Dissections in Vert Morph – For Science!

April 21, 2010April 9, 2017 - Wendy Leave a comment

(Post backdated to 2010, when these photos were originally taken).

Dissections nearly scared me away from biology. No kidding, when I first graduated from high school, I considered going into biology, but I always vetoed the idea, because I was convinced I’d never be able to handle dissecting an animal that had once been alive.

This wasn’t a new thought . . . when I was in elementary school (around 4th grade, IIRC), as part of the gifted/talented program, we were asked to dissect frogs. I decided that I wouldn’t do it, and told the teacher as much. Fortunately for my young psyche, this wasn’t a problem – they even allowed me to take the (living) frog home as a pet.

Fast forward a couple of decades, when I realized that I wanted to do something tangible to help the state of the Earth. Conservation work seemed the most direct way to do this, and biology seemed to be the most direct way to get involved with conservation. I knew that dissections would be in my future, but I figured I could handle it. After all, I’d given birth. It didn’t seem like dissecting something could be more intense than that. I’d do it, for science!

Finally, the opportunity arrived in Vertebrate Evolutionary Morphlogy, which I needed to compete the Evolution and Ecology concentration for my major. I was a bit nervous, but when the time came, I was surprised to find that it wasn’t nearly as difficult as I’d anticipated.We dissected two animals during the course of the semester – the first was a dogfish shark, and the second was a cat. Admittedly, the cat was tricky at first, but once we’d removed the skin it stopped seeming like something that could once have been a pet, and was instead an interesting collection of connected muscles, and bones, and nerves, and other tissues. Sure, there were bad smells, but more than anything, it was interesting. Really, really interesting to cut something open and see how it’s put together inside. To follow the muscles, and nerves. To see how the lens fits into an eye. For science!

Since then, I’ve done other things I would have once found distasteful – I’ve pinned dozens and dozens of insects, dissected squids and earthworms, filed notches into the shells of baby turtles, cut up mice and rats into bite-sized pieces for animals in my care. Occasionally, I have moments when I feel like a bit of a monster, even now, if I have to cut up a live mealworm for one of my lizards. But mostly, things like this don’t bother me anymore.

I’m doing them for science.

Avian Team Award!

February 7, 2010April 1, 2017 - Wendy St. John Leave a comment

I had a big surprise at the Sonoma County Wildlife Volunteer Appreciation party this afternoon – I received an AWARD!

I had no idea this was going to happen, and in fact I was really, really surprised. Apparently, though, Nicole knew about it, and insisted that I attend the party (otherwise I probably would have stayed home).

I received the Avian Team Award, for the work I’ve done at the Songbird Hospital. I was really excited and pleased about this – I did put in a lot of hours at the Songbird Hospital (although it’s possible that I put in even more feeding the animals at the main site). In any case, it was lovely to be recognized this way, considering that there are a lot of volunteers who do really excellent work for the center.

It turned out to be a good event all the way around. In addition to the award, I got to chat with some good friends, and I got to see Wiley (the Coyote), who lost a leg in late December to some wild coyotes who attacked him through the enclosure to his fence. He was hopping around like crazy (he even gave me some kisses, as usual), and seemed perfectly fine, except for the missing leg and the fact that one third of his fur was shaved off. He’s alive, though, and recovering well, which made me so very happy. So, I’m really glad that I went to the party. And YAY! I received the Avian Team Award!

Songbird Hospital

June 20, 2009April 1, 2017 - Wendy St. John Leave a comment

In addition to working at the main site of the Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue, I’ve been doing one shift a week at the nearby Songbird Hospital, which is affiliated with the SCWR, but located at a different site (at the home of the woman who runs it and does most of the work).

I learned about the Songbird Hospital about a month ago, when I found a young crow in distress near where I park my car at home. In checking the SCWR website, I learned about the Songbird Hospital, and since crows are technically songbirds (taxonomically, if not based on the aesthetic merits of their songs :D), I decided to take him there. Well, turns out that he had a severe parasitic infection, and didn’t live through his first night at the center. The silver lining for me, though, was getting in contact with the woman who runs the Songbird Hospital (her name is Veronica).

I expressed an interest in doing some volunteer work there, and it turns out she is desperately in need of people to help out, so I’ve started helping her out feeding baby birds, and doing whatever other things need to be done at the hospital (things like sorting out mealworms, and setting up aviaries). Mostly, what I do is go from enclosure to enclosure in the main hospital room, and shove mealworms into the eager little gaping beaks of baby swallows, finches, flycatchers, thrushes and woodpeckers.

Considering how much I love birds, it’s not a big surprise that I really enjoy helping out with the songbirds.

Baby bluebirds, and a robin (the robin is the large one center front):

Black phoebe:

Northern mockingbirds:

Female Bullock’s oriole:

Ash-throated flycatcher with the bluebirds and Pacific-slope flycatchers:

The Mousetrap

June 17, 2009April 1, 2017 - Wendy St. John Leave a comment

As a follow up to this post, I thought I’d post some pictures of the most excellent “mouse” trap that I built earlier in the week.

The Vole Trap:

That’s the corner of the piano which I left unblocked, and the approximate location where I placed the trap (really, that wood-tone thing was moved over, and the ramp was right at the opening between the piano and the wall):

A side view, showing the angle of the trap. Also, the grape. I had put a grape there, thinking that Gizmo would go for it first, and that would be a clue that he’d ventured out near the trap. But no. He left the grape untouched, and just dove right in for the other goodies. 😀

Building an Excellent Mousetrap

June 12, 2009April 1, 2017 - Wendy St. John 1 Comment

Today, I had to build a mousetrap. Well, to be more specific, a vole trap. It’s a pretty funny story, but first you need to know some history.

Meet Gizmo:

Gizmo is a vole, a native rodent who was found by a guy in Healdsburg who cared enough about this tiny baby animal’s well-being to drive half an hour to our center in Petaluma. This minature bundle of fur needed a foster mommy, and the woman who is in charge of such things asked me if I’d be willing to take him home and hand feed him until he’s old enough to fend for himself. How could I resist that face? 🙂

He’s been here with me for just over a week, and he’s the cutest little baby animal in the WHOLE WORLD. (Okay, so maybe I’m a bit biased, being his foster mama and all, but he really is SO CUTE). When he came to me, he was what I’d call a “juvenile” – he had fur, but his eyes weren’t fully open yet, and his little ears hadn’t separated from the rest of his body yet. Because he wasn’t yet old enough to eat on his own, I hand fed him with a syringe. The first couple of days, I fed him 8 times a day (every 2 – 3 hours, except at night; he was old enough to go 7 – 8 hours without being fed). Then, I cut him back to 6 feedings a day for a few days. Then down to four, and then three. Today, I only hand-fed him just once, because of a little excitement he gave us. More on that in just a bit. As I’ve cut back on his formula, I’ve introduced foods for him to eat on his own. First formula and rice cereal, then soft fruits, then rodent “block” (which looks sort of like tiny dog biscuits), and next rodent “mix,” which is a variety of seeds and grains and other strange things. Once I feel that he’s eating all of these things well, on his own, I’m going to go out and collect some native grasses and flowers for him, so he’ll be used to eating the things that he’ll be able to find for himself once he’s released back into the wild.

Here he is not long after I got him. Even in this photo, he looks noticeably younger than in the first one I posted, which was taken only two days after these others. So sweet:

Feeding him with a syringe – he eats between .4 and .8 ccs of Esbilac formula per feeding:

This photo is a little bit blurry, but it gives a good idea of just how tiny he was. He’s still small, but in the time that I’ve had him, he’s nearly doubled his weight – from 7 grams to at least 13 grams (he weighed 13 yesterday, so probably today he weighs even more):

So, now I get to the funny story. Well, it’s funny now, although it had me in tears earlier in the day. All along, I’d known that he was an escape risk. I mean, tiny rodents? They can move FAST, and this one is not domesticated. Still, I hadn’t had any trouble. He managed to wriggle away from me once or twice when he was first here, but he was so young he didn’t get very far very fast. I thought I was taking precautions – I’ve been taking him into the bathtub when he needs to be weighed. I figured that way, if he got away from me, he’d be contained and easy to catch. But I didn’t figure on him getting away from me when I was holding him to feed. It always seemed like I had good control of him (holding him in a towel for both control, and to avoid squishing him).

Even so, that’s exactly what happened this morning. Escape, I mean. This morning, around 8:00, just as I was putting him back into his container after feeding him, he wriggled out of my grip, landed on the table, jumped down onto the floor, and was GONE. I wasn’t even entirely sure which direction he’d gone. I won’t go into too many details about my frantic attempts to search for him, but they included taking all the books off my HUGE bookshelf, so I could look behind it (he wasn’t there), pulling the printer off it’s shelf on my computer desk (he wasn’t there), and checking under all the other furniture in the room (he wasn’t there, either). I was pretty certain that there was no way for him to get out of the house, but that still left the daunting task of figuring out where he was in the house.

I put out some food on the floor, hoping to tempt him out of hiding, and I kept searching around. Finally, about an hour after he escaped, I discovered where he’d ended up – I heard him exploring the inside of my piano. 😀 At first, I thought that was rather nightmarish – there was no way I felt good about moving the piano away from the wall. I was afraid of squishing him. But then I realized that this might not be a bad thing – it was actually a pretty good place to set up a trap.

I used towels to block off all the way around one edge and the top of the piano, leaving him only one escape route. Then, I used one of my son’s toy bins (about 10″ deep), and a ramp made out of legos to create a trap. I set the bin on an angle, with the ramp leading up to the rim. I set food inside, and some of the towels from his container (I thought he’d like that they had his smell on them, and would hopefully smell “safe”). My plan was that he’d climb up the ramp, and after going for the food would slide down into the bin. I wasn’t sure it was deep enough to really keep him from jumping out again once he figured out what was happening, but I hoped it would at least give me time to throw a towel over the top, and get him secured and into the bathtub to be captured properly. It seemed like a reasonable plan, anyway. I set my ingenious device next to the opening between the wall and the piano, put up a barricade around it (hopefully keeping him trapped in that area, if he happened to wander out and ignore my trap) and sat down to wait. Surely, soon he’d get hungry enough to sniff out the lovely food I had waiting for him.

I waited. And waited. And waited. Every so often, I could hear him moving around inside the piano, and twice he peeked his adorable little face out, but when he saw me, he got scared and ran back to hide. Finally, after a couple of hours of this, I decided that sitting around watching wasn’t really accomplishing anything, so I went across the room to use my computer while I waited. I figured that when/if he wandered into the trap, it would make enough noise that I’d be able to get over there and capture him before he knew any better.

Still, I waited. I heard noises from that side of the room periodically, but every time I looked, there was no sign of him. Around 2:30, I started getting worried about him. After all, he’d been out for several hours, and therefore, gone without food. He’s a spry little guy – surely in the category of “young adult” now – but I didn’t think it was good to go this many hours without eating. Plus, I hadn’t heard any noises from inside the piano in a while. What if he’d managed to get out of my “containment area?” He could be anywhere! I really REALLY didn’t want him getting outside. Not in my neighborhood – there are TONS of outdoor cats around here. I figured he’d be safe enough in the house, but still, I was horribly stressed out worrying about him, and hoping I’d be able to catch him. Because really, I love him. He’s a precious little creature, and even though he’s tiny and might seem insignificant, his life is important to me. I wanted to do my best by him, and give him a really good chance at a life.

Finally, I heard a bit of noise from that part of the room, so I knew he was still in the area, but it was getting to be 5:00. I’d fed him NINE hours previously, and I was starting to get really worried about him. He was being so quiet – what if he was wasting away from lack of food? I decided that I’d make him some new Esbilac and rice cereal (which seems to be his current favorite food). The old stuff had been there all day, and I hoped that fresh food would smell so yummy that he’d be encouraged to come out after it. So, I reached into the trap/bin and pulled out the little jar lids of food, only to notice that one of them had some tiny little droppings inside. What’s this? I could have sworn that I made all this food fresh this morning, and had discarded everything that was in his container overnight. So how did the droppings get in there?

A thought occured to me: Maybe he’s already in the trap?

I poked around in the towels, and sure enough – there he was. Sleeping away happily in the trap. WHAT THE HECK? I couldn’t believe that he’d been in there ALL THAT TIME! He must have climbed in hours before. I was watching and waiting, and he was in the trap all the while. I was worried that he might be hungry? OH NO! He had PLENTY of delicious food, and a lovely place to nap, and he was quite snug and happy, and had no idea that he was IN A TRAP and should have been trying to ESCAPE again!

Part of me wanted to scream – DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU PUT ME THROUGH? But mostly, I was just so freaking happy and relieved to have him safely contained again. YAY GIZMO!

It’s true that I felt like a bit of an idiot for not realizing he’d climbed into the trap, literally HOURS before I discovered him there. *facepalm* But, on the other hand, I felt pretty accomplished for having built a trap that was so extremely successful. More successful that I realized, in fact.

Gizmo is now back in his container, with all fresh food. I’m going to cut WAY back on the hand-feedings (which will now all take place with the two of us sitting in the bathtub). In any case, I’m so happy with his progress. He’s still not ready to be out in the world on his own (he’s eating too much formula and cereal, and not enough seeds), but he’s definitely growing up. That’s one of the coolest things about raising him – watching the changes, which have happened so rapidly. Right before my eyes, he went from being really vulnerable and tiny, to being a proper little rodent, scampering around inside my piano (which, were I a rodent, would be a lovely place to visit, I think). I’m guessing that he’ll be ready to be released in a week or two, and until then, I’ll be weaning him off of the formula, and making sure he’s eating enough “big boy” food.

Wildlife Rescue (with BABIES)!

June 4, 2009April 1, 2017 - Wendy St. John Leave a comment

We’ve had some new arrivals at the Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue, and I thought I’d share a few pictures.

This is Mason, our resident Grey Fox. He’s not new; this is just the first time I’ve been able to get photos of him. Isn’t he gorgeous?

We also have several young grey foxes on site right now. All of these little guys will (hopefully) be released back into the wild. They’re adorable, and feisty, and run around really fast (so it’s hard to get good photos). But I tried:

Here’s a baby opossum. We’ve had more than a dozen of these little guys come in to the hospital already:

And here’s Opie, our resident grown-up opossum:

Leslie and Katie are Red-tailed Hawks, and they’re our newest permanent residents. One of them is missing part of a wing; not sure why the other one is unable to be released. They’re both so beautiful, though.

Here are a few pics of Kyla, the female mountain lion “cub” who will be spending the rest of her life here at the center.

We had a somewhat close encounter with her. While we were putting out her food, she came over to investigate. Yes, she really IS as close as she looks. I was about a foot away from her, through the chain link fence.

Mostly, she didn’t seem to mind that we were there, but once or twice she did remind us that this is HER territory.

This scene makes me very happy. That’s Kyla with Kuma, her brother, behind her. Kuma is missing one of his legs (due to a poacher, whom I hope goes to jail and has to pay an enormous fine). We were worried that, due to his somewhat limited mobility, he wasn’t getting enough food – that Kyla was eating all of it before he could get down to it. Apparently, not. That grey bundle of fur to the right is one of the rabbits that we gave to the lions. Kyla dragged it up there, which I assume she wouldn’t have done unless she intended to share it with her brother. So, it seems she’s looking out for him, and we don’t need to be worried about him getting anything to eat. 🙂

Here is some EXTREME cuteness – this coyote puppy is adorable, and so friendly. Disturbingly friendly, in fact. He wasn’t scared of us at all, and just wanted to play. This is a bad sign in terms of him being a good candidate for release back into the wild. So, we’re NOT playing with him, or cooing at him, or anything like that (and believe me, it’s SO tempting). Hopefully he’ll get “wilder” as he grows up. But for now, he’s just so adorable, I’m glad to have the opportunity to see him close up like this:

Finally, here’s one of me and my sweetie-boy Wiley. He is so precious (and it’s worth mentioning that the reason he’s here is that he was too friendly, as well – someone tried to raise him as a pet, which didn’t work. So now, he’s too wild to be a pet, but not wild enough to be free. As much as I love getting to play with him every week, it also makes me really sad that he’s locked away in here, because some person thought it would be a good idea to try and tame him):

FYI, our permanent residents are used for education, although they aren’t taken off-site into schools, or to fairs, etc. People can visit the center to see them. The site is separated into two sections: one where the residents live, so that people can come and take tours of this area and see the animals; the other side is for the animals who will be rehabbed and released. The public is not allowed in that part, so those animals don’t have more contact with humans than is absolutely necessary. Tours of the education area are offered every Saturday, plus school groups (and other organizations) can come and visit during the week by appointment.

We do education in schools and at other events, but for the most part, we don’t bring our animals to those events. It’s really stressful for them, so the woman who runs the center made the decision not to put them through that on a regular basis. (I think it’s a good decision). Instead, they bring taxidermied specimens, and skulls and things for children to view/handle, and just talk about the animals we have on site. For a while, they had a red-tailed hawk named Spirit whom I believe WAS taken around to schools and things, but he died a couple of years ago. Maybe they’ll use one of these new hawks in that way? I don’t know.

I think that giving children the opportunity to see wildlife up close like this is such a great way to learn respect for wildlife. That’s what happened for me, anyway, and look at me now. 😀

In just a bit, I’ll be off to feed these animals again today. I’m filling in for someone who’s on vacation, so for the next month, I’ll be feeding twice a week. Plus I’ve just started volunteering at the Songbird Hospital, feeding baby birds. I’ll be doing that once a week, too. No pictures of the baby birds yet, but I plan to take some next week. So keep an eye out for more baby animal cuteness! 🙂

Biology Field Trip

May 28, 2009April 1, 2017 - Wendy St. John Leave a comment

Here are some photos from a field trip that I took back in April to the Fairfield-Osborn Preserve in Rohnert Park, a nature preserve that is owned and maintained by SSU. It was a field trip for my Diversity, Structure and Function class, a class which gave a systematic overview of the whole range of life on Earth, from bacteria through plants and animals. Cool class. 🙂

For our field trip, we just went out to the preserve and tried to identify as many different organisms as we could, armed with all the knowledge we’d (hopefully) gained during the course of the semester. Here are a few of my favorite things that we saw that day:

Western Fence Lizard (Sceloporus occidentalis)

Me holding the lizard:

A scorpion (maybe the California Forest Scorpion, Uroctonus mordax?). OMG SO COOL! I didn’t know until fairly recently that we had scorpions up here. But we just turned over rocks until we found this little guy. Adorable!

Pacific Chorus Frog (Pseudacris regilla). Also incredibly adorable:

Another view of the chorus frog:

A California Slender Salamander (Batrachoseps attenuatus). It’s amazing the cool creatures that can be found under rocks!

Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue

May 5, 2009April 1, 2017 - Wendy St. John Leave a comment

Back in March, I started volunteering at the Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue, a center in Petaluma that rehabilitates native wildlife. What I’m doing right now with the organization is feeding the animals that live at the center (some permanent; some temporary).

I finally got around to taking some photos of the animals I work with, and thought that was a good excuse to write up a big entry about my experiences so far. Even if you’ve seen the photos on Facebook, you might want to read this – there’s loads more information about what I actually do at the center. Like feeding mountain lions, and getting kisses from a coyote. 🙂

Right now, I’m helping out by feeding and otherwise caring for the animals at the center one day a week. This involves preparing all their food (some combination of fruits, vegetables, nuts, mice and rats in most cases, although the mountain lions eat only meat). After we put together a food dish for each animal, we go around to the individual enclosures, put out the food, refill the water, and generally tidy up the place.

There are two categories of animals at the center: “education” animals which are here permanently, because they can’t be released into the wild for a variety of reasons; and animals which are being rehabilitated for release back into the wild. They’re kept in two discrete parts of the property, and the animals that are going to be released back into the wild are treated very differently than the permanent residents. We don’t want future releasees to become too comfortable with humans, so we avoid talking to them, and try and spend as little time with them as possible. Just get in with the food, tidy up, and get back out again. It’s different with the permanent residents. We can interact with them as much as we like – it’s good for them, really. We call it “enrichment” – anything that makes their lives in captivity more interesting, and less stressful. All the animals in these photos are education animals.

This is Betsy, a red fox. She is living here because she’s a non-native species, and can’t be released back into the wild, because in general, red foxes are in competition with the native fox populations (grey foxes – I’ll try and get photos of our resident grey fox, Mason, next time I bring my camera).

These photos were taken from inside the enclosure. The foxes are calm enough that we can easily go into their enclosure and feed them without having to lock them up first. One of the ways we provide enrichment for these animals is by hiding their food. Every day they get several dead mice; part of my job is to hide them in various places so the foxes have to find them, instead of just having them set out in the open, which would be far less interesting. 😀

Here’s my personal favorite (but shhhh – don’t tell any of the others) – Wily the Coyote. He’s here because someone tried to raise him as a pet, so he was too tame to be released back into the wild (but not tame enough to be an appropriate pet. One of the themes of wildlife rehabilitation is that these animals are almost always in need of help because of something stupid or careless done by humans).

Wily is such a love. When we come to feed him, he runs up to the edge of his enclosure so I can give him some scratches and loves. Sometimes he gives me kisses – he licked me all over my face yesterday. 😀

Here’s my sweetie-faced boy:

An interesting factoid about the coyotes (there are two; there’s a female named Cleo living in the same enclosure, but she’s too skittish to come and be pet) – they actually earn part of their own keep. When we feed the animals, we also go through and clean up after them – including their scat. Everyone else’s poop goes into the trash, but the coyote scat gets bagged up and sold. Why, you may ask, would anyone want to buy coyote scat? (I sure wouldn’t. It’s kinda stinky. :D). It’s used as a wild animal repellent, though – the scent keeps deer and other critters away. 🙂

Here’s Wily, looking wild:

Missy, the grey squirrel – so fat that she’s on a special diet. One of the dangers of captivity.

Rocky and Bandit, the two resident raccoons. They have to be locked in their den box before we go in the enclosure to hide their food, or else they’d climb up our legs in excitement:

We do enrichment for them much as we do for the foxes and coyotes, except they have an elaborate way for us to hide their food. They have a wooden “puzzle” box . . . basically a wooden box with six compartments, each compartment with a little door and some sort of latch (think of various gate closures, and you’ll have the right idea). We put snails and grapes (their favorite foods) in the compartments, and then close the latches. It takes them a while, but they’re able to open all the various latches. Which makes it easy to understand why it’s so difficult to keep them out of trash cans. They’re smart and dextrous. 😀

Here are our newest residents, and probably the most famous. Or at least the ones that most people come to the center to see. Kyla and Kuma are mountain lion “cubs,” brother and sister. They lost their mother to a poacher (I hope he/they go(es) to jail; I think the case is still being litigated, so I don’t know all the details). Kuma also lost one of his front paws (which necessitated the amputation of his entire leg). They ended up in the hands of the Fish and Game department, but state law doesn’t allow mountain lions to be rehabilitated and re-released the way we do with most other native wildlife. Fortunately, the center had enough property – and the ability to raise enough money to build an enclosure for them – that we’re allowed to house them as part of our educational animal collection. About a week ago they were moved into their new permanent home, which is lovely, with a stream and pond, and trees and platforms, plus a big den box. (I’ll try and get pictures of that sometime soon, too). They’re not full-grown yet, but are definitely not babies anymore. I think of them as teenagers. That’s Kyla on the left, and Kuma, hissing at me on the right.

And yes, I get to feed these guys, too. Which involves going into their enclosure. (Not while they’re loose in it, though. At least not usually). I had my first opportunity to do this on the very first day I was being trained to feed the animals. It was rather exciting. They were locked inside their den box, which, in the old enclosure, didn’t have wooden walls, but chain link fencing. So, I took their food (horsemeat, just like zoos feed to their carnivores, and a rabbit) and laid it out for them. They were about six feet away from me while I was doing this, and they weren’t entirely happy about me being in their home. Even knowing they were locked in, it was a bit nerve-wracking, having two large predators hissing at me at such close range, with just chain link fencing between us. They didn’t seem teenage at all just then. 😀

I intend to get more pictures of the wonderful animals I work with at the center. LIke the pair of young grey foxes we’re caring for right now who are SO INCREDIBLY ADORABLE (and feisty. They growl like crazy whenever we come near). We also have, at various times, opossums, skunks, hawks, owls, squirrels, bats, and even river otters, among others. So, expect more entries soon. I really love the work I’m doing with the wildlife rescue.

If you’re in the Bay Area and would like to meet some of these wonderful animals for yourself, the center is having it’s annual open house, Wild Fest, 09, on Saturday, May 16th. If you haven’t already seen the event on Facebook, and are interested in coming, let me know and I can get details and directions to you right away.

Spring Break Fun!

April 18, 2009April 1, 2017 - Wendy St. John Leave a comment

We’ve been on Spring Break this past week (later than just about everyone else, it seems), and the Bio Club at school (of which I am a member) had some fun activities planned. We went on two of them – a trip to a wild animal park called Safari West, and tidepooling at Pinnacle Gulch, near Bodega Bay. I also did a couple of other local things – I did some honest-to-goodness scientific research, counting pollinators on a species of wildflower that grows only at vernal pools, and I fed the animals at the wildlife rescue. Here are some photos from the two most photogenic adventures:

We went to Safari West on Wednesday, and it was a great day. I took a bunch of photos, and it was nice to have the camera out. It had been a while since I’d done any photography, what with being so busy with school.

At the park, we were given a walking tour, and then a two-hour tour on the safari truck, where we drove through the park, which has been arranged to have the animals in as natural a habitat as possible, and the truck goes into the “enclosures” (some of which are several acres large). It was a really cool place, and best of all we got in for free, because the woman who gave us our tour is a member of the Bio Club.

Here are a few of my favorite photos taken at the park:

A ring-tailed Lemur (pregnant, maybe?):

A whistling duck – these guys were so cute, all of us loved them:

Cheetah (and no, we didn’t go in this enclosure):

East African Crowned Cranes:

Cape Buffalo:

White Rhinoceros:

Chapman’s Zebra:

Not sure what these are, but they’re pretty:

On Thursday, a bunch of us went tidepooling at a really pretty little secluded beach just south of Bodega Bay. We had to walk a half-mile to get there along a poison oak-infested trail (and of course, it was harder work going back up on the way back to the car at the end of the day), but it was totally worth it. It was a great beach, and we got there about half an hour before low tide, so we had plenty of time to explore the pools, looking for invertebrates. Here are a few photos taken at Pinnacle Gulch:

Sea Star (although I still think of them as Starfish):

My son and Kate from Bio Club:

Anemone:

Bat Star:

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School Update

September 19, 2008July 14, 2017 - Wendy St. John Leave a comment

Heh. I just found an entry I started writing last Friday . . . and never managed to post. Mostly because school is keeping me busy. Busy in a good way, but I’m ending most days feeling mentally (and because of that, physically) exhausted.

Statistics is easy; Biology is mostly easy except for having to memorize the ^#*%^@ cell cycle. (Can’t I be a biologist without knowing about mitosis and meiosis? Okay, so I can’t. Whatever. *pouts*). Oh, and Thomas Hunt Morgan? Let’s dig him up out of his grave and beat him with a shovel (w+ . . . WHY????). Physics was insanely hard for me at first, not so much because of the physics, but because of the math needed to do the problems – my algebra skills were . . . rusty, to put it mildly. (Surprisingly, my trig skills are just fine, which is a relief). In the past week, though, I’ve put in a lot of time and effort (and a couple of sessions with a tutor), and I think I’m back where I need to be with the math. And the physics. We’ll see – I just got home from taking my first Physics exam, and I think I did fine. There weren’t any problems that made me think, “WTF?” and I’m pretty sure I did the one write-your-answer problem correctly (the rest of the test was multiple choice). Anyone want to have a go at it?

George and Alfred are brothers who drive race cars. (They’re also apparently not that smart, as you’ll see in a bit). George’s car accelerates at 3.00 m/s2, while Alfred’s is a bit slower: 1.50 m/s2. They set up their cars on a race track, 1.00 x 10^3 meters apart, facing one another, and from rest, drive towards one another. How long will it take them to crash into one another, and at what distance from George’s starting position will this crash occur?*

So, my brain has been tired lately, but I’m still feeling like I’m hanging in there as far as schoolwork is concerned. Plus, I have friends in Biology now (we have lunch together, and study together, and work out at the gym together, all of which is lovely), and I have people to chat with in both of my other classes. (I wouldn’t call any of them “friends” yet, but it’s still good).

Physics lab is fun – on Wednesday, we got to fire steel balls out of a little “cannon.” And in Biology lab, we got to mate drosophila flies on the computer like crazy (I deliberately did some pairings that I knew were LETHAL! Bwahahahahahah)! Okay, so it’s probably not quite as interesting as actually breeding the fruit flies themselves, and seeing what happens, but the computer model is much faster. 😀

My son, btw, was a bit scandalized by the fruit fly experiment. He said, “What did you do? Lock the flies together in a bedroom with a ‘do not disturb’ sign, and then wait for them to make kissy noises?” *facepalms* Of course, he was even more traumatized the previous week when we played with Mr. Potato Heads in bio lab. And yes, we made them have sex with one another, to see what would happen to the offspring. Mr. Potato Head Sex! W00t! (That really was the title of the lab). Genetics. Fun stuff. 😀

Nothing quite so interesting in Stats. We’re doing a project for which we had to collect data, and the group I’m in decided that we were going to poll students on their majors, and see the breakdown of male & female, and whether they were science majors, non-science majors, or undeclared. We stood outside the library asking people about their majors as they walked by, and it was really not fun. People are damned suspicious when you walk up and ask if they are willing to participate in a survey. Even though ours was only ONE question. (Then again, when I see people wanting to ask me survey questions, I run in the opposite direction, too, so I guess it’s only fair).

Teacup Rex

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