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