Gotta Move!

Hello out there. It's Jenn - the long lost biologist who has been busy taking a year off from school.

But that year is just about over. On Friday (yes - just two days and some change away) I will be packing up the last load and heading to Tulsa. OK, well that's not very exciting, but on Saturday morning (the wee hours) I will be driving off again - only this time the destination will be College Park, Maryland! The plan is to get there on Sunday, but it may end up being a Monday morning arrival date because it's possible I could be overreaching myself by trying to make this a two day trip.

The movers, if all goes well (keep your fingers crossed!) should be showing up on Tuesday. Then all the joy I have been experiencing packing (read: sarcasm) will become even greater as I try to find places for all my stuff in my shoebox apartment.

Although I am excited about this apartment. It's an apartment complex for graduate students only. The price is extremely reasonable - with all utilities, phone, and internet included. I'm less than a mile away from campus, but for the icky weather days, I have 3 bus lines that stop in the area (the furthest of these bus stops is less than a 5 minute walk). So all in all, the fact that it is on the smallish side and the toilet doesn't exactly work well doesn't really seem to matter so much. (I'm hoping by the time I arrive the toilet problem will have been fixed. Either way it's a story for another post).

In other good academic, new-stage-of-life news, I am now registered at UMD College Park with a student ID and everything. Granted, I've only signed up for one class, but at least now I know how to do it. I took a trip to College Park a couple of weeks ago to check out the new apartment and the school and try to get as much figured out as possible. Sure, dealing with the administration was a headache (especially since we were both about a month early for our actual department orientations) but we got some stuff figured out which should make getting settled in easier.

One of those things I learned is: I need advice on good, reasonably priced (read: cheap) seafood, Italian, Mexican, Thai, etc. etc. restaurants in the area. So if any of you readers out there can help me out - please do.

The last bit of good academic, new-stage-of-life news is actually pretty fantastic. See, I was guaranteed a half-time TA position last April, with the somewhat hazy promise that "those who need full time positions generally find them" (hah. not a sentence I really wanted to rely on.) With the half time TA position, I would only get 5 credit hours paid for (I need 10 to be a full time student and I need to be a full time student to get done in 3 years) and I would also get half the stipend of a full time TA. Needless to say, the stipend I would receive as a half time TA would not have kept the proverbial wolves from the door. In fact, I would probably have had to rely on the time honored technique of making my dinner out of stolen crackers from Wendy's.

By last week, it seemed pretty definite that there were not enough positions to go around, and I would only be a half time TA, paying for the rest of my living expenses and credit hours out of my very shallow pockets. But then, I received an email asking for a full time TA for a calculus for life sciences class. This TA would be teaching sections that taught how the math the students were learning could be applied to biology. I thought, "hmm. I took up to Calc 3 for engineering. I also took stats for biologists. I can do this." And several emails later, I'm hired! I was supposed to receive the paperwork for it today, and I didn't. But I'm not too worried about it. I have a few more days before I get to full blown worry.

And I have lots of other stuff to worry about these days. Like what still needs to be packed, how my gray, fluffy cat will handle all the traveling and boxes and new home... how I'll handle all the traveling and boxes and new home. Not to mention all the friends I'm trying to see these last days (2 days and change, to be more specific). Whew! Oh yeah. I still have work to finish up from this summer. Sigh. I suppose I better get back to it.

Long Time, No Post

So it has been quite awhile since I've updated on this blog, and a lot has happened since then.

I am not the new Outdoor Recreation Planner at Salt Plains NWR. The previous ORP, as you may remember, left in Sept. 2007, and I left in Oct. 2007, expecting the ORP job to be posted on the government jobs website within a week or two. Instead, the job actually posted after Thanksgiving. By that time, I had applied to anther job in Washington state, and was looking at conservation biology masters programs across the country.

I found lots of amazing programs doing some wonderful things, and when the ORP job came open I decided that my best choice was to go ahead and finish with my education and experience something outside Oklahoma.

I narrowed my choice down to three programs: 1) The Biodiversity, Conservation, and Policy masters program at SUNY Albany, 2) The Conservation Biology and Sustainable Development/Environmental Policy dual masters program at the University of Maryland, College Park, and 3) The Masters in Environmental Management program at Duke.

I was accepted into SUNY and UMD. I haven't heard anything back from Duke, but it's pretty late in the year for accepting students, so I'm thinking I didn't make it.

After visiting both schools, I have decided the one that fits me best is the program at Maryland. I had a wonderful time visiting their school - I spent a lot of time with graduate students who were in the same position I was: young, ambitious, and idealistic. The program offers many diverse classes, so I can really get a good idea of what's out there and which aspect of conservation biology I am most interested in. At the end of 3 years (and 60 credits) I will hold two masters degrees, and I am very excited about that.

The campus is also gorgeous - it's very stately. Lots of rolling hills and red brick buildings with tall white columns. The fox squirrels are black there - which really startled me the first time I saw it. I whole-heartedly approve of the campus' mascot - the Diamondback Terrapin, named Testudo. Testudo has a long and dramatic history: http://www.umd.edu/testudo.html. And he is the turtle whose nose I am rubbing in the picture at the top (it's for good luck).

Here are some pictures of the buildings where I'll be taking a lot of my classes. The first is the building where I'll have my cons bio classes and the second is where I'll have all of my policy classes:



So while I am waiting for fall semester to roll around, and inbetween searching for funding and housing at Maryland, I am a substitute teacher. It's been an interesting experience, and I have learned a lot in how to teach children efficiently. I've taught everything from pre-kindergarten to seniors in high school, although I mainly work at the elementary school. That's fine with me, as I don't get a lot of respect at the high school - I still look too much like them. I have liked some of the classes I've taught, but I don't think I'll miss substituting much after I'm done.

As you might expect, I am rather impatiently waiting for August 2008 to get here. Completely ready to start my new adventure.

Things with Wings

First of all, I've been wanting to mention that the Sandhill Cranes are finally on the refuge. I've seen them flying and I've heard their distinct call, but I haven't gotten close enough to them to take any pictures.

In spite of myself, I'm having a pretty good week. The days are just gorgeous so it's a pleasure to be doing outside work. Yesterday I took a walk on the nature trail because I needed one last Southern Catalpa picture for the plant book. While I was there, I decided I would stop at everyone's favorite look-out point for Sand Creek Bay.

And I saw lots of American Avocets. I had my hiking boots on and the refuge's high powered digital camera. So I decided I'd just hop down into the muck and see what kind of pictures I could get. And here's what I got:





I'd like to caption this one: "Oh no! I lost my contact!"

And this one: "Hey, let me help you look for your contact."

So then this one, of course, would be: "Hey! I found your contact - It's right here!"

They are fun birds to watch - even when they're just looking for food (or lost contacts).

So then I meandered back to my truck outside the nature trail, taking in the beautiful warm afternoon sunshine. I get back to my truck, and a monarch butterfly sweeps up right in front me, gets eye level with me for a second or two, and flitters off again - before I could get my camera on and focused on her. She - because only a "she" could be this coy - came back to tease and flirt with me and my camera. Then she landed on the white background of my truck and gave me a perfect background. Of course, she only stayed there for 10 seconds. Maybe all butterflies are flirts.


Here's hoping she makes it to Mexico!

Hairy, ugly, brown spiders with webs that seemingly defy physics.

I am speaking, of course, of a spider species belonging to the orb weaver group. This group has over 2800 species and over 160 genera. In this group, we have such spiders as the garden spider, which is very colorful and whose web has a zig-zag running through the middle. Here:

But we're not gonna talk about those today. We're going to talk about the much less cool species of orb-weaver. The ugly, brown, and hairy one whose webs can span entire roads.

I got email today asking for information on the webs that are everywhere right now. It seemed relevant enough to give everyone information on it. So get ready to be informed, you lucky readers. :)

They live most commonly in fields, forests, and gardens. Definitely not an inside spider. If you see one inside, it's lost, and therefore has flawed instincts. Thus you will be doing the species a favor by killing it and thus weeding its inferior genes out of the population. You'll be helping evolution along - Darwin will love you. ;)

What these beasties do is let out a strand of very strong silk, and they let it fly until it lands somewhere. Normally somewhere on the ground or (if the wind is strong) on a nearby branch/tree/car hood. This is called their "anchor strand". They build their web around that anchor strand. And they make them big without any thought to the larger animals that might walk through them.

If their web becomes severely damaged during the night, the spider will eat its web in the morning and remake it during the evening. I've yet to see this, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen (after all, I don't spend much of my time studying them).

As far as I know, the spider's bite won't cause much damage to humans - aside from maybe a welt/swelling you would expect from any non-venomous-to-humans spider bite. Whenever I've run into one, or even come close to running into one, the spider - which hangs out in the middle - will creepily run for cover.

They webs are just annoying! The spiders seem to be running amok this year (or spinning amok, rather), and I can only assume that's because of the wet summer we Oklahomans have had.

It most likely goes something like this:

Wet summer + more standing water = More insect food & more insect habitat = more bug sex = more bug babies (this is esp. true for mosquitoes/dragon flies/damsal flies/some flies (bugs that hang out around water)).

Wet summer = more food & habitat for insect spawn = higher numbers of successful, surviving insects

More bug sex + more surviving bug spawn = more spider food = more spider sex (Since they don't have to work so hard for food, they can concentrate on the procreation side of things. The other explanation is that more spiders are surviving long enough to have sex - no starvation here.)

(interesting side note here - there are some spider species - like the Black Widow - where the female will kill/eat the male after mating with him. Students have asked me why and I tell them that the male has served his purpose, and is encroaching on the female's territory - so she simply gets rid of him. You see, in some species (in general, not just spiders) the male will harass and cling to the female after mating with her to ensure she doesn't replace his sperm with some other male's (he wants his genes to be spread, not some other guy's). There are many ways males can get this "sperm insurance" - plugs, scrub brush penis, and the ever popular never-leaving-the-female-alone. Very annoying and often harmful to the female.)

more spider sex + higher insect (spider food) numbers = higher numbers of surviving, successful spider spawn = TOO MANY DAMN SPIDERS

Here's a picture of one of those ugly, brown, hairy things. This shows the underside:

Enjoy because this is most likely the only time I will post pictures of spiders. *Shudder*

Fun with the news

Fun indeed.

So far I have done two interviews with newspapers on behalf of Salt Plains NWR. I am quickly learning that either 1) I am not very articulate or 2) the two reporters that I have spoken with really don't care about quoting me correctly.

The first newspaper was the Lawton Constitution, over the annual Pelican Celebration. That was a pretty good little article. I was misquoted several times (several? I mean everytime he quoted me he was wrong), but that's not a big deal.

This time, however, the reporter got lots of facts wrong. Here's the article: http://www.ocolly.com/2007/10/03/a-new-type-of-bird-migrates-to-oklahoma/

I assumed when we were talking on the phone that she didn't really know much about biology. (Go ahead and assume I'm understating). She asked such questions as "How are the pelicans adjusting to the water?" (To which there was a bemused silence on my end of the phone line - Sounding something like this: "????")

She also asked me to inform her about the refuge. What a wide open question that was! So I told her we have roughly 30,000 acres. 10,000 approximately for the salt flats, 10,000 for the reservoir, and 10,000 for the wooded/pasture/prairie areas.

What did she get from that? Here: "The refuge contains 10 acres on the salt flat plains and an additional 10,000 acres for reservoirS."

Haha. The other serious flaw is when she asked me what we had on the refuge - some of the other birds - and while listing off some, I said "Night herons"

Her translation - "Night hens".

You can't make this stuff up. I printed off the article and showed it to the refuge manager - asking him if he could pick out the mistakes and misquotes. He told me you just have to get used to it - and then went on to say he very rarely reads the articles he was interviewed for, because they're just going to mess it up. On that same note, he also said that it did absolutely no good to get mad, because they very rarely print corrections either. (He then went on to say he's never seen anything that bad before)

And I'm not mad. I really do think it's amusing. What's even more amusing is she is an OSU student. Now I have something in my arsenal for whenever the cowboy alums who work here start razzing me about OU.

Speaking of OU - was that a good game, or was that a good game??

Don't blame me if this works - Take II

And Curtis will not be blamed because it does not work.

Last Thursday along about lunch time, as previously mentioned, I was in Cherokee because I was giving Education programs to some of the elementary classes. The refuge workers came to Cherokee to give me (and Curtis) a send-off with a lunch at Pizza Hut.

Thursday morning before I even left for Cherokee, Curtis and I were back out wandering through the wilderness, putting the finishing touches on the camera system. That means we hooked up the batteries to the system (thus giving it two power sources - solar and battery). I was very excited about seeing it work, but I had to get to Cherokee. Curtis promised to fill me in later.

Back at Pizza Hut, most of the refuge workers are grumbling about what a funky bad day most of them had had up to that point. Nothing too terrible - just frustrating. There was a break in conversation. I looked at Curtis. "So......? Did the cameras work?"

I received a very dark look in response. "Don't ask," said one of the maintenance guys, "We told you it was a bad day."

And now he's gone and won't be back until the first week in November (I think). Hopefully that will give him enough time to regain some enthusiasm and/or ideas on where to go from here. I can't help thinking that if I land the ORP job, this project is going to fall on my desk because I've had the most recent work with it - aside from Curtis himself, who is leaving us all behind.

And if it does, I will get the distinct pleasure of shimmying up this tower to mess with the microwave antenna (notice that you cannot actually see the microwave antenna - aside from a blurry form or two near the top):

Can't get a feel for how tall that really is? Try this picture (and please note that I cannot even get the whole thing in my shot. Also - See the antennas? Again - blurry forms):

That's the boss's Tahoe that you see off to the side. The same Tahoe that got me stuck with some fellow Pelican enthusiasts a week or so ago.

But back to the sheer height of that tower that I am sure waves in the wind. I'm not afraid of heights. It's plummeting to my death that I don't like. I'm told that if it comes to climbing that, I will be wearing a harness. Of course, I have to make it up to the top before I clip myself in. So that makes the climb up there a bit exciting, no?

You see, that's the tower that faces the other antennas across Sand Creek Bay. It goes from the camera to the microwave antenna at the bay to the antenna on this tower to a computer here (I think - still not sure on that last part). From there, the computer is somehow hooked up to the tv in the visitor's center to provide a 'direct' (not exactly a word I would use for this setup...) feed of the action on the bay.

We'll see what happens from here. A previous employer once told me he thought I was bad luck, because as soon as I'd start helping him on his project, many, many things would start going wrong. I have my own theories on that, but the important thing to note here is, even though Curtis is not to be blamed, neither is his helper. I know I'm not the Murphy's law of biology.

Just because I've only caught 5 Kangaroo rats in over 2 months, and just because the newly fixed and returned camera equipment still doesn't work does not mean that everything I touch breaks or becomes tainted.

But speaking of - I've picked that cold back up. I can't breathe at all, and no drugs will touch the congestion in my nose. Sleeping has become a problem. Oh, and in the past week, I've sliced open several fingertips with my razor (3 to be exact) and cut the palm of my hand while breaking the coffee pot at the bunkhouse. Oh, and this weekend, I broke one of my friend's parents' drinking glasses.

Sigh - I suppose I'll go pick up the traps from my somewhat failed research experiment.

One week left?!

Today was another fun day - but very tiring.

But before we get to that, I want to talk about something I forgot to mention yesterday.

On Tuesday afternoon I went ahead and set up about half of my live traps. It is now getting a bit late in the year for the drift fences, so those funnel traps and pit-fall traps are closed down, and next week I'll be picking those up and putting them away until next summer. But, the mammals should be scurrying about busily looking for food to fatten themselves up for the upcoming winter. Prime time to catch K. rats, right? So I went and set some up. Of course, considering the blatant disregard the rats hold for my research goals, I wasn't very optimistic about my turnout.

So non-optimistic was I that I did not check them first thing yesterday morning. First thing yesterday morning, I went to Cherokee for the education programs. Next thing was lunch. The thing after that was messing with the fragile camera systems with Curtis. So, it was at approximately 3 o'clock in the afternoon that I went to check my mammal traps.

This wasn't a good thing. These metal mammal traps become extremely hot inside once the sun hits them. I thought everything would be alright because 1) I didn't think anything would make it into the traps and 2) It's not nearly as hot these days as it has been.

So I go to check my traps. And what should I find but 2 traps closed, with Kangaroo rats inside. Of course! The day I'm not on the ball about checking my traps is the most successful day I've had to date. Luckily for my conscience (and even more luckily for the rats) everybody was fine. Because I had been pessimistic, I didn't carry my equipment with me (rulers, bags, nail polish, weight measurer) so they got to go to the air conditioned lab while I took their measurements. I had a little boy and a little girl. The little boy was about 9.5 inches long with a 6 in. tail. He weighed around 82 grams. The little girl was 9 in. long, with a 5.5 in. tail and weighed 67 grams.

Up to this point, the kangaroo rats I have captured have tried to get away, but none of them have tried to bite me. They squirm, they squeak, but they don't bite. I still wear my gloves, and it's a good thing I did. I was painting the boy's toe nails when I noticed that the little guy is gnawing on my index finger. I barely felt a thing - it was almost kinda cute. "Aw...he's trying to fight back."

I can only assume that sooner red isn't his color. Probably a cowboy fan.

With those two I now have a total of 5-6 captured Kangaroo rats total. I think I can publish in Nature with that kind of data!

Today I had the pre-K, 3rd, and 4th grade classes. First of all, 3rd and 4th are my absolute favorite classes to teach. For the most part, they are all very interested in learning about biology. They know enough to want to learn more, but they don't yet think they know it all. I had a sci-fi fan in my 4th grade class today. "Do you think that scientists are going to build a time machine and go back in time and stop the dinosaurs from going extinct again?" "Do you believe humans and animals are going to go away and all that will be left are plants?" "Do you think that we're gonna pollute so much that our air turns green and yellow and we have to go live on Mars?" Another girl said, and this is a direct quote, "One question that haunts me is that why does every museum always have one t-rex dinosaur?" (Lol!!)

But that particular Q&A session (aside from having to voice my beliefs on time travel) was very fun and informative. We talked about endangered species - why they become endangered, what we can do to help, etc. etc. We talked about DDT and lead shot and bald eagles. We talked about over-populations and what happens when a population exceeds the amount a resources it needs. They all seemed to understand everything - it was very fun.

One little girl asked me how I knew all this stuff. So that got us started on college. A boy asked me "Did you ever get bored in your classes?"

Lol. What to say to that? I couldn't exactly say "Well, no, because I always brought a newspaper with me and would do the crossword puzzle in class." So instead we talked about what my favorite classes were, and how I am able to remember all this stuff.

A girl came up to me after we had finished a "lap sit" game (where you stand in a circle and sit on the knees of the person behind you). She said that she was glad we weren't playing that game anymore. The boy who sat on her knees was "weird". I told her "All boys are weird. Remember that." She put her fist up in the air and said, "I will!" Haha.

The third grade class was also fun. Normally, during their insightful and clever remarks, I can keep a straight face and move on ("A mate is like having a boyfriend or girlfriend. EEEEWWW!!!!"). Today we played the predator/prey game, where most of the children are either skunks, armadillos, porcupines, possums, or turtles and maybe 3 of the other students are predators who tag their prey. The prey animals each have their own method of defense, but the goal is to find another of your species and get back to base without becoming food for the predator.

After one of these games, I had them group up so we could talk about what happened during the game and how that relates to the real lives of animals. One boy interrupted me and said, "I saw one of my relatives on the side of the road this morning..." as he was looking down at his noisemaker. His noisemaker was that of a skunk. I made the connection and couldn't contain myself - I just busted out laughing. What a clever kid!

The pre-K class was...interesting. I had not done a pre-k class before this morning, so I just went ahead and did the regular kindergarten program. The pre-k kids got it for the most part. But their attention spans were so short! We were talking about using our eyes to describe birds, and the game was to describe a bird on a card, and the students had to point out which bird they thought it was on a sheet given to them. It was fun and they were enjoying themselves, but I knew it was time to move on when they all, en masse, stood up and started jumping up and down. For no apparent reason whatsoever. It was the strangest thing. "Okay!" I said, "Let's move on to finding animals with our ears!" And then they all sat back down and paid attention. For approximately 5 minutes. The teacher said a couple of times when they were leaving that I did a wonderful job and that normally their attention spans are practically non-existent, so she knew I was keeping them interested.

Sure I did. But it wasn't easy!

Tomorrow is my last day at Cherokee - Kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd. Here's hoping it's as fun a day tomorrow as it was today.

Today was also my going-away party. Because I was already in Cherokee, the refuge workers met me at the Pizza Hut there. It was actually rather symbolic, as I had not eaten pizza since I started my internship. It tasted amazing!

Actually it was both mine and Curtis's going-away party. Curtis is leaving us as well - he's going to a national wildlife refuge in Texas called San Bernard's. Hopefully I'll be able to make it down there one day to volunteer. It was fun working with him - even though he is an Aggie.

He'll actually be here until November, but he's not gonna be here next week and then the 3 weeks after that he's going to be in training. Hence why his going-away party was paired with mine. Next week will be my last week as an intern here. Hopefully I'll come back as the refuge's new ORP.

It was a fun going-away party. Plenty of ribbing about "my Sooners". Apparently when they do badly, they become my personal possession. For revenge, I'm going to call them "My Sooners" all next week after we kick the Longhorns back to Austin.

ps - the eagle picture was not taken by me (It's still too early!!) but it was taken at the refuge (same with the skunk pic). Makes you want to come out in a month to take your own bald eagle pictures, yes?