Week 7..to Week 10? How long have I been here?

Things are so busy here!! I spent a frantic week helping Philippe, the Ph.D. that I’m assisting, help pack and prepare samples for transport to Switzerland. What a massive pain that is! We also discovered all the various different ways samples have been organized and disorganized, and even though he’s gone now there’s still missing samples to look for and freezers to organize.

The new research assistant also arrived, and I’m juggling training her along with getting all the normal workload of experiments done, but things are progressing.

It is starting to get very cold here in the desert, at least at night. We are moving into winter and already we’ve reached freezing temperatures at night. My poor tomato plants do not have adequate defenses, and there’s not much time to do anything to protect them. There are still green tomatoes growing, but when I checked yesterday I knew a hard freeze had occurred that night because most of the leaves are all wilted and sad looking.

Dinner at the farmhouse has moved from outside on the patio to inside on the couches and covered in blankets. There is a fireplace in the farmhouse at least. It has also become significantly harder to get out of bed in the morning,  and I’m considering wearing the next days clothes to bed so I don’t have to change. I’m already partially doing that since I don’t shower until the midday break, since it’s way too cold in the morning.

I really shouldn’t complain though since we do have it pretty nice here. There’s hot water for showers, plenty of food and tea/coffee, and insulated bedrooms that keep the cold at bay. I do not envy the meerkatters who have to get up early and wait outside the burrows in the morning until the meerkats emerge for the day. I just have to get changed, walk quickly to the farmhouse for breakfast, and then walk quickly to the lab where I’m inside all day. The rooms with molerats are kept at about 21’C so it’s quite warm there, although we’re considering lowering it in the future.

I also want to start writing more about some of the experiments we do in the mole rat lab, so I’ll start here by explaining one that occurs pretty frequently.

We use a standardized test called a Redbox to test an individual’s boldness in exploring unfamiliar areas. To do this, we get the animal we’re interested in into a dead end piece of the tunnel system, and connect the dead end to a large box that 6 equal size tunnel pieces in it. The dead end piece acts as the familiar area, and the rest of the box is divided with lines in sections numbered 1-10. We record the animal’s location using the numbers, so 1 is the dead end piece, two is the first section outside, and 3 and 4 are the tunnels in section 2. For ten minutes we watch the animal and record where it goes, and if it starts gnawing anywhere.

It is very interesting to see how differently the animals can be from each other. Age definitely seems to have an effect, and the really young mole rats rarely leave the dead end piece at all. Some of the older ones just walk right out and explore everything with almost no hesitation. And others will slowly explore, but be really jumpy and sensitive to any noise or movement. During the redbox test it is very important that no one enters the room, because it could scare the animal. We also have to be very quiet while observing. Even moving your feet too loudly can cause vibrations that scare the really sensitive ones.

This is just one type of test we do, but we do it for all the experimental animals that are born from litters where the mothers underwent treatment.

I’ll describe more in the future, but I hope this helps explain some of what I’m doing here.

Bye for now!

Miscellaneous Pictures, part 2

Lego set of New York City I did with Iris on my day off .

The view from my jog, less than a kilometer from the farmhouse. 

The beetles leave really distinct footprints. 

Sciency stuff! Bonus points if you can describe any part of this and guess what it might be for 

Cat!

Babbler--makes very interesting sounds

Crimson breasted shrike

Black Widow in the kitchen

10-Block, I'm in room 8-the second door down that you can see from the left. 

Weeks 4, 5, 6....

Hello!

The next three weeks passed even faster, and now at seven weeks in I’ve almost completely stopped writing things down in my little daily diary. I figured I would reach this point eventually, but at least I kept it up for a little while.

There’s not a lot of new information for weekly updates, so I’ll group things together and write about the highlights. This post is about things that happened in the last three weeks for me.

The first big thing was that the research assistant who I am replacing came back from vacation so she could train me briefly before leaving more permanently. The two weeks she was back were a whirlwind of details and new information about how to do things. Previously I was being trained by the Ph.D. student who the data was for, but who had not been to the project in a couple years and was a bit behind on how things are done now. But at this point I would say I’m pretty well caught up and ready to train the new volunteer that arrives early next week.

Two old ladies

Life in the lab has become a routine of different experiments, observations, and cleaning. Outside of the lab however, I have been getting a bit more adventurous. I finally went to my first ‘sundowners’ which involves sitting on a sand dune to watch the sunset, while drinking a beverage of choice. This occurs quite randomly, decided by whoever wants to go that particular day.

Not the healthiest pup...but I believe in him. 

I also had my first foray outside of the reserve, on a walk that went onto the neighbor's land. Most of the neighbors around the reserve allow us to venture onto their land, especially since a lot of meerkats live there and the meerkat volunteers have to follow the groups. This particular walk we went to a specific neighbor’s land to check on a camera trap. The other reason was that hopefully, if we were lucky, we would see the single male giraffe that lives there.

Now, this isn’t a wild giraffe. This neighbor and several others raise game animals and breed some wildlife for various reasons. This giraffe used to be one of three, but due to some unfortunate events there is now just one. We were not lucky enough to see the giraffe on this walk, but I’m told he tends to hang out with the cattle, and I plan on trying again in the future. I was lucky enough to see the single zebra that lives there however. The zebra hangs out with the horses, and we got pretty close to the horses but the zebra kept his distance.

Some of the other animals we saw included Red hartebeests, wildebeests, springbok, steenbok, and koi fish (don’t ask). It was an enjoyable trek and we didn’t see any deadly snakes either.

Giraffe hunting 

The most exciting day to day event is often what is for lunch. We are left to our own devices for feeding ourselves breakfast and lunch, which provides a creative outlet for many. The three hour midday break for mole-ratters and longer break for meerkatters is adequate time to make some nearly gourmet meals.

A very memorable meal I had recently was a pizza lunch, where at least ten people all pitched in various ingredients and we make three large pizzas that were amazingly tasty. I’ve also done and witnessed quite a bit of baking. I thought I would be eating so much healthier here...but not with all the cake available!

A grad student in the mole rat lab also left to go back to Cambridge. Whenever someone leaves (permanently or possibly permanently), they get a cake the evening before and a card signed by everyone here. There is also a morning goodbye tradition that I’ll keep a secret for now. This particular person was the first person to leave that I actually knew pretty well at the time of their leaving, so it was a sad day. After now having several goodbye cakes, I’m starting to get used to how things are constantly changing here. New people come, other people leave.

Most volunteers are here at least six months or a year, so it is possible to make very strong friendships, but change is a part of life here.

On a different note, on April 19th I received news that a very special person had finally arrived in Edinburg, Texas. My second niece, Kori Faith, joined her new family in the outside world (outside of the womb anyway), and I hear that everyone is healthy and happy! It is hard at this distance to stay in communication, especially with a seven hour time difference. But I was ready and checking my email every hour from the 17th to the 20th for updates.