First Update as Manager

I’ve been back on the reserve for just over two weeks now after a brief holiday at home. A whole lot has happened, and it will be difficult to include everything, but here’s my attempt at an overview of the past month or so.

I spent just under three weeks back home in Texas. In a way, it was mostly just a chance to prepare for spending another year in the desert then it was a vacation. I did get down to South Texas though to see family and spend time on the beach. We spent a day cleaning up the coasts of South Padre Island with a naturalist group my mom is a part of. I also got to meet my new niece who was born while I was away, and I met a much more grown up version of my older niece who seems to be growing so incredibly fast.

While I was home, I spent plenty of time shopping as well. I bought a few bits and pieces for myself, but I also bought a bunch of food and presents for others and crafts to keep us busy. Some of the food items included things like Koolaid, poptarts, those pink and white animal crackers, and gummy worms.

Two days after I returned I officially became manager of the mole rat lab. I had quite a conflicting mix of emotions that morning. Even though I felt ready and optimistic about improving the lab, I also had a heightened sense of anxiety for the first several hours, which eventually devolved into a gentle but persistent squeeze that gripped me for the first week.

But, as my reign as manager nears the finish of week three, I can already start to look back with a sense of achievement. I have begun to settle into a routine that allows me time in the morning to prepare for the day before the volunteers arrive, which also helps prevent the anxiety.

My days start at 6:00 AM, which is when our employees arrive to start cleaning and feeding the mole rats. I ensure they know where to start each day, and what colonies need to be cleaned especially well for observation. For the next hour I prepare the tablets for scans and the first observations of the day. I also check email, and try to take care of some small things on my ever-increasing to-do list.

At 7:00 AM the volunteer research assistants arrive to start their day. My role is to plan out what needs to be done for each experiment, and to assign tasks to the volunteers based on what they are capable of. Currently we have two relatively new volunteers at different stages of training, so I pair them up with more experience volunteers for new things.

In the past, the research assistants have been split between two post-docs who are running separate experiments. One of the big changes I have made, with agreement from said post-docs, is to combine the scheduling and volunteers so that everyone works on every experiment. This way I can make one weekly rota that has everything on it, whereas in the past we’ve had two.

This change has also involved a lot of time spent going through what each experiment needs and what has or hasn’t been done, and organizing it together so I can see everything in one place.

During the rest of the day I’m running around trying to get everything more organized, monitoring the progress of structural improvements and maintenance things, and planning for the following week. I’m still in a stage where I need to make sure I know where everything is, what we have, and how to get things done. Some of the smaller tasks I’ve completed or have in progress include re-organizing our storage space, making new signs for colonies, painting and prepping the giant old coke fridge to hold potatoes, and trying to keep the tablets running. 

Overall I'd say it's going pretty well. I'm getting a handly on things and making the first steps toward some major changes that will improve our data collection and management. I'm also learning more about SQL everyday and will be learning other useful programs and languages as well. 

Promotion!

Four months have gone by, and I'm not sure if it feels that long, even longer, or way shorter.  For mole rat volunteers, they ask a minimum of six months, but you can stay longer. I was initially planning on six months, so that I could get some experience and take more time to figure out what I want to do with my life. However, my plans completely changed not long after arriving here.

Here's some big news. At the end of October this year, I will take over as the lab manager for the mole rat lab, and stay as manager for a year. So that means, I'll be here 19 months in total. NINETEEN MONTHS. AH.

I feel like I'm not fully comprehending what that length of time, but at this rate I imagine it will probably go by pretty quick. I'm excited for taking on this new role and make some serious improvements to the lab, and learning more SQL and Pendragon software to advance our data collection. The main reason I agreed to this position was for this oppurunity to learn incredibly useful skills in a real world environment, without having to pay for like I would if I took classes at University.

Also, I get paid (not much), but I also have almost zero living expenses, so I'll be saving money and learning, booyah!

Anyway, recently things have been busy as usual, with the added bonus of new equipment and construction in preparation of tissue collection in the next few months. A new, fancy BioSafety cabinet arrived yesterday and it's sitting and ready to go. In order to get it in the lab, though, two doors had to be removed, so for the next day or two we just don't have an outside door or an office door...which is fine. But, it has been getting below freezing the past couple nights. For those of you that think it's not that cold, keep in mind we don't have heating here. You just layer up best you can. Well, I'm sort of lying. There is heating in the lab for the mole rat colony rooms, but not the main lab room or anything. Or for our bedrooms, or the farmhouse.

But, even with negative temperatures during the night, it still gets up to the 80's/90's (Mid 20's in Celsius). So that means at lunch I go back to my room to exchange thermals and multiple layers for shorts and a t-shirt, and then a few hours later I go back into long clothes and thermals.


Lastly, I'm going on vacation back home to the U.S. for three weeks. I'll be back from September 27th to October 15th. It's three weeks total, minus a few days of traveling. I'm flying back the direct route from Johannesburg to Atlanta, and I have a 26hr layover in Atlanta, so maybe I'll get to see some of my Georgia family :)

Picture Update: I can't currently add pictures (not easily) on my computer. I can with another computer but I haven't made time for it yet, but I will add pictures eventually!

Weird mole rats and Christmas 2

Quick note--due to internet issues I can't get my pictures uploaded yet, which is part of the reason I've been delaying this post. But I'm doing it now anyway, and I'll try to add pictures later.



So....I need to get back into the habit of blogging. There have been quite a few things going on recently that are certainly worthy of writing about. My general day to day is pretty much the same. The main difference is in which colony I'm spending time on, and what weird quirks they happen to have.

This past week has been a colony named Gemsbok 10, which is one of colonies I was trained on and did my first solo observations in. The youngest member is the strangest juvenile I've gotten to know so far, he continuously calls to adults whenever he runs into them, and while it sounds like a submiss call, the frequency and his other actions make me think it might be something else. He also likes to initiate spars with adults, by biting them on the face until they get fed up enough to interact with him. Spars between adults aren't uncommon, but usually they stick to other animals that are of similar size and age. This little juvenile has no litter mates left, and so he tries to spar with everyone else.

The dominant male in this group is also quite interesting to watch. He has a strange way of sweeping sand that involves dragging his teeth along the pipe as he goes, making a very distinctive sound. He also bites any tail that he runs into, and he is so consistent that I can almost record a bite before it happens, because it always does. When we pulled out all the animals to freshen up their dye marks, we also noticed that nearly every adult has either a thickly scarred or actively wounded tail from all the tail biting in this colony.

Another interesting lab thing that happened recently was the creation of two new colonies. In order to increase the sample size for a specific experiment we split up a male and female pair that have never had offspring, and gave them both new partners in hopes that they'll make some babies. For new pairings, we take urine and blood samples leading up to the big day, and isolate the animals for at least 24 hours beforehand. The female from the original pairing and the other new female were both in colonies, and when we added the males to the colonies we then observed their interactions for the next hour. The pairing with the previously barren female went exceptionally, and they were both immediately in love.

The other pairing was possibly the most boring observation I have ever done though. They sniffed each other a couple times, but then the female went back to the nest for the last 45 minutes of the observation to sleep, while the male swept the sand out from the feeders. It could have gone much worse though, and they seem to be getting along well enough. I'm just not convinced that the male mole rat is much interesting in...making offspring. We'll start doing pregnancy checks in the nest couple months though and find out soon enough how successful the pairings were.

When we have new colonies, of course we have to come up with new names for them. Currently the rules are as follows: colonies in room 7 are named after national parks in Africa, and all the others are name after doctors (sort of). The original wild colonies that were brought to the lab have names relating to where they came from, but that's not as relevant. Of the two new colonies, we had one in room 7, and the other in room 1. The final decision on names was Who (Dr. Who) and Addo (national park in SA). If you're wondering, they don't have to be real doctors. We do have a colony named Dumbledore...but most of them are actual famous doctors.

Anyway, mole rat quirks aside, the other interesting news involves some new research that will be starting early next year. We have another research coming in to use the lab to look at genomics relating to social behavior in meerkats and molerats. To prepare for her work, we will be installing a new biosafety cabinent and some other new shiny equipment, and putting up walls in the office to make a separate room. Her work sounds extremely interesting and I'm excited to get to see what she's doing and learn more about lab techniques involving cell cultures. We are also expecting stainless steel countertops soon to cover all the surfaces in the lab, which to me is very exciting.

In more general news, this past weekend was Christmas 2 here in the kalahari! It was 6 months exactly from Christmas, so it is celebrated here as Christmas 2 since we're in the middle of winter here. We put up a tree (branch) and covered it in miscellaneous decorations that have made it here and been stored away for such occations. On Saturday everyone paired up and cooked something, resulting in a massive feast. Everyone on the reserve also went to a nearby sand dune to watch the sunset and all the volunteers had Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon off to celebrate.

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.

Week 2 & 3

Week two went pretty smoothly, and the routine of things started to set in. I slept in late on my first day off, then spent some time organizing the workshop where the pipe tunnels are built. I also really started to get into the garden during the second week, aggressively pruning the monstrous tomato plants.

I had many firsts in the lab during the second week. I entered my first litter of pups which involves weighing and dying the little wriggly pink mole rats. I also learned how to take blood samples, which is quite an interesting process. I have spent a good amount of time assisting in blood draws from cats and dogs, but mole rats are done very differently. We poke a vein in a back foot, and use a small capillary tube to draw the blood into a container. In order to actually have decent blood flow in the foot, the mole rat gets a nice foot and massage in warm water.

All of this is done while the animal is under anesthesia of course. They are put under with isoflurane gas and generally wake up pretty quickly and easily. Over the entire course of the mole rat project there have been no issues related to the anesthesia, which is very impressive.

Some of the other highlights during the week include finding a large black widow next to the toilet in the middle of the night, and a party on Saturday hosted by the head of the meerkat project.

During the third week I started to get a feel for how busy it can get in the lab, and also all the things you think of doing while doing the most unexciting 12 Hour scan. Sometimes scans are just boring. When all the animals are asleep, it is very tempting to dry and fit in other tasks at the same time. I one room I managed to find all the miscellaneous old sticky tack that had been used to hold up labels, and made a considerably large ball of the stuff. I also started doing more of the specific experiments by myself, and most of my training list was crossed off at this point.

This was also the week where I experienced rain in the Kalahari desert for the first time! We had a couple good storms over a few days, and the thunder and lightning was extraordinary. The lightning lit up the sky from kilometers away, and you could watch the storm move along. This was also likely the last rain of the season, and I probably won’t see any for several months. On Saturday we had barbecue for dinner and around a fire outside. In South Africa barbecues are called “bri’s” which took some getting used to.

On Sunday I had a brief introduction to SQL coding so that I can find things and make tables in the massive database where all the mole rat data is collected. This is my first experience ever with actually learning a coding language, and I’m excited to have this opportunity. The project manager is very knowledgeable in several languages and he manages the databases as well, and he is a great teacher. I’m hoping that by the end of my stay here I will have a decent level of skill in SQL and maybe some other programs or languages.

The last really exciting new thing was that I went on my first night drive. On nice nights once or twice a month, the manager drives his pick-up around at night with whoever wants to go standing in the back. We use flashlights and headlamps to look for wildlife that prefer to roam when it’s dark, and stop for any neat sightings. On my first night drive we mainly saw some of the antelope species around, but we also saw a couple porcupines, some hares, some night jars (birds), and a bat-eared fox. I’m definitely looking forward to the next one! Although now that it’s getting pretty cold at night who knows when the next one will be.

Food, Paper, and Sand

 Feeding ~600 mole rats is quite a feat. In the wild they mainly eat underground tubers and bulbs. In the lab, they are fed a diet of sweet potatoes and english cucumbers, that we buy in bulk. When the colonies began, several types of food were tested, and these two were the winners in popularity and nutrition.

Deliveries are about every two weeks, and in a month we can go through about 560kg (1234lb) of sweet potatoes and 400 English cucumbers (The long ones). The food is stored in fridges, although recent mechanical have led to large amounts of food loss because the food freezes, thaws, and goes rotten. We are trying out different ways to store the food, but even potatoes left out of the fridge and in the dark got moldy.

The two other basic necessities for mole rat life in a tunnel system include paper and sand. We get massive rolls of thin paper (like really cheap paper towels) which we provide to the mole rats to use for nest building. They have plastic shoe boxes attached to certain points in the tunnel systems, which are used as food stores, latrines, or nests. The nest boxes are quickly obvious because they are often full of paper and you cannot see inside.

The sand is probably the most labor intensive part and needed in the largest amount. The sand is brought to the lab from various dunes on the reserve, and must be completely dry. Each day the feeder tubes (upright tubes on the systems) are filled with sand to resemble collapses and encourage working behaviors and food searching behaviors. The feeders are filled once in the morning and once in the evening for most colonies.

However, during twelve hour scans we fill the tubes every two hours, so that there is plenty for the mole rats to do during the scan. We also try to fill them before doing focal observations, if there is not enough sand already in the tunnels.

You may be thinking, where does all this sand go? What do the mole rats do with it?

At one end of each tunnel system, there is a large box we call the wastebox. It is where the mole rats put things they don’t want in the colony. This includes excess sand, old nesting paper, and food that they don’t want. But, since these systems aren’t completely accurate at resembling real life, sometimes the wastebox becomes a food store, or even a nest.

When the wastebox gets full, the sand is removed. Also sand is removed when the rooms and colonies are deep cleaned. All this sand is full of paper and old pieces of food, which must be removed before it can be put out in the reserve. The workers use large metal sifters to remove the large pieces of debris, so we aren’t adding paper to the environment or feeding the wildlife. The sand needs to be taken out often not only because of the amount, but it also helps keep the colonies clean.

At the end of each day all the volunteers/researchers in the lab (currently 6 of us) do room checks. This involves checking to make sure each colony has food, and filling the feeders. The feeders definitely take the most time.

Focals and Scans

A Very Handsome Mole Rat

There are two main types of observations we do on the mole rats to collect behavioral data. The more common type is focal scans. For a focal, we follow the activity period of a single animal, ideally from the time they leave the nest to when they go back in. Luckily with mole rats, they are generally only active for an hour or so at a time on average. There are of course some outliers, like super pregnant females or young pups that only come out for maybe ten minutes, and the really hard workers that will be going for over two hours.

Starting the focal can sometimes take the most time. Right now we have to wait and watch a colony for the animal to come out, which can take a couple hours. There is however a device that is in the early stages of implementation, that will allow us to have an alarm go off when a particular animal leaves the nest. The device reads the implanted chips inside the mole rats which have individual numbers, basically the same thing that dogs and cats get.

Sometimes the animal is already active when we enter a room, and they we do an ‘incomplete’ focal, which just means that it does not cover an entire activity period since we don’t know how long they’ve been active. The best type for data though is the complete focal.

The other type of observation we do is a scanning observation. We do twelve hours scans of specific colonies a couple times a week. The twelve hours is split into four shifts, and generally two people split up the shifts. We try to start the scan right at seven in the morning, so we aren’t working too late.

For this type of observation, we are collecting data on all the individuals in the colony. We have a special program on tablets that we carry when doing the scans and focals. The program lets us record the behaviors of each animal. For the twelve hour scan, we record what each individual is doing every four minutes. In total, it is 180 scans done during the observation period. Amazingly, four minutes is generally more than enough time to find each one, and the rest of each period is used for continuous sampling.

What this means is that once we have recorded a behavior for each animal in the colony (including rest if it is not visible), then we watch and record any social behaviors in the remaining time. Some examples of social behaviors we record include sniffing, biting, pull-tail, and pup carry. We also include certain vocalizations and mating behaviors.

When the colony is active, the time passes by very quickly. Each four minute scan is filled with observations and there is plenty to watch. The worst part is when there’s only one or two animals awake. It can be difficult to find something to occupy the mind when trapped in a room surrounded by mole rats, watching time tick slowly by on the tablet. The four minute period can suddenly feel like forever, when you have one animal that’s eating, the rest are sleeping, and no social behaviors are happening.

The twelve hour scan days do lead to a great feeling of accomplishment though, especially when working the last shift. Also, it really helps you get acquainted with a colony, and certain individuals start to stand out. If you ask me right now, I would much prefer to focal Curie or G10 over G4 or Mandela. It feels wrong, but I can’t help but have some preferences for certain colonies.

Anyway, our weeks involve many focals and some scans, as well as other specific experiments, sample collection, and data entry. There’s also always stuff to clean, and things to prepare for the next day. I’m definitely not bored here, that’s for sure!

Miscellaneous Pictures, Part 1

Here's a random assortment of pictures that I haven't put into a blog yet, but I want to share anyway. Enjoy! 

Neat Cricket (have not yet identified) 

Giant Millipede!  Holy crap! Apparently the meerkats like to eat these. 

Close up of the millipede (I touched it and it curled up) 

Horses that belong to someone on the reserve.  

Wildebeasts! Seen on my first walk. 

Really neat beetle I found in the sand for the mole rats

Snakes! (Linda Don't Read This!)

          There are two potentially very dangerous snakes in the area where I am. One is the puff adder, a snake with cytotoxic venom that attacks the surrounding cells causing severe swelling, hemorrhage, and even necrosis. The other, more dangerous snake is the cape cobra. This snake has a neurotoxic venom that affects the nervous system and respiratory system.

         Both snakes have occasionally been sighted around the reserve where I am staying, and it is important to know how to treat both types of bites and what to do, just in case. The puff adder in particular likes to lay in the middle of paths at night, waiting for prey to walk by. They generally don’t make much noise as you approach, and I’ve heard several stories of people walking right next to them, nearly stepping on them, without noticing.

         The good thing is, the puff adder doesn’t automatically send you to the hospital, and the cape cobra can be choosey with its venom and not every bite injects the potentially deadly substance.

          Anyway, the reason I’m writing about snakes is because I saw my first puff adder just the other day. It was crossing a path near the farmhouse when one of the volunteers heading to the laundry room nearly stepped on it. I saw a small crowd of people looking at something and went to see what all the fuss was about. It was quite a large one too, about as thick as my forearm.

         Tim, the general manager, was alerted of the existence of the snake so that it could be quickly dealt with. He has had much experience with removing the two types of dangerous snakes on the reserve, and has snake hooks and tongs to pick them up with. He got the snake out of the grass and plopped it into a plastic tub, so that it could be driven a few kilometers away and released. Apparently he actually prefers dealing with cape cobras, because they are longer and easier to pick up. The puff adders are short and thick, and can be difficult to pick up.

So, I can now saw I’ve been just a few feet away from one of the deadliest snakes in Africa! How cool is that! (The main reason it’s the deadliest is due to improper care and their frequency near human habitation, they’re really not that super deadly). I hope the pictures do it justice.

Mole-Rat Pregnancy Checks

The first chance I got to really hold and touch a mole rat was when learning how to perform pregnancy checks. Mole rats breed throughout the year, and because we need to know when the pups are born, it is best to be able to make predictions for how far along each mother is. This is done in two ways. The first way is to look at the changes in weight. Based on a few years of monitoring, we know now sort of how to tell when a pregnant female will be due and if she even is pregnant based on big changes in weight.

The other way is more….tactile. For this, each queen is removed and the abdomen is carefully manipulated to feel for shapes that might be pups. The tricky part is doing this and not getting bit. The queen is held by the tail, and generally they stay facing forward for most of it. However, some will immediately reach around to try and bite, and it can be difficult to get a good feel.

Their gestation period is around three months, and usually the pups can be felt when there is a little over a month left. At first you feel small round shapes a little bigger than a pea. When there is closer to a month left, the shapes feel more like lima beans. With 2-3 weeks left, you can start to feel the skulls with little bodies attached. The best way to tell how many individuals there are is by skulls, although it can start to feel quite confusing the closer they are to birth. The size isn’t always the best factor to determine how far along either, since a queen with only one pup will have a much larger pup at birth than one with three or four.

The maximum number of pups is probably about six, although some females have seven nipples (yep, 7). Based on the pregnancy checks, both weight and physical manipulation, we try to predict birth dates. The closer it gets, the more frequently we check the nest, up to once a day. Once the pups are born, we take them out and give them their individual ID numbers and first dye marks.

We also take pictures of their head patches, which are visible on the skin before they even grow hair. The head patches are mostly pretty unique and easy to tell apart. We try to do this quickly, then return the pups to the nest. The newborn pups are quite squirmy and surprisingly mobile, and the hair starts to come in very quickly. It is very fun to compare litters at different stages and watch them become more and more independent.

This is G1F010, or Panda Queen as I call her. She is a pregnant female with the unique panda head patch. Only a few of the mole rats in the lab have this type of headpatch, and it is definitely the coolest. 

The Garden, Part 1

I’m just about three weeks into to my stay in South Africa, and I must say the garden looks significantly better, but there is still a long road ahead. So far, I have been pruning the two tomato plants and the mint, and mixing up the soil regularly to prepare it for planting. Perhaps my biggest accomplishment so far has been ridding the tomato plants of the giant armoured crickets. A quick google search helped me learn more about their lifestyle and it became clear that they would not pose that much of a problem.

Because these crickets are so massive, they cannot jump, and they do not have wings to fly. This meant that all I had to do was remove all the ones currently on the plant, and either move them to a new location or give them to the chickens for food, and that took care of most of my problem. The day after I performed an extensive cricket hunt, I found only one on the tomatoes. Over the next couple days that has dropped to zero.

I will keep checking daily for the intruders, but I think that by keeping up on their movement I can stay ahead of the game. Also, by donating the bugs to the chickens, I was rewarded with some eggs in compensation! These crickets are a common pest in the area, and one of the best ways to deal with them according to wikipedia is to just dig a 50cm trench around the crop/garden, and they can’t cross it. So that’s my backup plan if necessary.

Basil Top L, Tomato Top R, Parsley 

In other garden news, a little over a week ago I planted my first experimental seeds into some pvc tube end pieces to see what would happen. Everyday I nurtured those tiny seeds. I brought them in the lab at night, and put them in a slightly sunny spot during the day. They were given plenty of water and love. And all that work paid off, first in the form of tiny tomato sprouts! The other two plants were basil and parsley, and basil followed shortly after the tomatoes in sprouting.

After about a week and nearly giving up on the parsley, I saw the first tiny sprout this morning, and quickly showed it off to everyone in the lab. While waiting on these planted seeds, I also put some seeds for lettuce and cucumber in moistened paper towels inside of plastic bags and taped them to the window. It’s been four days and I can already see tiny shoots sprouting from the seeds. I honestly know nothing about what is best for the different seeds I have, and if I should sprout more in the bags or just in soil. But I’m willing to try multiple ways and learn through trial and error.

In the garden itself, I planted a short row of carrot seeds as well. The patch they are in generally stays pretty moist, but not too wet. All of the garden is watered from the drain pipe of the sinks in the lab. Right now the water distribution is very uneven, and the pipes need some clearing out and better connections. But with the current location of the plants everything is getting sufficiently watered. I’ve been told that carrots have worked out in the past, so I have been optimistically checking for sprouts each morning (a bit prematurely perhaps).

Yesterday was a big day in the garden especially. I was able to take some small aloe vera shoots from an a person’s personal plants and transplant them into the communal garden. I took three relatively well established plants, and put two in mostly sand and one in the garden soil. I also plucked two tiny shoots with only two branches each, and put those in tiny pots (toilet brush holders).

Re-homed Aloe Vera

At this point I’ll go ahead and mention that the lab has a surplus of toilet brush holders, since we use the brushes for cleaning the mole rat colonies. The kind here are like small plant pots, and they have no other use in the lab so they’ve just been set aside. I have been able to put some of them to use in the garden, and they should do the job nicely!