It was not exciting work and I was pretty bored. Doc's Boss's right hand woman, Mammal Master, was giving a talk about loons. She's given this talk before and I've heard it, but it's a nice talk to listen to. Her audience was primarily a summer camp, and I'd say all the kids were less than 10 years old. They asked her very good questions, as did the adults in the audience. After MM's talk, I ate a delicious lunch of cold pasta, and went back to work on the guide. Just when I thought I was ready to gouge my eyes out, Dr. Student walks in! Huzzah! He apologized for not going to do field work yesterday, and instead we went today. Needless to say, that guide did not get done.
Field work was interesting, I've never really done entomological work before so it was a nice experience. The first site we went to had the first malaise trap. Malaise traps look a lot like a tent, and funnel insects into a death chamber (a jar full of alcohol). There were a lot of insects in the jar (hopefully they were the ones that Dr. Student needs) and after replacing full death chamber with an empty one, we walked around looking for wounded trees. Some of the flies that Dr. Student needs are only found where trees are wounded, have sap flowing, and there's some kind of mold or fungus growing. We did not see any trees with wounds at site one, but we did see turtles and a five lined skink (I think)! After a patrol of site one, we moved onto site two.
Site two was the place where we went last summer, this time there were horses there too. Two chestnuts, one bay, and a brown (which is technically bay, E_, AtAt or AtAa as opposed to E_,Aa or AA).
Site two had the second malaise trap, which was in between two creeks and was a bit of an adventure to get to. Dr. Student let me change the death chamber at this malaise trap which was cool, it had a scorpion fly in it. We then walked around site two, looking for wounded trees. We did find one, but the wound was not bleeding. We also tried to catch flies that were attracted to this dead looking mushroom, I did not catch any but I believe Dr. Student was successful. After site two, we said good bye to the horses and went to site three.
Site three did not have a malaise trap. It did have a tree that was bleeding last year, and Dr. Student hoped that it was still going with the flow. And in fact, it was still flowing, and the tree adjacent to it was wounded and bleeding as well. We caught at least one of the flies he needed, unsure about the second one. One of the trees was making noises as the sap leaked out, which made it sound as if the tree was going to explode. You'd be surprised at the diversity of insect life gathered around the sap flows. Truly impressive.
And before I go to the concluding part of my day, just a couple words about Dr. Student. He is a pretty cool dude. He knows so many things about insects, he can identify these tiny little flies without a microscope, and he also finds the names of Ikea furniture hilarious. I wish I had part of his brain, because DAMN that boy is smart.
I came home to my apartment and checked for ticks. I have never gotten a tick in my life and I've done plenty of things in the field. After my first search, I got nothing. But is a lay in bed, absent mindedly scratching my back, I felt something.
A female lone star tick. I immediately put her in a test tube as she awaits punishment for her indiscretions. Luckily for me she did not latch on, because lone stars can cause a myriad of terrible things. Dr. Student suggested microwaving her. It is quite tempting, but as of now, she sits on my desk.
And that my readers was my most exciting day thus far. It felt great to be outside and interacting with another human being.
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