Finally!!

We have finally been given the green light to start field season. Actually, that was Thursday. We (Brittany and I) made the 2 hour trip to Merryville, Louisiana early Friday morning. Looking back, we really should have gotten here earlier, but I was unfamiliar with the route and suck driving in the dark so we left a little before sunrise. The reason I said we should have gotten here earlier is I spaced on the fact that there is zero shade in the majority of these stands. Granted the eucalyptus is about 10 ft tall, but they are skinny and offer no shade. Half our pine reference stands (the ones that represent age) are only calf high so there really is no shade in those. The temps thus far have only been in the lower to mid 80's but the sun is scorching when you are carrying so much, trying to avoid falling in holes or  chokeing on smilax, and going up and down rows. 

I was really surprised how they planted the eucs. It honestly looks like they just ran over everything with a bulldozer, plowed up rows and stuck the eucs in. They did not pick up burnt slash or remove some snags. There are some stands where it looks like they ran out of herbicide and sweetgums and oaks have started to grow in. Each stand is different from the next. One will be full of broomsedge and wild flowers and another will be full of hardwood encroachment. Some have horrible high rows where others don't. Then some might have lots of left over debris while another wouldn't hardly have any. 

Although we were in the stand a little later than you would want to be to hear the most birds, we heard a lot of them in the euc stands. Though, I am not sure if it was because they were utilizing the snags or not, but we will document if the birds we see were on snags or not to see if that might be it. 

Our second day went much better than the first. We left at 4 am to try to beat the heat, finished this weeks pitfall traps for insect collection, and found out we were cleared for field housing. Granted the communication for this wonderful discovery was anything but ideal, but everything worked out. 

So we came back to Nac early, ate an awesome dinner at Buther Boys to celebrate (homemade bacon ranch burgers!!), slept in (sleeping till 8 am!!), did laundry and packed for the week. 

We are now settled in, have tomorrow's agenda planned out and are waiting on Game of Thrones (wifi in field housing what?!?). Needless to say, and without going into much detail, it has already been a learning experience. Even though I have already been frustrated and sometimes discouraged, I am very thankful for this opportunity, to have one of my greatest friends go through the frustration, heat, and joys with me, and to have my wonderful husband to support me. I don't know if I could have really got this far with as much sanity as I have without them. 

Tomorrow starts bird surveys and insect fogging so I'm off to sleep so we can get up before dawn. Don't worry, I'll go into more detail about housing and fun times in the field later. For now, blessed be and I hope you enjoy some pictures from this week. 

Texas sunrise. I think this was just outside of Lufkin. 

Cross roads at a baby euc stand. 

Hot, sweaty, dirty me and a baby euc stand. 

Dirt roads for miles

Wildlife truck decorations. 

Home for 8 weeks. 

Disappointment and Discovery

Still really nothing new to report here. We are still awaiting a green light to begin field season, but it's ok. I had set the schedule up with an extra site survey and two extra sites so it should be no problem to adjust and still come out of the season as planned.

We were finally able to test my bug capture contraption. What I wanted to do is place a tarp over the trees and surround it so that no insects could escape and then fog the inside with insecticide so that they would fall underneath. My original idea was to place a sheet 3/4 from the top of the tree and another 1/2 way down. See, different bird species use different parts of the tree. If we didn't find any insects at particular parts of the tree it would explain why they weren't there if we didn't find any birds that use that area and vice versa. This became a challenge while putting the sheet parts together. What if my tarp covers more than one tree, how can I place the sheets then? So I just nixed that part out.

SFA had 5 days out for the Easter holiday, so we took one of those days to test getting the tarp up. That was a major pain. The PVC pipes were too flimsy. The painter's pole wouldn't fit in the eyelets. The tarp was huge and heavy! Then came the questions. Are we going to be able to maneuver this huge, heavy ass tarp around plantation style trees? We were having to work with the wind and were having extreme difficulties trying to get it over a tree with limbs. So, that planned was nixed. The majority of the literature I have found has just fogged the hell out of a tree and shook it 30 minutes afterwards to make sure any silk hanging insects fell, so that's what we are going to do. I had the idea to just surround branches in the cardinal directions on the top and mid story (same idea as the sheet but separated instead of the entire canopy part), but my major adviser is more interested in what insects are there and not necessarily where they would be located at.  Which, considering there are no published works from the United States about this habitat type, is a good start.

The word as of yesterday on the project is that it is at the President of the University's office to sign,
which should be the last step. Part of our equipment is already packed in the truck (ya! we have a truck) and everything else is packed and ready to be packed.

While we have been waiting oh so patiently on the landowner agreements to be resolved, we visited two zoos last week. The Caldwell Zoo in Tyler and the Ellen Trout Zoo in Lufkin. The Caldwell zoo had penguins and Ellen Trout had hippos! Both were small compared to the ones we had been to in Montgomery and Birmingham, Alabama, but they were unique in their own ways. The Ellen Trout zoo was laid out in such a way that you were constantly coming up on something different and there were lots of places to sit, rest, and enjoy along the way. When we went to Caldwell there were about six different elementary schools visiting and so we had to constantly dodge and maneuver around children. Both had some small cages for some of the animals, but nothing so bad I would want them reported for.

I don't know this kid, but this picture makes me smile. 

I'm going to try to do better about posting. I've gotten really bad about it this month! But hopefully I'll be able to give y'all bigger and better news next time.

Still alive

It's been little over a week and no, Luna did not kill us with her farts. Field season is on hold for the time being since we are awaiting landowner agreements to be concluded. But, Brittany (Hi) is here and we are awaiting oh so patiently on the green light. 

Other than reviewing birds and touring the walking trails of Nacogdoches, there isn't much to report unfortunately. 

We are in the middle of transferring our car and Buddy's license to Texas. Due to a tear in one of the tires and all of them being the wrong size (which we knew) we replaced all the tires on the cruiser, got it state inspected and changed the oil. 

So, really nothing new but we're still alive and kicking!! Here are some recent pictures. Enjoy and blessed be. 

Wherein my OCD gets the better of me

Hi. My name is Libby and I'm a control freak. I like making a schedule and sticking to it. I like making plans and following them. I like having a clear cut path from point A to point B.

That being said, I knew what I was getting into accepting this assistantship, having an upcoming field season, and going to grad school. I knew schedules would continually ebb and flow and change. I knew shit happens and not everyone plays well with others. I knew not everyone keeps up with their email and answers them in a respectable time. I knew not everything was going to be easy-peasy and straight forward. I accepted this, embraced it, and it punched me in my damn face today.

I guess I was just having one of those days where EVERYTHING seems to go wrong, but this day really tested my control issues to the point where I had to put my head in my hands and breathe deeply. However, before the day was over I was feeling better and Buddy and I even took Luna to the dog park.

So, there is one week left till field season, we still don't have field housing squared away and I may be out of a truck and having to use a van instead. Worse case scenario, cause ya know that's where I go, is we'll have to drive 2 1/2 hours to our sites at 3 am each morning and hope it doesn't rain anymore than it has so we don't get a van stuck. We also may be postponed a week which means I'll have to rearrange the schedule for the 475th time. But, I'm taking deep breaths and we're going to make the best of this and it will come out amazing.

In other news, life with out Georgie is just weird. I still keep waiting for her to come around the corner and fuss at me about something. Serenity is no longer searching for her sister, but has become more talkative and more snuggly. She had started coming to the back door while I was outside, so I decided to see if she would come out with me. She is not a very good jumper so I wasn't afraid of her jumping up on the ledge, but I have created a monster. Everytime Ne-ne hears the sliding glass door she comes running her fat little self to the back door where she cries and cries until either she is let outside or I come in.

Luna had been acting a little depressed. I think its mostly because of a food change. The food I had got for her when we moved was a store brand from a store that does not exist in this area. So I got her some Alpo which she used to love. Now she has the most disgusting gas! She even refused to eat her food all day Saturday. Guess I'll be getting a different kind of dog food on grocery day. The pseudo-depression is one of the reasons I wanted to take her to the park today. She ran and played tag as usual, so all is well...except for the gas. If I don't post again in at least a week, send someone to check on us please. Luna may have killed us with her farts.

Heartbroken

I had planned to post something more upbeat, but today the worse case scenario happened.

I had mentioned earlier that Georgie had a kitty cold but was starting to feel better. Well after weaning her off of soft food she started loosing weight and acting lethargic. So I started giving her soft food in their usual food bowl, but she wasn't eating it. I started putting it in her special bowl but still on the chest with the food bowl so Luna wouldn't get into it. It seemed like she was only eating when I placed her up there. So I started feeding her in the kitchen again. She was eating a little better, but not much and even started falling asleep at the water bowl and hiding out for the majority of the day. Last night I even noticed she was stumbling a little even though she was walking very slow and carefully. 

So we decided what I knew to do was no longer helping and we took her to a vet this morning. After answering all the questions, getting some looks after telling them she hasn't been vaccinated in years, and Georgie getting a thermometer stuck up her butt to make sure she had no fever, the vet decided to do a urinalysis to see where we needed to start. 

When he came back the diagnosis was grim. Renal failure. With those two words I just knew we weren't bringing her home. We asked how it could have possibly happened. It could have been an injury when she was a kitten, came in contact with something toxic or even genetic. We asked what our options were. Subcutaneous fluids as needed, a feeding tube, additives to food to help encourage her to drink more, but all were prolonging the inevitable and wouldn't make her less lethargic or feel too much better. 

We had a blood test run to confirm that was what was wrong and it came back sooner than expected. Her BUN was so high the machine couldn't run it and give definitive numbers and her creatinine was about 9 times normal. All confirming my Georgie was dying. With all of our options we decided to let her go peacefully. When our first dog, Nova, died all we got was a phone call. At least with Georgie I was able to be there, hold and kiss her one last time, tell her I loved her and that I was so sorry. She was so weak and sick that she went without a fight. 

You would think being there for that would be the hardest part. Coming home with out her, walking in the door with out her running up and talking to you or smelling yor shoes to see where you have been, putting the empty carrier outside instead of letting her out inside, having Serenity and Luna look for her, emptying the opened cans of food in the garbage disposal because Serenity didn't like it - these were the worst things. 

Even with Luna and Serenity looking for her I catch myself doing so as well. Looking at the bedroom door, the back glass door, or under the table expecting her to be there. Or even thinking, she was just asleep I can go pick her up.  I have spent the majority of the day staring at pictures of her when she was healthy, remembering when she first came home she so skinny that she was pretty much all ears, the multitude of head-butts and old lady complaining meows, smelling someone before she let them touch her....Six and a half years of memories. 

I know it gets easier with time and tomorrow I try to go back to "normal". But today I am heartbroken and mourn my Georgie-porgie cutie-pie smushface fu-manchu Messick III esquire pterodactyl head-butt princess destroyer of all things. 

Georgiepuss 10/07-4/14