car, and home where frozen pizza was waiting for me. The nesting area was interesting, but not quite worth the hike (about 6 hours each way). I am glad I went, but next weekend I think I will go snorkeling.
So that’s what I do for “fun”; work has been far less strenuous. We went up to Hakalau to check the bug traps up in the trees. Three days of climbing were great, and, unfortunately, our last trip. We had beautiful weather: blue sky, brilliant greens of grass and trees, and bright red birds (Apapane and I’iwi).
In the lab I have been given additional, exciting, tasks. To supplement my ant IDs and caterpillar care I now count moths and ….. drum roll…. sort bird shit. To be fair, it is important endangered bird shit. Fecal samples were collected from hundreds of native and non native birds on the islands. Most of these birds are at least partly insectivorous and by identifying the various insect bits in their poop it is possible to figure out feeding niches, competition for food resources, and that sort of important scientific stuff. Right, so I can’t tell a psyllid femur from a beetle tibia to save my life so my job is to sit at the microscope and separate out all the identifiable bits from the unidentifiable crap (literally!). I put the bug bits in a tiny bottle and give them to the PI, who sits in his office all day identifying caterpillar mandibles and spider legs. Isn’t science great?! Actually, science is great, but sometimes just a wee bit tedious (in retrospect, looking at salamander slides wasn’t all that horrible, hmmmmm).
My lab here didn’t get funded for the spring so I am definitely coming back to the mainland. I am starting to look for spring jobs, anyone have any suggestions?. I think it would be interesting to work on research relating to white nose syndrome in bats. This subject has now held my interest for almost a month (beating my usual attention span of three days), I am 200 hundred pages into a book on bat ecology, and now I just have to work up the courage to contact people working in that area.

Tree climbing/rainforest photos

Hapuna

2008-11-04T14:32:00.000-08:00

I think it is time to construct hammock 2.0. My first hammock (version 1.0) has suited me quite well for the last two years, but it has some serious deficits. In good weather these issues can be overlooked, however there is nothing quite like a little rainstorm to bring certain deficiencies out in the open.
On Saturday night we were camping on a beach on the Kona side of the island, which is typically the drier side (but November is, undeniably, the wet season). In an attempt to pack light, I brought only my hammock, and a tarp in case it rained. I figured that, in the unlikely event of precipitation, I would toss the tarp over myself and stay dry. I forget that beachside rainstorms are generally accompanied by howling winds, the sort that refuse to let tarps stay put. So, it’s dark and raining and while my two camping mates have already retired to their nice dry tents, I am outside stubbornly attempting to tie an unruly tarp to my flapping hammock. Eventually the tarp and I reach a truce; it will stay attached to the hammock as long as I don’t expect it to actually keep me dry. Good enough. I climb into my sleeping back and spend the next several hours holding various parts of the tarp in an attempt to curb its incessant flapping and smacking of my head. The rain and wind eventually died down, unfortunately their replacement was worse. It turns out the unpleasant weather was keeping the even less pleasant insects at bay. I spent the rest of the night acting as an all-you-can-eat buffet to a population of biting flies. My housemate commented that, maybe, I should bring a tent next time. I think she might have a point, at least until I have a chance to make a hammock with a rain-fly (see, I don’t need schoolwork or research to occupy my time!).
Despite the less than ideal sleeping conditions, this past weekend was AWESOME. We drove over to the Kona side for some serious beach time on Saturday and Sunday. The first beach we went to, Hapuna, was the touristy, white sand, resort sort of beach.
Convinced that every body of water in Hawai’i must have snorkeling, I brought my mask and snorkel and spent a half hour staring at perfectly white, empty, sand. I did see a flounder, and that was really neat, making my snorkeling attempt slightly less pathetic.
We sat on the beach until the sun set, and then headed off to our camping spot.

All day the weather had been perfect, but by time we reached the trail head to our camping beach it was raining. We sat in the car discussing why it was a bad idea to hike to the beach in the rain until it stopped raining. We scrambled down to the beach and set up camp just in time for it to start raining again. On the hike down I impressed my camping mates with my cane toad catching skills (with that much eye shine they are hard to miss). I forgot to take a photo to add to my collection of Hawai’i herps, but really, it was just a cane toad, not even a big one.
I woke up the next morning to a perfectly blue sky without a cloud in sight. The black sand of the beach was edged in casuarina pines (not true pines, but they look like them) and beyond the band of pines stretched a green valley that had once been used for taro farming, but was now completely wild.
After briefly enjoying the amazing surroundings the rest of the group declared it was time to hike out. Having gone to bed at 7:30, both of them had been up since before sunrise, less then patiently waiting for me to wake up (which I did annoyingly late- at 8am).
As we hiked out we dripped sweat while enjoying breathtaking views of the whole coastline.

We made a quick, two hour, stop at a coffee shop in the town of Hawi (pronounced “Havi”) before heading to another beach. While sitting at the coffee shop we pulled out our big book of Big Island beaches and looked for a nice one between our current location and home. We quickly found one that sounded good and declared it the one of the day. Having already proclaimed it our beach goal, we discovered that the description spanned two pages. The second page informed us that our beach of choice was favored by the local nudists.
Undaunted by such warnings we drove down the coast towards the beach. Upon arriving at the trail we were immensely amused to see numerous signs stating that “nudity is prohibited by law and subject to fine”. Our book is about 25 years out of date. Resigned to perpetuating tan lines we walked in and staked a spot on the sand. I grabbed my snorkel and headed straight for the water. The coral was ok, the fish were pretty good, but the turtles!!!!
Ooooooooh there were turtles!!!!! I was paddling along admiring some shiny fish when a Green turtle floated into my field of view. Completely ignoring my squeals of delight, it continued to graze on the algae on the rocks. As I watched my first turtle three more came into view, and then a bit later a few more wandered by. Wow. Sea turtles are sooooo cool. I eventually made it back to shore where I stood in front of my friends jumping up and down saying “turtle turtle turtle” while vaguely pointing towards the water. One of them humored me by taking the mask and snorkel to go look; returning 15 minutes later to report that, yes, there was a turtle.
Yay turtles.
Eventually it was time to head back to home sweet HAVO (Hawai’i Volcano National Park). Along the drive we decided that the one thing that could make the weekend even better would be ice cream. At 4:59 we pulled into the parking lot of our favorite ice cream shop and, as they closed at 5, sprinted to the front door. They let us in, glared, but gave us our ice cream.
I like ice cream almost as much as sea turtles.

Halape

2008-10-29T19:42:00.000-07:00

Before I go into great, lengthy, detail on my weekend beach adventure I have a message to my readership:
I love it when people make comments, it lets me know that people haven’t completely forgotten my existence. However, I like comments even more when I know who wrote them. See, otherwise I have to make assumptions such as it must be grandma who wants more pictures of herps.
Wow, I didn’t know my grandma knew what a herp was!!!
Next time I visit the grandparents I will have to give them a whole slide show of herp pictures!
So, save both my grandparents and me from the grave misunderstanding that would ensue- sign your comments (you people know who you are… and I don’t).

On Friday we were out ant mapping at Kahuku Ranch, the ex-cattle farm that will someday be part of the park. Part of our transect happened to pass by the Giant Pit-Crater of Awesome-ness (not the official name, but I highly suggest that park adopt my nomenclature system). I had pictured in my head a huge bottomless pit, and while that mental image had no relationship to reality, the actual pit crater was really neat. It was round, several hundred meters across and deep, and the bottom was completely forested. It was as if a circle of the forest dropped a couple hundred meters below all the surrounding woods. Being isolated like that, it seems like an area that could have all sorts of nifty things: unicorns, bigfoot, lost dinosaurs, etc. We climb up trees all the time in search of insects, it wouldn’t be completely out of the question to repel down a crater to “search for ants”.
Highly unlikely, but would be soooo cool (even if there turned out to be no unicorns).

(digital media fails to capture the awesomeness that is the pit crater)

All week I fantasized about another beach trip, this time without the soccermom minivan full of unruly “children”. Sometime in the last few weeks we stepped into the wet threshold of the Hawaiian rainy season where sunshine is no longer a daily guarantee. On Saturday morning I woke up to a grey sky and the sound of water pouring from the gutter outside my bedroom. Ignoring the weather (I am going to get wet at the beach anyways…), my housemate dropped me off at the trail head for a 10 mile hike to the nearest beach. It was a wet, but pretty, hike.

I passed through miles of black pahoehoe lava fields where bunches of red, orange, and green grasses sprouting along the rock edges gave the terrain the appearance as if aflame. Of course, these same fiery colored grasses also collected ample quantities of rain water, which was then transferred to my pants. Within an hour I was soaking wet from the waist down. Conveniently, by then I had dropped 1000 feet in elevation and it was relatively warm . I reached my beach of choice by early afternoon and met several park volunteers who were living there to monitor sea turtle nests.
I am not kidding here, the job of the turtle interns is to camp on a pristine Hawaiian beach for 6 days at a time, waiting for turtles to show up. Every night they have to patrol the beach hourly (6pm -2am) to spot incoming turtles, and they are expected to trap feral cats and mongooses, but that’s about all they are required to do. I showed up right as they were about to head to a favorite freshwater swimming spot, formed by a water seep in the lava field alongside the beach. I followed the turtle folks to “the Crack” ( I swear, that’s what they call it), a hidden pond of brilliant turquoise water filled with large aggressive shrimp. While the rest of us swam, one turtle intern sat on the rocks, trying to integrate the word “cloaca” into a song she was writing about sea turtles. They do spend a lot of time on the beach with just the turtles.

I eventually wandered off to go explore the larger, saltier body of water and enjoyed my own private beach, complete with some coral and coconut palms, for the rest of the afternoon. Towards the late-ish end of the afternoon I decided I needed a coconut. I spent half an hour bashing at it with a stick to get it out of the tree, and then another half an hour smacking it against a rock to get it open. Yep, a university degree and I am pretty sure that my pathetic coconut attaining techniques would make me an outcast in early hominid society. As I sat on a rock along the wave’s edge, eating my coconut and watching the water slide up and down the white sand, I couldn’t help but think: this is awesome.

As the sun was setting I wandered back to the main beach. I strung my hammock above the sand between two palms and then joined the turtle crew for a few of their beach surveys. It was pretty late in the turtle nesting season, and unsurprisingly, there were no turtles (adults or hatchlings) to be seen. I retired to my hammock and swung to sleep under a spectacular starscape unmarred by the lights of civilization.
In the morning I flopped out of my hammock onto the sand, found a coconut, and ate it for breakfast while sitting on the lava rocks just beyond the water’s reach. I rolled up my hammock and sleeping bag and hiked two miles down the coast to another beach (Keauhou) where I found some of the most spectacular snorkeling I have ever seen. Surrounded by a protective circle of lava rock was a shallow lagoon carpeted in an incredible quilt of multicolored corals. The water was beautiful, the coral, pristine, and the fish shiny, but eventually it was time to head up the trail again for the ten mile hike back towards civilization, Monday, and the humdrum daily life on top of a sulfur-belching tropical volcano.

the sun came out, and my camera ran out of batteries, so here is a picture to illustrate what it was like. this is a very accurate rendering, or course.

gecko!

2008-10-22T22:59:00.000-07:00

2008-10-22T22:40:00.000-07:00

Cows are a serious field work hazard. Seriously.
We are doing a significant amount of our work mapping ant distributions on some property that used to be a cattle ranch and now belongs to the National Park. Despite no longer, technically, being a cattle ranch there is a surprisingly large population of cows roaming the premises. Sure, one cow isn’t so scary, but when you walk around a bend in the road and suddenly find 50 of them staring at you (and believe me, cows stare), then they are a little intimidating. So far they always run away, but what if one morning a cow woke up and realized, “Hey, I am bigger then a person!”. Suddenly the cows wouldn’t be running away, in fact, they might even be running towards me; and that is a scary thought.
An additional fun thing that comes with cows is fencing. Barbed wire is annoying, but fairly obvious. It’s the electric fences that you have to watch out for. You would think, being a Berkeley graduate and all, that I would be smart enough not to get shocked by the cow fence… that would, however, be an incorrect assumption. So, life is generally good, except that I manage to run into an electric cow fence about once a day. Which, amusing to me, I watch a cow jump clear over today. Clearly those fences are working.
And, if getting myself shocked by the fence wasn’t bad enough, today I got my boss shocked, too. I was setting out the baitcards for the ant survey and flagging each one. My boss was an hour behind, checking each card and removing the flagging. After five hours of this we reconvene and she looked a tad bit peeved.
Calmly she asked, “ are you mad at me?”.
My response “umm, no… why?”.
And her answer, “ Because you were tying your flagging tape to the electric fence.”
Oops? I guess I won’t be asking for a letter of recommendation any time soon…. In my defense, the fence is the most obvious place to tie the flagging, and my usual ant mapping partner has yet to complain about getting shocked by it.
In conclusion, I am not unsure which is the bigger fieldwork hazard, me or the cows.

Photographer to the instars

2008-10-19T20:46:00.000-07:00

Niche expansion in the common minivan

2008-10-15T19:26:00.000-07:00

The government has lots of rules that it expects its employees to follow. We use government vehicles for all fieldwork, and are allowed one trip into town a week, as long as we park discretely in places where we might, conceivably, be doing government business. Allowed: grocery store, post office, hospital, airport, etc. Not Allowed: Beaches, camp grounds, anywhere fun. It is all about image- you don’t want tax payers complaining that we are using government cars to go snorkeling.
After two weeks in Hawaii it was time to visit a beach. Three geology interns who couldn’t rent cars on their own were asking around for people who would be willing split costs but do the renting and driving. In theory the plan was great… which was how I ended up as the minivan chauffer for the weekend. Not complaining exactly, just next time I want to feel like a soccer mom/bus driver I will volunteer myself for another one of their trips. Ok, so that part sucked, but overall it was a great weekend because I got to swim with dolphins, see sea turtles, chase geckos, and visit some sweet beaches.
After an obligatory stop at Wal-mart (grumble, grumble goes the bus driver..) we headed out of Hilo towards beaches, turtles, and foot long centipedes. We visited the Black Sands Beach known as a good spot for Green Sea Turtles (Chelonia mydas).

True to its reputation there were a half dozen turtles basking on the sand, and several dozen tourists ogling at them. The green turtle s in Hawaii are unique in that they come onto the beach in the day to bask and rest. Signs quite clearly say to give the turtles at least 15 feet of space, but this is lost on most of the onlookers.

While it was amazing to get to see the turtles, right there, on the sand and in the water, it was also depressing and frustrating to watch people pester them. Sure, you can tell one person to back up and give the turtle space, and maybe they will even listen to you, but you can’t sit at the beach all day doing that. We joked that maybe next time we would bring our orange vests and radios and people would take us seriously. But even if that were to work for the few hours we were around, really, people just like harassing wild animals if they can. The only way to keep us from harassing the turtles would be to completely close the beach. Would I give up my privilege to see the turtles if it meant they would be spared the harassment of the general population? Yes, I think I would. But, I also think that that is really sad. Really, people, why can’t we appreciate the wildlife without poking it?

So, after a thought provoking visit to the Black Sands Beach we climbed back into the minivan and headed to South Point, the southernmost point in the US, where people like to jump off the cliffs into the water.

At this point we knew that we were close to the Green Sands Beach, which was our next beach going goal. Certain group members forgot to bring a map, or any directions to any of the places they want to go… so we asked some locals. “Just follow this “road” this way for a ways, you can’t miss it” . OK, it wasn’t really a road, and we were not driving a high clearance four wheel drive vehicle. This is where we expanded the niche of the minivan, and probably took a few years off my life. Thirty minutes of the sketchiest driving I have ever done and we made it to the beach trail head (which was also accessible by a nicely paved road…).

After a pretty 40 minute walk on cliffs above the water we reached a small beach with olive green sand. It was sort of pouring rain, but if you are already in the ocean a little more water can’t hurt! No snorkeling, but we played in the waves for while enjoying a nearly private beach with incredible views.
We eventually made it back to the car, had to navigate it across the series of dauntingly deep ditches that separated us from our paved exit route, and headed to our campground. After driving around lost and passing the campground entrance four times without finding it, we finally (after asking for directions) made it. We showed up well after dark and found the area occupied by a number of slightly shady vans that proceeded to come and go sporadically through out the whole night. Joe and I went off to search for geckos around the bathrooms. We found lots of geckos, and black widow spiders and foot long poisonous centipedes. Chasing the geckos was entertaining, and seeing the first huge centipede was exciting.

But then we saw another, and another, and then some deadly spiders, and then another centipede, and more spiders…. All in a twenty square foot area. When we shared our findings with the rest of the group suddenly everyone was sleeping in the minivan and I was left alone in my hammock outside. I was more concerned about the sketchy vans then the invertebrates, so by the time I watched the sun rise at 6:30 I had only had a few hours of sleep.
Loaded the kids back on the bus and headed on the next part of our great beach adventure. Of course we missed the turn for the beach they wanted because they didn’t know its name, but after stopping at a coffee shop we figured out where we were going (2.5 miles back down the road). We explored the City of Refuge, a historical and sacred area, and then headed next door to the beach for some snorkeling.

The snorkeling was great with healthy coral filled with fish and eels… and dolphins! The reef dropped off a few hundred meters off from the shore and in the deeper waters were dozens of spinner dolphins. I had an excellent time exploring the reef and swimming around with the dolphins for a couple of hours. The dolphins swam in either pairs or pods, occasionally with young, and every once in awhile one would jump completely out of the water and spin high in the air.

Back to the bus and on to Kona to do some final touristy things before heading back to Hilo. We visited the Kona Brewery , learned about beer making, tasted some beers (oh, wait, I am designated driver…. ), and bought some large jugs of brew to bring home. Leaving Kona around 7 we finally pulled into the park around 11.

It was quite an adventure, I think I will need a few weeks of work to recover from it.

2008-10-15T19:14:00.000-07:00

Loco Moco: rice topped with a hamburger patty, topped with gravy, topped with a fried egg. A "traditional" Hawaiian dish.

skink (Lampropholis delicata)from Hawai'i Volcano National Park. Not native to the islands, but still pretty.

Hakalau

2008-10-15T19:11:00.000-07:00

Work this week was great. We traveled to Hakalau, a bird reserve that is closed to the public, to do a monthly sampling of invertebrates living high up in the trees. Hakalau is probably some of the nicest remaining high elevation rain forest in Hawaii and is home to many of the highly endangered bird species. While I didn’t see anything extraordinarily rare and endangered (I was supposed to be insect searching, not bird watching!), it was hard to miss birds like the bright red I’iwi flitting around and feeding in the bright red blossoms of the Ohia trees. This was the prettiest area I have seen in Hawaii so far, and I forgot my camera. Luckily we will be traveling there every few weeks for bug work, so I should get a second chance to have a camera handy.
Work isn’t all frolicking around in the waist high grass of the rainforest understory. In fact, in Hakalau the work involves climbing from the understory up towards the canopy to collect insect samples from traps set 30-70 feet up in trees. Over the course of three days three of us climbed about 75 trees and collected samples from 100+ traps. The weather was amazing. Generally it rains continuously (something to do with being a rainforest), but we had sunny blue skies every day.
Walking between sites in the forest required some coordination and care as the ground was covered in (nonnative) grass that was several feet deep. From above, the grass looked fluffy and soft, but under the lush greenness was hidden fallen trees, rocks, and various other discrepancies in ground flatness. More than once I dodged a tree fern only to fall into an unseen hole, always while carrying a climbing rope, 20 gallon bucket containing samples, and an insect sweep net.
Now back home at the volcano I am getting better at my ant identification. Its simple: just follow a dichotomous key through characteristics like the number of nodes on the petiole, gaster constriction, carinate and reticulate frons, and adpressed setae (just to mention a few). Biologists love fancy big words. There is a whole dictionary of insect terminology and it now resides next to my microscope. Now I just need to figure out how to work this new vocabulary into daily conversation. (Nope, can't think of anything....)
In upcoming news: the great beach extravaganza, hopefully accompanied by some relevant photos.

On Wal-Mart, spam, and papayas

2008-10-06T23:17:00.000-07:00

At first glance these three nouns may appear completely unrelated, but actually, if you squint, tilt your head funny, and use a lot of my imagination, they are closely interconnected. Food is outrageously expensive in Hawaii; a loaf of white sandwich bread will run you over $5, a block of cheese runs 5-8$ (and this is not fancy cheese, we are talking about the basic white and orange types here). During our weekly grocery run to Hilo one of my housemates, Joe, wanted to go to Wal-mart to check out camping gear. While walking the half mile between the entrance and the camping gear we stumbled upon the food section and discovered cereal priced at only $3.50 a box. What a deal! This must be why people like this place so much. In addition to cheap fruit loops and a large variety of moderately priced junk food, Wal-mart also had a wide selection of spam.
The previous day I had told Joe that I would be willing to try spam if it came in turkey. Surprise surprise, Wal-mart offered whole cases of turkey spam. Not allowed to chicken (or should I say “spam”) out, I now have a tin of turkey spam sitting on my shelf. At only $2.00 it was a bargain, now I just have to eat it.
I survived my first encounter with Wal-mart, but what has that to do with papayas? According to Joe, Wal-mart is a lot like a papaya: both can be described with “not much going for it”. Another similarity: they are both cheap. Milk is $5 a gallon, but I can get five papayas for a dollar (that is 25 papayas for the price of one gallon of milk)! So, the same day I experienced Wal-mart I also bought myself a 20 cent papaya. I ate half the thing and gave up; one of my house mates finished it for me. Next week, I will buy another papaya, I will eat it, and maybe I will like it. If not, there is always the week after, and the week after that....

2008-10-03T23:10:00.000-07:00

petroglyph in the pahoehoe lava

road closed due to lava, that plume in the background is from lava hitting the water.

A week in Hawaii, and this is as close as I have gotten to the beach (yep, that's a cliff)

It’s 5 o clock on Friday and I have just finished my first week of work. Of course, when I say work I really mean crashing through underbrush in search of elusive and invasive ants. Mapping the ant presence around the park is our main goal, however little things like rain and high sulfur dioxide levels periodically force us into retreat, back to the comforts of lab: microscopes and all the frozen ants you can key out and count.
Assuming you are now wondering how one maps ants, it goes something like this:
Two people pick a transect to do together. The first person sets out armed with tuna fish goo (aka ant bait) and bait cards and sets a station every 100 meters. An hour later person #2 comes along and checks the bait cards and the surrounding area for ants. Any ants silly enough to be lurking around are sucked up with an “aspirator” into a vial and returned to lab to be identified. In this age of modern technology, our ant collection device is basically a bottle with a cork and two drinking straws sticking out of the top. Point one straw at the ant and suck on the other, and if you are lucky, the ant goes into the bottle. I have yet to swallow an ant, but it is only a matter of time and uncoordination until the inevitable happens.
Our primary transect area is full of pokey bushes and a a lava fields. On these sites person #1 gets to carry a machete and look like an adventurer on safari (ant safari, that is). While the second person doesn’t get to carry a big sharp knife, the orange vests and army surplus pants we all wear are enough to convince most onlookers that we must be doing real science (and know the directions to any trail in the park). The transects full of unpleasant plants and lava have a tendency to be in the path of the vog. Vog…. Volcanic fog: heavy on the rotty egg stench with an essence of headache. When the vog comes creeping in we go running out. This has been the story for the last two days, so instead of mapping the shrub land we have been mapping the trails around the main park area (ie where all the tourists hang out). This makes for excellent fieldwork. We walk on nice trails and get to see cool things like smoking calderas while searching for ants and looking official in our orange vests and camo pants.
Today, as person #2 in the ant survey, I had to wait for an hour to hit the trail. Conveniantly, the lava tube was a half mile away. LAVA TUBES ARE AWESOME!!!!! I jogged over to the lava tube and as I crested the top of the trail I found myself facing four school buses, three tour buses, and a small squadron of minibuses. OK, so I was going to have to share the lava tube with the tourists. The first section was well lit, and full of shrieking running kids, still cool though. After ~200 meters the first section ended with a large hole and some concrete stairs back into the tree ferns, Ohia trees, and non-native ginger plants. On the other side of the stairs was a gate, allowing entrance into the rest of the (unlit) lava tube. Out comes my headlamp and in I go!

After the family with three small shouting boys realized the sign was serious when it said flashlights necessary, I had the whole lava tube to myself. At fifty meters in the sounds of the outside world had faded and were replaced by the chimes of water drops falling from above. The beam of my light made every surface glisten, the translucent tips of forming stalactites sparkled a few feet above my head, like an oddly claustrophobic night’s sky. I turned my light off and it was perfectly dark as the chorus of droplets rained to the floor around me. Yeah, it was really, really, cool. I think I will go again tomorrow. My lava tube exploration was cut short because I had to return to our transect exactly an hour after my partner began setting it. As I walked out of the tube, towards the growing light of the entrance, I heard excited calls of “oh, look, someone is down there!” I was greeted by a gang of plastic poncho clad onlookers, staring quizzically down at me; and I wasn’t even wearing my orange vest!

The ferns here have the coolest fiddle heads. I now have a very large collection of out of focus fern pictures.

Made it to Hawai'i

2008-09-28T16:38:00.000-07:00

I flew into Kona on Friday night, stayed at a hostel, then caught the bus at 6:30am to go to Hilo on the other side of the island. Sure, they have flights straight to Hilo, but I figured the $500 I saved flying into Kona could be better spent on other things (like food..... wow is that expensive!). I met another intern in Hilo, did my grocery shopping for the week, then headed to the park.
I am sharing a house with the other ant interns (there are three of us) and next door are the "Turtles" (the turtle monitoring volunteers), and down the road are some bat folks, bug folks, Lava house, veg people, and so on. It is a mini subdivision of science nerds!
As promised, I am taking pictures and I might even post them at some later time. Work starts on Monday, at which time I will have lots to talk about, but likely be too busy to do so.
And, speaking of busy, I have a hammock to go hang up and take a nap in...

a website!

2008-09-12T00:41:00.000-07:00

I now have a website for those nerdy herpetology cartoons I spent most of my physics class drawing. I am learning html.......

http://sweinstein.revealedsingularity.net/

Israel 2008

2008-01-07T17:39:00.000-08:00

(1)In Tel Aviv, outside the building where Israel declared independence.
(2) Overlooking the Old City of Jerusalem

(3)The view from Yad Vashem, in Jerusalem. The Old City is visible on the far side of the fog.

(4)Camels!!! After sitting around a campfire and serenading the desert to the wee small hours of the morning, we retired to our bedouin tent for the remaing three hours of the night. Breakfast at sunrise, followed by camel rides in the desert. Nothing like big, slobbering, chomping camel teeth inches from your backside.

(5)The view from the hotel patio in Tel Aviv.
Looking out from a former military bunker in the Golan Heights. Syria is visible in the distance.

The desert

A little frisbee throwing on the shore of the Red Sea

The start of my senior year... it's November already?

2007-11-24T16:53:00.000-08:00

I made it home from Costa Rica and suddenly all communication stopped…. It’s not you, it’s me, I swear.
It has been one crazy semester. I discovered, for the first time in my life, that my time can not be infinitely subdivided. Unfortunately I didn’t realize this until after it was too late to drop a few of the 19 course units I had signed up for. So, my excuse for dropping off the edge of the virtual world is 4 courses, senior thesis research, ultimate Frisbee, lab work, Co-op house work, and a wee bit of homework.
This semester I signed up for Evolution, Biomechanics, Plants and Fungi, and Statistics (listed in order of increasing distain). Actually, Evolution and Biomechanics have turned out to be pretty interesting classes. Even the plants and fungi class, once we moved beyond the life cycles of various colored algae, turned out to be alright. But that leaves statistics…… (gag, cough, retch) I should really clarify, I don’t hate statistics as a subject, I just despise my class and feel that nearly every minute I sit in that desk is a minute of my life I am going to wish I had back in about 70 years. This class has been going since august and it took us until chapter 22, last week, to learn about P-values and confidence intervals. I think it is great when professors take time to explain the material, but this is just absurd! The rumor has it that we might make it to t-tests by the end of the semester, but I wont hold my breath.
In addition to “normal” classes I have been spending a decent chunk of my time working on an independent research project (code named Project Salamander Fungus, not to be confused with various other shenanigans such as Project Potato Power -aka taking over the world one starchy tuber at a time). Anyways, I still manage to spend my time tromping through mud in the pouring rain looking for dirt brown colored salamanders on brown dirt. The results of my summer work were pretty cool, and I was able to present a poster at a conference in Arizona earlier this month. The conference was neat and I learned a lot. Possibly the most amusing part of the weekend was when I ended up stranded in the hotel lobby for almost 4 hours because the rest of my group hadn’t made it to the hotel yet. It wouldn’t have mattered at all, except my bags were with them, so I didn’t really have any entertainment. Four hours: I tested out most of the chairs, coerced one of the desk clerks into letting me play with the gecko, took a nap by the pool, scouted out the first floor of the hotel, retested the chairs…. It was quite a way to spend an afternoon.
I returned from the conference Tuesday night for a really enjoyable midterm on the life cycles of various colored algae on Wednesday morning. I was there and ready to take the test at 9am, unfortunately the professor had sort of completely forgotten. Ooops.
Don’t despair, we rescheduled and a mere three hours later I was able to showoff my quasi-impressive knowledge of when Volvox sp. is haploid and diploid.
The next week I had two delightful midterms: evolution and biomechanics, on the same day. It was nearly painless, except for that time when I almost didn’t make it to my evolution midterm because I didn’t know what building it was in… oops. I was in the bio building, where I had assumed the test would be, and I ran into another student who was panicking because she couldn’t find the test. To her dismay, I didn’t know where the test was either, but thirty seconds of near-panic later another classmate walked by and divulged the secrete midterm location. So, we all made it to the test. Hurrah!
Finals don’t start for another few weeks, so thanksgiving almost feels like a holiday. Except for that homework.

I am going to try to restart this whole bloggermajig. We will have to see how it goes. Amusing things still seem to happen on an hourly basis: chasing escaped frogs across the animal care room, discovering that the house foosball schedule conflicts with my bedtime schedule, cooking dinner for 40 on 6 hours notice…. All good stuff, and potential fodder for my keyboard.

My Summer

2007-07-22T21:24:00.000-07:00

Wow…
It’s been quite a while since I last wrote something and pasted it here. Of course I could blame this sudden burst of babble on great literary influences or other such impressive notions, but that would be lying. Really, the only reason I suddenly feel the urge to write is because I have two hours to wait until it is my turn to read the house copy of Harry Potter and I currently have nothing better to do. I mean, it’s not like I could be doing anything productive, like laundry, right now; though I do think that pile of dirty clothing in the corner may have mutated into a member of the order Xenarthra and be slowly advancing across the room towards me.
So, asides from wrestling children’s book away from my equally mature housemates, what have I been up to this summer?
Errrrrr… being a scientist? Yeah, that sounds good…. Mmmmm…. Science.
No, really, I am playing scientist this summer, I even got me one of those mythical, magical, mysterious entities know as “grants” (evil cackling goes here). While still in Costa Rica I applied for summer research funding and someone in an office of money related matters must have liked my proposal (I bet they were awed by my impressive command of English grammar). So here I am in Berkeley for the summer with a large but dwindling pile of salamanders.
Yep, the salamanders and I get a lot of quality time together, because not too many other folks are around Berkeley this summer, bummer. The unfortunate salamanders that I am studying seem to have run into a nasty infectious amphibian fungus, that, preliminary results show quite conclusively, greatly reduces their success at staying alive. I think I can sum up my current research results as intellectually exciting, but emotionally depressing.
But enough about science, research, and salamanders; as astounding as it may sound, there is actually more to my life then those. I am still playing Ultimate, but on a pretty mellow team this summer. We practice two to three times a week unless we get chased of our field by a horde of several hundred summer camp kids. You would be surprised at how often that happens.
Living in a an urban setting like the Bay Area really makes you appreciate nature, especially when “nature” presents itself as a dead vole that needs to be turned into a museum specimen. And this brings me to another activity that I seem to have acquired; working at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology on campus skinning and stuffing small mammals. It is pretty much taxidermy for research purposes. Weird, smelly, usually slightly gross, but also kinda cool in a very twisted rat brains on my t-shirt sort of way. I think this will really be a skill that will give me that extra boost needed in today’s competitive job market.
That pretty much sums up the more odd bits of my life right now. Really there is nothing more of interest to discuss. My social life is really not something that anyone would find the least bit entertaining; especially not that part about a boy….

2007-05-24T13:06:00.000-07:00

Even more pictures, because uploading is so much faster here then it was down there.
doing some fieldwork up in a tree, the trail in the cloudforest behind the station, a lot of dirty wet shoes, and a great lake for swimming as long as you don't mind leeches

Photos!

2007-05-24T12:53:00.000-07:00

More Costa Rica pics... Dendrobates pumillio, Epidendron radicans, doing some hardcore birding, and baby hummingbirds in a nest

I lost my camara but found some shiny frogs

2007-05-24T11:24:00.000-07:00

I am now back in the states, home in Santa Barbara. My last few days in Costa Rica were a whirlwind of adventure from Monteverde, to Arenal, to San Jose. After a hectic day of turning in final papers, finding missing socks, and packing overstuffed suitcases we all found ourselves on the trailhead to Arenal (big active volcano!)at 8am on Friday.
We were given ample time to say our goodbyes to the cloudforest as we spent 6 hours hiking through it in our usual sodden state. The recent arrival of the rainy season had turned most of the trails to mush and much of the hiking was actually sliding through foot deep mud.
So much mud calls for special consideration, care... and mud-ball fighting.
We eventually emerged from the forest, soaking wet and covered in mud, took a boat across Lake Arenal, and found ourselves once more in civilization. Big volcanoes make for big tourist stops.
We stayed at a big goofy hotel complete with a light up waterfall shaped like a volcano and a bunch of sketchy water slides. If the hotel wasn't enough, that night we went to hot springs. It was pretty funny to see the faces of the other people at the pools when thirty college students showed up and headed straight for the bar.
The next morning we eventually rolled out bed, were herded onto a bus, and went careening across Costa Rica back to San Jose. We had one last night of group togetherness and flying through large Central American cities in seatbeltless taxi cabs, and then it was Sunday morning. The end. sniff sniff, sob sob.
My flights back to the states were completely uneventful. I had my major reverse culture shock in the Dallas Airport when I paid three bucks for a cup of coffee. Three dollars! I could get a whole meal, and a drink, and probably dessert for that! Nothing like Starbucks to say "welcome back to the states"

2007-05-16T21:45:00.000-07:00

Well, my project is done... ok, that's a lie... I still have to edit my attempt at translating my abstract into spanish. definitly a project for tomorrow. Tomorrow, thursday is our last day in Monteverde... for now but hopefully not forever. Today a few of us hiked up to the continental divide (it only takes an hour to get there from the station). As I stood watching the clouds roll from the Atlantic to Pacific slopes of Costa Rica it finally sank in that the semester is almost over. wierd. Ok, enough with the quasi sentimental bullshit, time for some funny stories about the idiotic things I have done lately...
So, we are tromping through the elfin forest up at 1800 m when suddenly I realize that the results to this paper I had to read about 15 times to understand could really be best summarized in a song. So, sliding through the mud while simultaneously singing about global warming and amphibian decline... and if you think that is bad, shortly thereafter we composed a song about how predation and herbivory drive speciation.
ACCCCCKKKKK BIOLOGY IS TAKING OVER MY BRAIN!!!!
In other news...
I still can't figure out how so much water can fall from the sky. Every afternoon it is like some one turns on the faucet and suddenly the whole world is soggy. And then we get the lightening. I got accused of being undeniable odd yesterday for sitting with my computer near a window, with the lights out, so i could write my paper and watch the lightening at the same time. I guess I never said I was normal.
It's funny, when I finally have the time and energy to sit and write something there is really nothing to write about. Actually, this is not so surprising because usually the things that are interesting to write about are also the things that make me pass out with my shoes still on at 7pm. Really, for a while I was on a grandma schedule; waking up at 5:30am and going to bed before 8pm.
ok, time to meander my way to bed... tomorrow is my last day and i have lot of souvenirs to buy.

where has my time (and my socks) gone?

2007-05-13T15:46:00.000-07:00

long time, no write...
Life here has been super busy as our semester comes to an end. independent projects are wrapping up, all field work is done, data analyzed, and first drafts turned in. It turns out that moss photosynthetic pigment ratios can change along a natural vertical grandiant... or in english... the thingies in moss are different depending on how high up in the tree you climb to find it. Yep. that was three weeks well spent.
Yes, on paper I may have the boringest project ever, but the field work ROCKED. Some of the trees we climbed were incredible. Though most were between 30 and 40 feet, a few were as tall as 60. It is an incredible feeling to sit IN the canopy, in the crown of a tree, and look out and down at the rest of the forest. So, it looks like i can now add tree climbing to my resume, its a very useful skill to have.
Stuff here is winding down, well perhaps that isnt a good description... It is more like suddenly everyone realizes that we have a week left, a million things to do, and a sucky-ass final report to write like we were real scientists. Sleeping is currently not part of the time table. Sanity and logic both got misplaced (I like the spanish way of saying this : se me perden.... "my things got lost but it is their fault not mine...") at approximatly the same time that the computer frying lightening storms started. At the first sound of thunder the estacion bursts with activity like a disturbed ant farm as everyone runs about trying to disconnect anything electronic. And then comes the rain...
Rainy season has started. My laundry will never be dry again. I guess i will just extricate the mushrooms from my ears when i get back to the crispy dry lands of california. Despite the pervasive dampness, rain can be fun. One night some of us decided it would be a good idea to walk to a concert/bar in the pouring rain. Not only did we arrive dripping, but i added a little extra decoration to my clothes in the form of mud. A mile from home, but still a mile from the bar, i tried to move off the road for a coming car, except where I stepped turned out to no longer be road... splash , thud.
Ok, i have a paper of mossy doom to finish, yuck. This painful assignment is the cause of my first, and only, bout of home sickness... midnight last night... " I hate moss, I want my mommy, and I am going to bed!
sometimes I feel like such a grown up, like that time (last night) when I instigated an invisible machete fight with flashlights.

when slingshots don't work, throw rocks

2007-04-16T16:06:00.000-07:00

My adventures with my "research" project continue. My project has now turned into looking a photosynthetic pigments in moss along a height gradient up a tree, because pretty much every tree has moss. Climbing trees is really really cool. Unfortunatly, rigging them to climb is really really difficult.
How to rig a tree:
Take a small roundish object, tie a string to it.
Take slingshot, try to shoot roundish object over desired branch
repeat 100-500 times until object goes over branch and falls all the way to the other side
Do happy happy dance
tie slightly larger rope to string, drag over branch
tie climbing rope to first rope, pull over branch
think about climbing......

My slingshot skills have drastically improved, but this is still a bit time consuming (it took two days to rig one tree). One of the TAs came out with us this afternoon to try to impart some tree rigging secrets. It turns out that throwing rocks might actually work better then the slingshots... except i am a girl and can't throw. With the slingshot i can shoot something up about 60 feet, when i throw the rock it goes up maybe 15 feet... embarassing!
So we climbed our first tree, it was amazing, sitting 50 feet up on the canopy... so cool! I got my first set of samples (little baggies of moss) and figured out how to process them. Four hours later I had ony two samples to finish and they locked the door to the room where i was storing them. I guess that's one way to tell me to get out of the lab and get a life!
In other exciting news... my homestay mom and I have reached a food truce. She now only gives me enough food for two people (instead of 8) and in return I eat it all. It turns out there is only so much fried food one can eat before wanting to curl up in a ball and puke.... here is a normal breakfast: some combination of fried rice, fried plantains, fried cheese, eggs scrambled in oil, toast coated in butter, some fruit, and coffee. mmmmm fried food.
When not eating liquid fats I spend time playing with my new "sister". She and her 8 year old cousin spend hours devising imaginary games that involve elaborate story lines and somehow require my presence. Having the rules of some complicated game yelled at you simultaneously in spanish by two kids is a great way to learn spanish.

slingshots suck

2007-04-13T10:51:00.000-07:00

We made it back to Monteverde, where they promptly dumped us off with homestay families. My family seems nice. On my first day I met about 30 different people, all of who were some how related (my cousin's sister's, youngest daughter....). I have a 5 year old "sister" who is enthralled by my flashlight and intent on preventing any sort of studying I might want to do. My "mom" seems to think I don't eat enough, which might explain why she gives me enough food for 6 people, at every meal.
Life is pretty interesting, my alarm clock... aka the rooster next door.... goes off at 4:30. My family gets up around 5:30, and we have all had breakfast and left the house by 6:45am. I make it up to the station around 8, and then try to work on my independent project.
Ahh, the projects:
mine is on changes in photosynthetic pigments in a plant (i cant figure out which one) going up a tree. So far, no data. My first day was spent learning how to climb trees, and more importatnly, how to get back down. Going up is pretty easy (Jumars!), going down isn't so bad (repelling with a figure 8 device), but swiching between the two at the top of the tree is a little tricky. So I spent most of wednesday hanging three feet off the ground from a tree in front of the station, practicing with the gear... in the pouring rain. Thursday was even less productive. To get up a tree you first have to rig the tree. rigging a tree involves using a sling shot to shoot a metal weight with a string over a branch 100 feet up in the canopy. 6 hours of mosquito bites and tangled fishing line later, still no rigged tree. Oh, and the plant I was planning on studying actually doesnt grow in the area with the trees we are going to climb. So, I can now use jumars, shoot a slingshot, and, ummm, thats about it.
lunch time....

2007-04-07T22:11:00.000-07:00

John and Erik: Preparing for some very intense caving

A view of bird island

A few more photos for your viewing pleasure.

2007-04-07T12:23:00.000-07:00

We have just returned from an extended fieldtrip and I seem to remember promising to update this blog at some point. So, here it is, 2+ weeks of our adventures, somewhat faithfully recorded and then sloppily transcribed onto a computer. If I can give you six pages of prose you could at least send me a two letter email that says “Hi” (not that I am bitter or anything…).
Enjoy my grammar-less ramblings!

Penas blancas
We hiked out of Monteverde, over the continental divide to Pen_as Blancas (translates to white cliffs, though I never did see any of those) where we camped for four days. The hike was beautiful, all 6 dripping hours of it. We stopped for lunch along a river and it was a great, albeit chilly, place for a swim. I put my backpack on again and then proceeded to slosh my way up the trail for several more hours. All in all an excellent day.

Penas Blancas Dia dos
We woke up to the sound of pouring rain beating on the metal roof. So much for that 6am bird watching we had planned. We sat on the porch with our coffee and watched two scarlet rumped tanagers flap wetly between the distant trees. We had lecture for a few hours while hoping the rain would let up: how to tell the difference between the aracae genera. At 10am the rain showed no signs of relenting and the powers above (aka the professor) announced it was time to go see some plants in the field (which was quickly becoming a swamp).
Off we trudged and learned. After lunch we went on a second hike in the rainforest. I have decided I really like the rainforest, in fact it may be my favorite place ever.
Dinner was an adventure: spaghetti with tomato sauce, beans, and rice. Really, it isn’t a meal if there aren’t beans and rice. After dinner we headed back into the forest for a little frog hunting. It was funny to see 20 people stomping together by the light of their headlamps, because usually I go out at night with just a few others. There were fewer frogs then hoped (one live and one dead) but I felt special because I saw a norops and a Fer-de-Lance (my first Terciopelo!) and that makes it a two snake day because I also found a cute little rear fanged snake on our afternoon hike. I was looking for salamanders but all I got was a snakes, that we played with and later found out were slightly venomous. Anyways, the Fer-de -Lance was intense. There were just two of us left on the nighthike and the other guy was ahead of me on the trail. He took a step and I looked down to see this brown patterned snake with a triangular head right in front of me on the trail, which then prompted me to say, very intelligently: “snake, snake, ummm… I think that’s a Fer-de-Lance”. Pretty much awesome. Why must dangerous things be so beautiful?
Other exciting bits of that day: learning how to play chess. I am proud of myself because I now know the names of the pieces and how to set up the board. At this point I have yet to make it to the end of a game (free time is limited) but I am very excited at this newly acquired hobby.

Penas Blancas: day 3
Yesterday was fungus diversity day. We spent the first few morning hours being lectured to about various fungus forms and were then sent out into the rainforest on a fun filled fungus finding adventure. While searching for assorted fungus forms (polypores, birds nest fungus, etc) I found a very nifty green snake, and of course I didn’t have my camera, and the nine people who walked by also didn’t have cameras. We were pretty sure that the snake was a colubred, but after it attempted to strike at us a few times we decided not to mess with it. A bit later I found a three legged frog that I decided would be safer then a snake to bring back for show and tell. When I made it back to camp my tales of an orange eyed green snake were completely over shadowed because some of the guys had caught a large coral snake mimic and were showing it off. Apparently I am a wimp for not picking up a snake that wanted to eat me. Ha.
In other exciting news, we were given some free time in the afternoon and one of the TAs announced she was going to a waterfall only 45 minutes away. Two hours and several submersions in the river later we made it to the waterfall. It was gorgeous even if I was soaked head to toe before ever going swimming.
Another round of rice and beans for dinner (rice and beans must be served at every meal, or else) and then off on another night hike. This one was optional and only 6 students really felt like slogging our way through the swamp for the 4th time in one day. It was worth it I think: a coral snake, a toad, some froggies, and an assortment of nifty arthropods. At the incredibly late hour of 9:30 we stumbled our way back into camp where most of the group proceeded to mock me for accessorizing my rain pants with an ample quantity of duct tape. Some people, and by that I mean me, just shouldn’t bother with rain pants , this is the second pair I have ripped this year. I think I may give up on the duct tape and amuse myself with the knowledge that I am the sole owner of a pair of rain chaps.

Penas Blancas: day 4
Butterfly diversity day
I am a failure as a butterfly catcher. To learn about butterfly families we were given nets and sent into the forest. When we met to compare our spoils of butterfly battle my single catch looked pretty measly compared to the 5-6 most other folks brought in. On a positive note, I did discover that butterfly nets can be used to catch lizards.
We IDed our butterflies, released them, and then had a painfully long lecture on the families and subfamilies of Lepidoptera. I think I can cross butterfly-ologist off my list of future careers. In the afternoon we had time to plan our independent projects and consult with a prof. Unfortunately after meeting with our rather critical prof most of us felt like a) crying b)feeding self to jaguarondi or c) not wanting to do a project. None of those were really viable options so most of us just moped around instead. After dinner, mac and cheese with rice and beans, we went out to harass the local herps, yet again. Two hours and three frogs later we realized we were exhausted and the 4 of us treked back to camp. When we arrived at the oh-so late hour of 10 everyone else was asleep.

Day 5
6 am breakfast: we are like a pack of starving locusts, if you aren’t at the table when it is served then you don’t get any food. So I fought my mosquito net, escaped and went to breakfast. An hour later we had all been prodded out the door, packs on, marching to Poco Sol. We had a glorious, but as usual, muddy, 8 hour hike to the other edge of Bosque Eterno de los Nin_os. About an hour away from the Poco Sol station we started to fantasize about what treats the prof who was meeting us there was going to bring. Topping the list were guacamole, hummus, clean clothes, and beer. None of these were available, however he did show up with a large box of assorted sugar forms and we happily foraged for at least an hour. In other exciting news, I lost a chess game in four moves and had my first encounter with leeches.
There is a lake near the station we are staying at and we all jumped in because murky lakes are just as good as soapy showers. After I climbed out of the water I looked down at my toes and there were leeches, cute little leeches, but still leeches. Though, in short time I was leech free and on my way.
After dinner the powers above deemed it to be an excellent time for an ornithology lecture. I passed out shortly after the diagrams of avian respiratory systems and got poked awake an hour later to hear the recordings of local bird calls. Oh, the embarrassment… night lectures, 14 hours after waking up, after a 9 hour hike, just don’t agree with me.

Day 6 Poco Sol
6 am bird watching. Oh yeah. I actually don’t dislike bird watching, in fact, compared to most of the folks in the group I appear down right enthusiastic about the topic. After some quality time with an assortment of tanagers there was breakfast, and more lecture. We were released from learning at noon and given until 4 to harass the rainforest as we pleased. I set out with a few other folks in search of a waterfall. While passing the lake I caught a really pretty frog (Rana warswitcheii, I can’t spell….) that had almost iridescent green splotches down its back. We also found two Eleutherodactylus fitzingeri sitting on eggs clusters under a log. Still not a salamander, but very cool. I am starting to think that I am destined to never find a salamander, but in the process of looking I find a lot of other interesting things.
Back to the waterfall walk: The trail ended at a drop off looking across a gorge. Through the vines we could see a huge waterfall with its white sprays of mist highlighted on a background of brilliant forest green. Glorious. We briefly, very briefly, attempted to bush whack our way down there, but gave up after reaching another cliff edge 30 meters down.
The trail back passed below a giant tree dripping with Oropendula nests. These noisy birds weave together their teardrop shaped nests in clusters 50m up in a tree crown. And then they squabble and croon amongst each other in a cacophony of squawks and hanging upside down babbles. When we reconvened for more learning we had another lengthy bout of birding and were then released for dinner.
After dinner we had a statistics lecture. We were terrified of the thought of a three hour lecture; luckily this was not the case. We did a linear regression comparing our individual rum rankings to the nasty alcohols’ price. Ten samples of rum later (during which most of us decided we like statistics, but didn’t like rum) our lecture relocated to a campfire and the festivities, and rum sampling, continued to escalate. Several hours of ¨statistics¨ induced, off key singing later….

Day 7: Poco Sol to Tirimbina
No one made it out of bed for 6 am birding this morning. Most of us stumbled out of our mosquito nets around 7 because the threat of a missed meal was more terrifying then the act of waking up. After our morning dose of rice and beans we learned a pile of new plant species and had a lecture on bats. At noon we said goodbye to Poco Sol and deposited ourselves and our mud covered belongings into the back of some very sketchy pickup trucks. For the next hour we bumped and jostled our way out of the mountains, stopping once at a bridge to walk across so the trucks would be light enough to cross. We eventually hit a paved road, got ice cream, and met up with the bus. Along the drive we stopped for ice cream again (one of our profs really likes ice cream I think). We also took a few minutes to walk around an arts and culture faire that was happening in the town square. While checking out the handicrafts we encountered some of the most terrifying clowns known to existence. We are fairly sure that some of the most frightening we, in fact, women, which refutes our hypothesis that clowns reproduce through binary fission and popcorn shaped spores. Yep, we are nerds… we actually had a lengthy dinner conversation about what our favorite chemical reactions were.
Anyways, we made it to Tirimbina and there was much excitement over showers, sheets, and semi-clean clothes. On an amusing note, we finally had access to ¨The Savage Book¨ (pretty much the golden bible of all things scaly and slimy in Costa Rica) and had time to look up some of the critters we had annoyed in the past week. We discovered that the striped snake we had all played with was a colubred, but a rear fanged venomous one. Woops. We also read up on the nesting frogs. It turns out that the last/only other report of that was from 1930, and counting the eggs in those two nests might have made a note or something. I guess this is a good reason to never go anywhere with out the Savage book.
So, Tirimbina is supposedly stuffed full with highly poisonous snakes. We were expecting great things from the two days spent there…. Bushmasters??? Alas no

Day 8: Tirimbina
Today we hiked across the Tirimbina reserve. We started at the field station and hiked down into the rainforest. As usual, we slogged through mud and learned new plant species. It was a very nice, but very wet hike. I am now fairly certain that my raincoat was lying when it said waterproof. On a positive note, my hiking boots were dry for the first time since day one in Pen_as Blancas. I forgot how nice it feels to not squelch my way down the trail.
In the afternoon we had a lecture on tent-making bats. The most entertaining part of the lecture was when our prof, who was translating for the folks who don’t understand Spanish, misheard the speaker and with a bemused look announced that some bats can modify thermal vents to use as nests (what was actually said was termite nests). After that I stayed awake to learn what other unexpected things bats could do. After the bat lecture we went off into the forest to look for some bat tents. Actually, we just followed our lecturer, who showed off one of the tents/bat groups he was currently studying. It was really cool, we looked under a heliconia leaf (like a banana tree) to see three cute fuzzy white bats.
Conveniently located in the same area as the sleepy little bats was a nicely swampy frog ridden patch. A few of us spent several entertaining minutes chasing poison dart frogs around the woods (Dendrobates pulmillio: bright red and blue, only sorta toxic). After our bat hunt we headed down to the river where the more adventurous members of the group jumped into the frighteningly green and murky water. Ok, I am a wimp, and for once I just didn’t feel like getting wet.
Additional excitement of the day: bullet ants, giant ants named for their painful sting that apparently feels like getting hit with a bullet. For this reason three folks in the group decided it would be a good idea to harass these relatively mellow ants into stinging/biting them. 10 hours later they were all still sort of whimpering. Note to self: never mess with a bullet ant.
Anyways, after bats and bullet ants we bounced our way back to the station (via taxi vans) for dinner and lecture… the effects of pineapple plantations on Costa Rican ecology. As interesting as evil fruit corporations may be, sitting still for lecture gave me time to realize how many really itchy bites I had. It’s probably my own fault, I was too lazy to put up my mosquito net the night before. Sooooo itchy, soooo very itchy. I started to feel sorry for myself and then looked across the table at one of the bullet ant victims and suddenly didn’t feel so bad.

Day 9: Tirimbina
What I thought was a few mosquito bites turned out to be several hundred chigger bites. Everywhere. It made for a very itchy day. While not attempting to tear my skin off I tried to look interested in the pineapple plantation and managed forest our “humans in the tropics” class was visiting. The lectures and papers for that class are painful but the field trips do tend to be interesting. Quite randomly, the pineapple plantation is owned by The Collin Street Bakery, a Texas fruitcake company that mom used to get fruitcakes from every holiday season: small world. The managed forest was interesting. By mapping out and carefully selecting which trees to cut the foresting company is actually able to maintain an okay looking forest.
After dinner we had a “talent Show” which eventually digressed into the standard revelry and insanity.

Day 10: To Panama
After a late night of much excitement we all had to be up at 5:45 to pack and leave for Panama. Miraculously, at 7:30 all bags were packed and loaded, and so were we. Reunited with the bus we went careening down the Atlantic side of Costa Rica. Lunch (pizza) took place on a beach that was vaguely reminiscent of Dr. Seuss’ Truffula tree forest. All the trunks of the numerous palm trees were painted in a variety of shiny bright colors: a little weird, but very cool. After lunch, which for some inexplicable reason, half the folks didn’t want to eat, we continued barreling on to Panama. We came to the border at around 2 and proceeded to jump through metaphorical hoops for the next hour. Eventually passports had been stamped, copied, stamped again, and checked a 4th time, and we were allowed to continue. At this border crossing Costa Rica and Panama are separated by a rickety bridge that makes disturbing creaks while being walked across and distressed grumbles and squawks under the weight of a bus. The bridge stayed put, and we entered panama, where they once again ordered us to show our passports.
Not too much later we made it to the Bocas del Toro harbor, juggled our stuff from bus to boat, and head to Bocas del Drago on Isla del Colon (in Bocas del Toro province, Bocas del Toro region, and near the city of Bocas del Toro… not at all confusing). On the ride I thought the prof said “don’t put your hands in the water… there are piranhas”. Not quite, there are certainly no piranhas, just “poop”. Ok, gross.
We eventually made it out into the poop free waters of the archipelago, set up our bug nets, and called it a night.

Day 11: Panama
I woke up bright and early to the sound of one of my bunkmate’s sandy flip flops noisily smacking across the floor: it’s becoming a daily ritual. The morning was spent learning new Atlantic side, Panama species. Some new trees, biting sand flies, and a unique color morph of the local poison dart frogs. Our afternoon homework assignment was to read a chapter in our reader on marine diversity and spend at least 30 minutes snorkeling. After skimming over the names of all the marine critter orders I went splashing into the bathtub temperature water of the Caribbean. We all meandered through the meadows of sea grass and islands of slightly bashed coral to see some shiny fish and other creatures… like fireworms (why must such tactile-y painful things look so tantalizing to touch?)
After diner we had a lecture on coral reef ecology and I stayed awake the whole time… I am so proud of myself.

Day 12: Panama: A day on the water
We headed out onto the reef at 8am with snorkels and sun block in hand. We baked for several hours in the morning, and then several more in the afternoon whole admiring the shiny, squishy critters under the sea. One of the interesting places we swam in the afternoon was along the mangroves. The sea bottom was covered with hundreds of jellyfish that sometime back in their evolution got confused, flipped onto their backs, and settled into the murk with their tentacles waving up in the water like a frilly anemone. These jellies sat quite peacefully on the bottom until someone didn’t watch where they kicked their fins and suddenly the water was filled with sediment and floating balls of potential pain. EEK! Also cool: big stingrays.
Other interesting notes: I learned how to play dominoes, the big kid way with multiples of 5. And, the island we are on has very limited fresh water (drinking water only). The ocean is our bathtub… who needs salt for a tequila shot when you can just lick yourself?

Day 12: Panama: of biggish cities and bat caves
In the morning we were turned loose in the city of Bocas del Toro, a bumpy 45 minute drive to the other side of the island. With commands of “ be back by two” and “make sure you are sober for lecture at 7” we wandered off into the maze of tourist stalls, bars, and other assorted entertainment. After two hours I was in possession of a woven bag and a traditional beaded bracelet and it was time to find some internet. Fun stuff… looks like Berkeley will let me back in next semester. Excellent.
After our brush with civilization we retreated back into the wilderness to check out some bat caves. The first cave we splashed through was an educational experience with hundreds of sleepy, annoyed, bats roosting in the stalactites above our heads. Very cool (I seem to find myself saying that a lot these days). The adventure in the second cave was more for the fun of goofing around in caves then bat viewing. We spent a very enjoyable hour wading through waist deep water and slipping across bat guano. Once again, very cool…. I think I might like caving.
We emerged, covered in muck, squeezed into a minibus and bounced our way back to our side of the island where, clothes and all, we hopped into the ocean.
After diner we had a lecture during which one of our instructors presented her thesis work she had just finished on high altitude tropical birds. The lecture was interrupted when a few of us in the back row noticed that Benito, a guy who worked on the island, was sitting behind us proudly holding a very large, very irritated vine snake. After a brief snake break, the bird talk continued. Eventually we were released from learning. I hung around hoping to use the pay phone and pathetically lost another chess game (favorite comment on my playing: “either you are luring me into a brilliant trap, or that was the dumbest move I have ever seen…”)

Sometime several days later:
I knew it was bound to happen: one day I just wouldn’t feel like writing anything and my journalistic attempts would fail. Here I will just outline the highlights (i.e. what I can remember) of the last few days.
-The last day in Panama: we went to “Bird Island” where boobies, frigates, and tropic birds nest. I was actually looking forward to birding, but when we arrived they handed us our snorkels and pushed us overboard. Birding is pretty awkward through a mask and snorkel. In the afternoon most of the group went out for more snorkeling but the other Herp-nerd and I went out in search of the island’s frog species. We had fun crashing through every spider web in a four hectare patch of rainforest, chased by fiendish mosquitoes as we chased the frogs.
-Leaving Panama: After heavy partying on our last night in Panama (read, drunk folk falling from hammocks and embarrassing attempts to dance) we loaded ourselves and our stuff into boats for the trek back to Costa Rica and eventually Tortuguera. On a side note, It is never a good idea to wash your hair with biodegradable soap and salt water. IT DOES NOT WORK.
We made it back into Costa Rica and at some point had lunch in a restaurant with a large portrait of Mao on the wall. I think it might have been Chinese food. More bus, then boat… the boat broke down, but eventually started to work again… and we finally made it to Tortuguera. Highlight of the day: Showering! I love running water!!!
-Next day we did some learning, ate ice cream, and bought sea turtle t-shirts (I tell myself that this supports conservation). The powers above decreed that we were more likely to see nesting turtles in Parismina, a town a 2 hour boat ride away, so in a flurry of packing, off we went. Several hours later we found ourselves marching single file down a black sand beach, in search of sea turtles to harass. Eventually one was found to watch. Turtles are amazing, especially when they are 5 feet long and laying tennis ball sized eggs. Two hours of marching around later and we were released to bed (sometime after midnight, don’t they know my bedtime is 9:30?).

Day ?: La Selva
We headed out of Parismina and began the journey to La Selva, a big research station in lowland Atlantic forest. We arrived in the pouring rain, which is appropriate because it is the rainforest. La Selva is an interesting place. It is a BIG research station on a large reserve maintained by the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS). The OTS folks are a little neurotic (Rubber boots or Else!!!!). The administration decided to encourage research farther into the forest by creating paved concrete trails through the trees and providing bicycles. It gives the whole place a slightly Disney-esque feel, especially with their strictly enforced boot policy on their neatly groomed concrete trails.
So we settled in at La Selva, the administration lectured us about the large poisonous snakes that wanted to get us, and then our profs ordered us off into the wood to find said snakes.

La Selva: day 2
Morning time spent in lecture and learning, first in a classroom and then on a neatly paved trail (concrete in a rainforest is soooo weird). The afternoon was more lecture because theoretically it was “Herp diversity Day” and we had to learn the family of every creepy crawly vertebrate in Costa Rica. After lecture we were sent out on Herp walks (wait, isn’t every walk a Herp walk?). We all got split in groups and I managed to find myself in the least froggily enthusiastic group, who then left me in the woods. Moderately sucky.
Following dinner another night hike was announced. Everyone looked quite unenthusiastic until the Prof mentioned that the hike was going to end at a bar and the drinks were on him. Suddenly 8 kilometers didn’t seem so far. We eventually ended up at a bar, which upon the entrance of so many gringos promptly changed the music videos from mariachi to old CCR.
We eventually left La Selva Land and meandered our way into San Jose, where nothing was open because it is Semana de Santos (Easter week). We hit up the fast food restaurants, because they were the only thing open, and it suddenly dawned on me that Passover was going to be hell to keep in this country.

2007-03-12T21:50:00.000-07:00

I survived our first midterm! yay. and I wrote my paper, and I did the stats homework.... but i forgot to do my spanish, oh well, 3 out of 4 isn't bad. After my midterm I took a very nice hike through the cloud forest and rediscovered how off kilter my sense of direction is. It turns out that it is possible to hike over the continental divide without even knowing it, woops. I did have a fairly obvious clue to my misdirection when the weather changed from dappled sun (the pacific) to pouring rain (cuz thats what it does on the Atlantic side). I eventually did manage to meander my way back to a recognizable trail and then slide my way back down to the station. On my way down I was accosted by a flock of butterflies. There is a species of butterflies that roost in groups during the day down here. The ruckus I created while tromping down the mountain woke up about 20 of these flying terrors and sent them flapping straight into my face. Almost immediatly, we both realized our mistakes and headed in our separate directions. Shortly there after I came across a large gathering of army ants but after my butterfly encounter I figured it was best to leave all 6 legged critters alone. Also, from recently acquired experiance, I now know how much ant bites/stings hurt. Acacia Ants (Pseudomyrmex spinicola to be exact) are not toys! Amusingly, for that project we did with the ants and acacias, we managed to pick the most aggresive ant species and harass them at their most aggressive time. woops, again.
On an entirely random note, I have finally found a Costa Rican food (actually we aren't even sure this is a Costa Rican food) that I will not eat. Today for lunch we had a "banana bean wrap". ummmm, yeah. beans wrapped in mashed sweet plaintains topped with cheese. It was a unique meal that I hope never to have to experiance again. On the plus side, we got mango juice at breakfast and at dinner today, and mango juice is pretty much the best thing ever (it's up there on my list with sleep, salamanders, and chocolate). Actually, I think the possibility of mango juice is really the only thing that forces me to get out of bed for a 7 am breakfast..... mmmmmmmmm.... mango juice.....
Coffee is good too, we drink a lot of it here. I will be returning home an even bigger caffeine addict then when I left. It turns out that coffee (with milk and sugar) makes an excellent growth medium for tropical fungi. I forgot a mug on my desk for a week or so and the results were a little frightening. I won't be doing that again. On that very disgusting note I am going to bed (where hopefully there will be no scorpiones, or stinging wasps, or crunchy beetles).

more from Monteverde

2007-03-09T20:08:00.000-08:00

I have now been in Monteverde for almost two weeks. Everyone is thoroughly busy right now as we have our fist midterm this tomorrow. In celebration of this quickly approaching torture I am procrastinating by watching a film of fighting beetles set to very up-beat music.
The last week has contained many exciting events. Last Saturday we did the tourist thing and went to the ziplines. We spent a thoroughly enjoyable and un-educational morning flying over the forest canopy. After the zipline adventure I finally got the milkshake I had been dreaming of. One flavor tried, 20 more to go!
The week days are filled with class, lots and lots of class. Most days have biology related lectures from 8 until 3 and Spanish class from 3:30-5:30. I am starting to feel that studying and classes are getting in the way of my learning (and by learning I mean tromping around in the cloud forest whenever I feel like it). My Spanish vocabulary is expanding. I now know such useful words as querida (mistress), mapache (raccoon), and aguas muertas (neap tide).
Some days we get a break from the usual lecture format. Yesterday’s exercise in biology could best be described as “High Speed Field Biology: Survivor Style”. At 8 am we were divided into groups of 5 and presented with our research question. All field data was collected by noon. After lunch the data was analyzed, background research was conducted, and a 15 minute powerpoint was constructed. A mere 11 hours after learning of our research topic we presented our results (statistics, discussion, relevant articles… the whole shebang) to the whole class. My group analyzed the nest distribution in a species of high altitude neo-tropical bees. It turns out that Crawfordapis luctuosa (aka big friendly bees that didn’t sting us even though we hovered over their nests for 2+ hours) display a clumped nest distribution. Yay.
Today’s lecture started off with a two hour hike through the cloud forest, over the continental divide, to the lecture hall. I really think all classes should start like that. We hiked up the Pacific side and then slid down the much wetter Atlantic side of the mountain. While mud-skiing down the Atlantic side I managed a thoroughly graceful, and apparently very noisy, swan dive into the mud. While untangling myself from a guilty tree root I was told to shut up so as to not disturb the hummingbird nest someone had just discovered. It was incredible; a hummingbird had built a nest right along the trail and stuffed inside were two almost full grown chicks. That might have been the best thing I saw this week (there were also about 20 Quetzals on a different hike, but I think the hummingbirds were cuter). Anyways, at the end of our hike we popped out of the forest at an insect museum (random, I know). The rest of the day was spent learning insect orders, how to tell a true shrunken head from a knock off, and the difference between a butterfly and everything else in the order Lepidoptera. The grand finale of the day was definitely when the owner of the insect museum (a former opera singer) performed the Costa Rican national anthem on his organ followed by the US anthem on the accordion.
I guess there is only so much procrastinating one can do at any one time, so I am now going to think about studying.

2007-03-03T10:29:00.001-08:00

Monteverde!
We have now been in Monteverde for almost a week, and as the weekend approaches I finally find myself with a bit of free time. Unfortunately I used those three minutes of free time trying to find my socks, so now I am just eating into my sleeping time. It’s ok though, because sleep deprivation makes everything suddenly hilarious. Like sloths, talk about funny…. Actually, what was really funny today was Spanish class. I am in a class with three other people and we spent most of our time just practicing conversational Spanish. Somehow in today’s two hour class I ended up having to explain reproduction in kangaroos and the 1918 Influenza… in Spanish. It was amusing, probably more so for everyone other then me. (El conguro tiene una bolsa, y en la bolsa hay un bebe……etc)
Classes have been really intense for the last few days. I need a weekend just to catch up on all the studying and assignments we have. Of course I also have lots of important plans for this weekend like going to the zipline, buying at least one milkshake (a monteverde diet staple), sitting under a quetzal roost until one of those damn birds flies by, finding some frogs in the woods, and other stuff.
There are plenty of adventures to be had at the station we are staying at. Like last night, I was quietly studying and minding my own business when a very large moth barged into the room and proceeded to make a ruckus. So, of course I did the most logical thing and grabbed a butterfly net. For the next several minutes the moth and I went in circles as I slipped and slid across the hardwood floors in my socks. The flying distraction was eventually caught and released outside so that studying could once again occur.

some pictures

2007-03-03T10:29:00.000-08:00

hanging out in the cloud forest

heading to Corcavado

playing with toads

it takes forever to load pictures, so I might attempt to put more up later but I am now on a mission to buy a milkshake (the monteverde quakers have a cheese factory with the best milkshakes in the world, or so I have been told).

Palo Verde

2007-02-27T19:15:00.000-08:00

First, a few random thoughts about my attempts at blogging:
1. I can't spell (grammer is also a little sketchy). I am fully aware of this, and will probably continue to ignore such basic literary conventions for an indeterminate length of time.
2. I have been in Monteverde for two days now, but I am a wee bit behind in typing up the stuff I wrote out during our field trip. So, Monteverde is awesome and I am sure I will blather on about it in the near future.

OK, time to talk about Carara, ECMar, and Palo Verde! (also time for me to lay off the coffee... twitch twitch giggle giggle)
In Carara we spent the day hiking about and learning the names and natural histories of endemic plant species that I will never in my life see again. When we stopped for lunch we were accosted by a pack of hungry Ctenosaurs (2 foot long igauna things) that apparently are fond of pizza.
We then headed towards the Guanacaste region, stopping to gawk at some absolutly enormous crocodiles (20 feet long, I swear!) We spent the night at ECMar (estacion de ciencias marinas) and did a little bird watching and some mangrove swamp tromping. We also sat on a slightly gross beach (public trash cans have not made it to rural Costa Rica) and watched a glorious sunset. Of course, there was also a bit of learning to be done: some 20 new species and a lecture on plant identification.
As the week progressed we moved from the excessivly damp heat of Corcavado to the instant dessication brand of heat offered in Palo Verde. Palo Verde is in the much drier northern area of Costa Rica. In the wet season it is a giant mosquito breeding swamp. In the dry season (what we are in now) it becomes a haven for about a zillion different birds. I think I might actually be starting to enjoy birdwatching. I think it was the brilliant epiphany someone shared with me: "birds are really just like screwed up, feathery mutant lizards". Really, that makes ducks sooooo much more exciting.
In Palo Verde I also spent some quality time with Ant Acacias (and their nasty stinging ants). We were split into groups to do a day long field project and my group was investigating the correlation between Acacia thorn size and the number/development stage of the ants inside. Perhaps this requires a little bit of explanation: Acacias are shrubby trees that have a symbiotic relationship with ants. The tree gives the ants food and housing and the ants terrorize anything that is within biting/stinging distance. The results of our project showed that bigger thorns housed more ants and ant bites hurt like hell (nasty nasty little buggers).
Hmmm, what else? Someone found a scorpion in their bed on the first night, that was exciting. We mist netted for bats. One of the bats died (not from my group!) and the guys pocketed it in hopes of playing a really evil practical joke on someone. Unfortunatly, egg-fryingly hot weather does really bad things to dead mammals and the bat carcass did not last long enough to make its way into anyone's mosquito netting. Disappointing, but there was a great prank pulled off envolving a very large cane toad and a professor's tent, so all is not lost.
Our adventure continued to Liberia. We stayed in Liberia for two days, but each day took a trip to reserves nearby. Santa Rosa: trees, monkeys, monkeys in trees, monkeys in trees hunting down a squirrel and then eating it in a rather disturbing manner. We happened to be in Liberia at the same time the town was having a giant party in celebration of its existance. Pretty much drinking in the streets and sketchy carnival rides and a bull ring that might have collapsed at any moment. I walked back with two of my classmates and somehow managed to get lost. We got a cab and discovered 30 seconds later that we had been about 2 blocks ( and 1500 colones, less then 3 dollars) from the hotel.
The next day we visited Rincon de la Vieja (a very nifty park) and only had to learn one new species (it was a day off). We hiked to an awesome waterfall/swimming spot, watched a group of spider monkeys chase off a group of white faced capuchin monkeys, saw a 2 m long Tiger rat snake (I think thats the name, I am too lazy to go check though), and pretty much had an awesome day.
Sometime after all this excitment we made it to Monteverde, but those stories will have to wait because my caffeine buzz is starting to wear off and I still have to memorize about 100 species' information before I go to sleep (which reminds me, I want to breifly groan about my lack of sleep... why must breakfast be at 7am, with class at 8am.... EVERY DAY!? like today: 7am breaky, 8am-3pm species reports while hiking straight up a mountain, 30 min walk to spanish class, 3:30 -5:30 spanish class, 6 pm dinner, 7pm epiphyte lecture, 8pm until I pass out from exhaustion = study time. And it all starts again tomorrow. I am loving every minute of it, but at the same time, this is actually more exhausting then school at Berkeley.

Corcavado

2007-02-24T06:18:00.000-08:00

Two weeks ago we left behind the internet access and air conditioning of San Jose and went careening down the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. The city was rapidly replaced by leafy walls of green as our quasi-suicidal bus driver (this is actually a compliment, because all the other drivers down here are completly suicidal) deftly manuveered the vehicle down the tangle of asphalt known as the Pan-American Highway. In Sierpe we learned about mangroves, bug bites, and certain group members' inability to tolerate boats. The next day, armed with our newly acquired knowledge of who was most likely to puke over the side of the boat, we set off for the San Pedrillo station in Corcavado National Park.
Pretty much AMAZING, yep, that sums it up. We camped for 5 days along the beach and I discoverd how silly I was to have brought a winter sleeping bag... it hasn't left my backpack. There was much learning to be done, despite our classroom's existance as a tropical paradise. It turns out that this program will be a lot of work, probably a good thing, I guess.... An adequate course description might be "Knowing everything about everything". I predict some serious study time in my near future. I admit, I should have studied in Corcavado, but each night seemed better spent tromping through the rain forest harassing poisonous snakes and poking rare frogs... four nights in a row and I still haven't seen a Fer de Lance in the wild, so disappointing... but the spider monkeys, gladiator frog, tamandua, crocodile, Turnip tailed gecko, howler monkeys, rocket frogs,.......etc.... all might make it worthwhile.
Our days, and often nights, were filled to the brim with things like island biodiversity lectures, organized lizard chasing, species reports, and sunscreen application. So much to do and see, soooo little will power to sit down and put it to paper.
To sum up for the time being, the other folks in the program seem to possess an adequate amount of nerdy biologist-ness to make for a very entertaining and cohesive group. The profesors and TA s are awesome. I have decided that I am rather fond of rice and beans (also beans and rice, and beans mixed with rice, and rice mixed with beans....really the options are endless). Our first field trip continues to Carara National Park and perhaps some time in the not too distant future I might be convinced to write again (stranger things have been known to happen).

Made it to Costa Rica

2007-02-09T18:12:00.000-08:00

I have arrived in Costa Rica! Our first day was quite an adventure. I have been in the country less then 24 hours and already I have had an orientation lecture, toured a history museum, visited a center for producing snake antivenom, and survived being dropped off at El Mercado Central with the assignment of buying an assigned fruit and learning its natural history and cultural importance.... in spanish.
The best part of the day... a toss up between learning how to make chile relleno from a shoe sales person (my fruit was a chile, and we were loking for rubber boots)and watching incredibly poisonous snakes be milked for there venom (yep, thats a Fer-de-lance!)

Right, so there are about 6 people who really want to use the internet and are hovering behind me.... so, now might be an excellent time to relinquish the ethernet cord. alas.

Texas!

2007-02-03T11:12:00.000-08:00

Pictures from my trip to Texas. The salamander pictures were taken at the National Fish Hatchery and Technology Center in San Marcos, Texas (conveniently located in the same town as my grandma).

Eurycea rathbuni

Eurycea nana
Scorpions: they give you much more interesting pictures after being poked.

(probably should mention that the scorpion was all of an inch long and at 40 deg F outside, was not moving very fast)

2006-12-28T21:08:00.000-08:00

I am taking my first tentative steps into the land of "blog"; this could be very interesting. For the sake of efficiency and general laziness I plan to post next semester's exploits in this form instead of my usual whenever-I-am-bored-enough-to-write emails.
Stay tuned for future episodes featuring me GOING TO COSTA RICA!