Last weekend with the full crew :(

Sometimes in life, we often hear the phrase "time flies when you're having fun". In this case, I find myself thinking about how quickly this whole experience has entered and will now soon leave my life while I sit waiting for oatmeal chocolate chip cookies to be ready. I have to admit, watching Dawn use all her arm strength to add more chocolate chips into the batter is quite amusing. That wasn't really what I was about to admit though. Honestly, this kind of living situation can be very stressful at times. However, learning to spend 24/7 with the same people for several months has really helped me in being more aware of my methods of communication and having an awareness in general of my surroundings. I know that everything I've experienced here will allow me to perform better on my next adventure in the Pacific Northwest where I'll be working with birds.

Lesson number...503?: It's important to wash your dishes, lest you feel like understanding how a butter knife can be used as a weapon. I like how Nate wrote after his threatening message to "have a nice day".

Last weekend we had a Russian dinner. I cooked "gulaptsi" (stuffed cabbage with tomato sauce) and "midovik" (honey cake). Gulaptsi are traditionally made with ground beef, but I made it with ground venison since there was an ample supply of that in the basement. I also made a separate batch for myself using "fake ground meat". I should have taken pictures! Alas, the thought only came to me just now. It was difficult cooking gulaptsi and not having a chance to taste it. Since I was cooking for hours, I doubt anyone wanted to criticize, but I still wonder if I overdid it with the fresh onion, garlic, and salt. Although I'm Russian, I love to add a lot of garlic to practically everything, and I've heard that is an Italian thing. One element that would have made the dinner a true Russian experience was vodka, which unfortunately was absent. I bought pickles so I could teach the field crew how to take a proper Russian shot, and I'm still hoping to do this in the near future. For those of you who are cringing now, don't judge! Pickles are the best chaser for vodka, no argument. It is hard to deny the stereotype given what I've just put here. Drinking is a large part of Russian culture, especially vodka. It is present at most dinners.

...Over the past couple of weeks, I have been organizing, doing an inventory of, and labeling samples. We have samples in the freezers from 2009 and 2010! There was A LOT to go through. Luckily the only thing I have left to do now is label the remaining red top deer blood. On the list of things I dislike, I would have to add labeling samples. Although I like organizing and to some extent doing inventory, labeling is simply tedious, time consuming, and banal after many hours (such as creating labels for and placing them on every single deer hair sample that we have since 2009, equating to well over 300 samples). I'm starting to think I should get tips since that evening I spent on deer hair happened to be St. Patrick's day, and I worked till 8:30pm, by force...actually no, it was willingly because I have a strong work ethic and like to get the job done. ;)

This is an inkling of what I had to go through. From this picture, you can see a few large bags of saliva and some red top blood on the left.

Here is something else one sees when opening the freezer. Normally we don't store food in this one. While deer trapping, rat traps were set next to some of the clover traps since squirrels would go inside them and cut the fishing line (thus making the trap inoperable). It was unfortunate that we caught so many squirrels in these, but dealing with bycatch is inevitable in wildlife management. Luckily we make use of all these animals. Right now some squirrels are being used as bait for bobcat box traps.

Nothing like homemade oatmeal chocolate chips cookies with butter (because margarine is simply not as good)....There was a lot of talk about what to do for out last weekend together as a full crew. A trip to Marquette was on the list, and unfortunately did not take place. We did, however, end up at the only "dance club" in town, which is 18 and up, on Friday. I can't remember the last time I was surrounded by so many people that were underage and could very well be minors. Aside from that slight feeling of discomfort, it felt great to be on the dance floor again. I love dancing, and I don't think I'll tire of it anytime soon.

Thanks to Dawn's aid, we successfully made several batches of cookies. I've had about six or seven now. My stomach will hurt in the morning, but it was worth it.

The following are random pictures of the field crew with black bears. There are too many good ones, so I'll show some more in a future post:

T-dog (Tyler) and Caitlin with mama black bear and her yearlings.

Mike Olson, a local nature photographer, who came out with us several times for deer trapping and black bears.

Alec holding a yearling with Tim in the background. Tim works for the DNR in Marquette and has helped out greatly with our project, including setting up and checking coyote snares.

Here is me with an adorable cub!

This is Tanya with her dad. She worked for this project last summer and has visited a couple of times this season. It's hard to tell in this picture, but Tanya is not only a very driven and ambitious person when it comes to wildlife, she is also is a great dancer!

One more thing! I keep forgetting to post links on this blog. The first link is to the Predator-Prey project website. I can't believe it's taken me this long to remember to do this. It is full of wonderful information about the research going on. The second link is to an article posted in an online outdoor magazine. The third is another article originally published in a local paper.

http://fwrc.msstate.edu/carnivore/predatorprey/

http://www.outdoorlife.com/photos/gallery/hunting/2011/03/whats-killing-your-deer

http://www.freep.com/article/20110313/NEWS06/103130479/Wildlife-researcher-studies-predators-prey-UP

Blood centrifusion

Although I much prefer to be in the field than in the laboratory, I throughly enjoy blood centrifusion. This is a process which separates red blood cells from plasma. This is done by spinning the blood inside a centrifuge at very high speed. Depending on the type of blood, the speed and amount of time it has to spin is varied. This process needs to be done as quickly as possible, so after arriving home from the field, this is one of the first things to do at the house.

This is the set-up we have in the basement to centrifuge blood. Permanent markers are at the ready for labeling tubes filled with plasma and the white styrofoam holds the tubes in place. There are two pipets here because there was blood samples from two does. It is important to use a new pipet per individual to avoid contamination, as well as making sure the pipet doesn't come into contact with anything other than the plasma.

I swear my handwriting is normally much nicer than this. When labeling any sample, the doe ID number and the date are written. This is blood before being centrifuged.

As one can guess, the tubes are placed inside the centrifuge. It is imperative not only to place the tubes in the right direction, but also make sure there is an even number. That is why we have a couple of tubes filled with water in case of an odd number of samples.

After centrifusion, the plasma is taken out and put into separate tubes. I've found that the more blood in the tube, the better for separation. When the tube isn't full, the plasma appears more pink instead of yellowish. We hold on to the remaining blood in case it is needed for future testing. The plasma is sent to a laboratory in Lansing, Michigan, where it is tested for a few things, but mainly we look for the presence of pregnancy-specific protein B (PSPB) hormone. This way, we can confirm pregnancy not only through ultrasound, but also through blood samples.

Unfortunately, the picture I took of centrifused blood came out blurry, so I took this one from the internet. After centrifusion, the plasma is clearly separated from red blood cells and always ends up on top.

This is plasma after I've extracted it from a tube using a pipet and put into this smaller tube. Sometimes if one accidentally gets red blood cells into the pipet during extraction, the plasma will have a more pink hue.

Before centrifusion, blood must be kept warm. After separating all the plasma from the red blood cells, both are stored in the freezer. The freezer houses many other samples as well including saliva, fecal, urine, and blood with purple tops (the blood tubes here are referred to as "red tops").

Deer trapping over, let carnivore trapping begin!

Ahh....to those who read this I apologize for not having a new post up sooner. So much has happened since my last one. Instead of trapping till we have 50 does on air, lead scientists on the project Dr. Jerry Balant and another researcher who works for the DNR decided to stop trapping last Sunday, no matter number we were at. Right now we have 31 does on air. Discussing sample size with both Nate and Dawn, for research in general 30 is the minimum number one would want for a field study to have strong statistical data. Of course the bigger the sample size, the better since one would have a more accurate estimate of population size. It was decided, however, that having to do 50 VIT searches in the summer would be nearly impossible. By VIT searches, this means locating over 50 fawns after parturition (since it's common for deer to give birth to twins and even triplets) plus locating the dropped VIT tags that are excreted during the birthing process.

Alec and I are holding a captured doe down just after she was injected with an immobilization drug. I had to put my entire weight on this particular deer because she was very strong and wouldn't go down easily.

I am sad to be done with deer trapping. I had a day off on the last day that we deer trapped as well, so I wasn't able to work up the very last doe caught for this winter season. Right now work is more dull than usual since we have a lot of data-related work to do on the computers. The last five days were spent pulling deer traps, which are extremely heavy (luckily I strong like bull- repeat this to yourself with a Russian accent for added humor), and then fixing them. We have a total of 54 traps. My fingers, aside from getting very sore from the rope I was using to tighten the nets, actually ended up bleeding a bit. I have several cuts all over the place and a back ache on top of it. There is something gratifying about this work though. I don't think life is supposed to be easy. If it is, then that leads me to assume one has been handed everything on a silver platter. In essence, isn't that just an ignorant lifestyle devoid of realistic situations? (By "realistic situations", which I recognize is vague, that could applied to a range of things from being independent and supporting oneself financially to job hunting and applying for universities without having any connections). Being able to work a mentally challenging and labor intensive job full-time makes me feel more capable of taking on the future both in graduate school and my career.

This is a doe that just recovered after being worked up.

Josh and Alec watch as a doe recovers and takes off into the forest. We always keep an eye on the animals we work on to make sure they recover smoothly and appear healthy after handling.

Nate with his dad and his dad's friend after handling a pregnant doe.

Moving on from that rant, I am looking forward to carnivore trapping. We have over 15 snares set out to trap coyotes. Today we trapped our first coyote. I have a day off, so I wasn't there (and had plenty of overdue reading to keep me occupied). He was only 33 pounds! Coyotes are much smaller than I originally thought. In the near future, we might also set up snares for bobcats. Bobcats are even smaller than coyotes. In the UP, the average size is between 25 and 30 pounds. We still have two male bears to work up as well called "Ghost bear" and "Angry bear". Both bears we have already attempted to recapture this season four times. Ghost bear acquired this name from never being seen when using telemetry to locate him. Angry bear initially was in his den upon recapture, but unfortunately was not asleep and came out of his den charging at all the researchers and technicians who were there. Since then, Angry bear has been out of his den and on the move!

Side note: Four out of the total seven in this house are left-handed and five have colored eyes, myself included in both ("colored" meaning non-brown because brown doesn't count). We are slowly taking over.

Side note: All these photos are from Nate's camera and most of them were taken by him. Thanks, Nate!