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.