You can never have too much alliteration

Hey Everyone, I decided to jump on the blog bandwagon and let people know about my life after I disappear into Connecticut for 6 months of indentured servitude to wildlife. I'm starting now because I have negative computer savvy-ness and I want to learn what buttons I need to click to make things do things. Anyway, to make this more interesting I'm going to tell the story of field work in northern Maine. I got asked to help a masters student with her field work on amphibians which is taking place about an hour north of Bangor, ME and clearly I accepted. Despite a severe case of the sniffles and never having (sobberly) popped a squat in the woods, I was actually pretty excited about it. I think it would have been a lot more enjoyable for me if I wasn't sick and out of shape, but I still had a pretty good time and I got to play the rugged field biologist, even if I could barely get out of bed the next day. Anyway, I will tell this story primarily in pictures. Everyone likes pictures:

Here is one of the roads we drove on to get to the field sites -

Here is a road washed out from the apocalyptic amount of rain we have been getting (we hiked the rest of the few miles in...):

Here is a field site set up, basically a fence around a vernal pool with coffee cans burried in the ground to catch frogs and salamanders:

Lastly, here is what is was all about:

HOWEVER, the downside was that because of the ridiculous amounts of rain, the traps were full of water. This was fine for most of the amphibians who enjoy water, but not so much for the rodents who also fell in, couldn't get out, and then drowned and had to be gotten out of the traps somehow. Now I am not very squeamish, and I have had cats so I know the joys of removing dead rodents from undesireable places like the front porch or your bed, but smelling like dead things for 2 days was a little much. Anyway, all and all it was still another field work experience I was glad to have (dead rodents excluded).

In other news, in one week I will be meeting Jeff Corwin with Emily and he will then give us jobs as co-hosts for a nature show on the spot, as well as ditch his silly wife and kid to marry....us...in Utah I guess, where that sort of thing is less frowned upon. Then after that I'm off to Connecticut on October 26th to work here for 6 months:

http://www.wildlifeincrisis.com/

The rest of my pictures from Maine are up on facebook is anyone is interested. Ta!