A Big Decision

- Wendy St. John Leave a comment

As of 2:15 this afternoon, I am on WINTER BREAK! WHOO HOO!!! This seems like a good time to do a round-up of the classes I took last semester, and some other noteworthy activities.

One of the big themes this semester was evolution – and it’s funny just how much overlap there was with all of the classes I took. Which was good – I got a lot of reinforcement of topics, and there was a lot of material that I only had to learn once, and it got me through four different classes:

Animal Behavior, with Dr. Dan Crocker. I enjoyed this class – it was an upper division lecture class, with no lab, all about – you guessed it – animal behavior. We talked a lot about reproduction, and evolutionary concepts. I really like Dr. Crocker; he does his research on elephant seals, and he seems like a genuinely nice and funny guy. Plus, animal behavior is cool! We got to look at loads of pictures, and a few videos, of animals doing really interesting things.

Evolution, with Dr. Derek Girman. I feel like I really have some of these concepts down now, especially natural selection, the geologic timescale, and game theory. I can calculate the hell out allele frequencies, as well, and tell you if a population is in Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium. Plus, I adore Dr. Girman. He’s my advisor, and he and I have spent a lot of time together outside of class this semester, because of some of my student representative activites, so I feel like I’ve gotten to know him (or, more importantly, that he’s gotten to know me) a bit more this semester. One of the things we did in Evolution was a group project in lab. The assignment was to create a game that illustrated evolutionary concepts. My lab partner and I came up with an AWESOME card game – it was so good that Dr. Girman asked if he could keep it, to use with his Vertebrate Biology class next semester (a class I’ll be taking, and I am SUPER excited).

Macroevolution, with Dr. Nick Geist. This was a graduate seminar, so it was a lot more laid-back than my other classes. We read papers and then sat around and discussed them. Each person in the class was required to choose a macroevolutionary topic, choose a couple of relevant scientific papers for the class to read on the subject, come up with a powerpoint presentation to give to the class, and then lead the discussion. The topic I chose was the evolution of flight, and I worked with another woman in the class to put together the presentation. I thought we put together a really good presentation – we talked about the four times (that we know of) that flight has evolved (insects, pterosaurs, birds and bats), and then talked in more detail about the evolution of bird flight controversy. (Did they evolve from dinosaurs? Or NOT)? That was fun, and Dr. Geist seemed to really appreciate the presentation we put together. As with Dr. Girman, I feel like I got to know Dr. Geist better this semester, which turns out to be SUPER important, considering a big decision I made last week. Oh, and our final exam? Took place at a local dive bar (The 8 Ball), where we shot pool and played the pub quiz machine and then went out for hamburgers. Totally cool. 🙂

Paleontology, with Dr. Matt James (in the Geology Department). This is probably the single class I have most wanted to take throughout my entire life . . . and it turned out to be a disappointment. Which is okay. I still love paleontology. But this class? Didn’t love, for reasons I don’t want to put into print at this time. One of the factors, though, was that we only covered invertebrates – which meant NO dinosaurs. Can you imagine a paleontology course with no dinosaurs? No? Neither could I, until now. It’s not that I minded learning about the inverts. Trilobites are freaking adorable, and we took a pretty awesome field trip down to Death Valley where we went fossil hunting, and I found a BUNCH of trilobite fossils, as well as some brachiopods, dendrites, oncolites and scolithos fossils. So, there were good things about it. In any case, it’s behind me now, and I needed it for my Paleo minor, so it was totally worth it for that reason alone. But, still. NO DINOSAURS! 🙁

The other thing I did this semester was begin the research for my senior thesis, which I’m doing in Dr. Geist’s lab. In a nutshell, I’m doing research on Western Pond Turtles, and I spent a bunch of time over the summer at our field site up in Lake County, and during the semester I started working with my data. I’m studying the nesting preferences, and possible nest site fidelity of females – whether or not they return to the same site year after year to lay their eggs. It is super cool, and leads me to my big decision . . .

I’m going to grad school. I’ve decided to stay at Sonoma State to earn a Master’s Degree in Wildlife Biology – there are a bunch of reasons I want to do this, but the thing that really clinched it for me was looking at job postings for the type of work I want to do, and realizing that a B.S. will land me an entry-level position, and I’d have to spend a couple of years working my way up the ladder. On the other hand, I’ll be qualified to go directly into higher level jobs with an M.S., especially since I’ll be able to develop a lot of contacts and relationships with professionals in the field during the course of my studies.

Oh! And I also wanted to talk a bit about the big extracurricular thing I did. Last semester, the Biology Club elected me to be the student representative for the Biology Department, so I’ve been doing that this semester (and will continue next semester as well). Which means I attend all the faculty meetings, which is very interesting, and I’ve had some opportunities to work on additional projects, as well.

 

Early in the semester, I learned about a possible collaboration between SSU and the city of Fort Bragg, who wants to donate some land to SSU as a research/nature/education center facility. A committee was formed to find out if there was enough interest among campus departments to try and make this happen, and I volunteered to be part of this, so I was appointed by the ASI president to represent SSU students on the committee. If the project goes ahead (which I very much hope it will), it will be called the Noyo Center for Science and Education at Fort Bragg. It was a really good experience for me to be on this committee – I wrote a survey which was sent out to as many students as possible, gauging their interest in the project, and then I wrote the “Student Response” page of a document which was given to the school’s Provost, in the hopes of convincing him this would be a good collaboration for SSU to pursue.

The other big thing I’ve done this semester as student rep is my involvement in curricular revision. For a variety of reasons, the Biology Department has decided to completely, from the ground up, revamp its curriculum. Right now, there are a lot of classes in the catalog that never get taught, and some classes that aren’t offered regularly enough for students who need them for their concentrations. Plus, the make-up of the faculty is different now that it was when the current curriculum was created, so overall, its a good time to start from scratch and come up with something that will better serve the needs of students and the department.

 

When they started talking about this in faculty meetings, I let them know that I’d be more than willing to help in whatever way I could with this process – I thought having some student input could only be a good thing. Most of the faculty members agreed with this, and were really supportive of me being part of this process (particularly Dr. Girman, who chairs the curriculum committee). There were a few faculty members who weren’t quite so keen on the idea of a student being involved . . . but I think I’ve mostly won them over. At least no one has been dismissive of me or my ideas during the two faculty retreats I’ve attended.

 

I created a student survey asking questions that we decided would be helpful in deciding what direction to take with a new curriculum, and I’m also sitting on the committee which is working on a recommendation for Upper Division curriculum. We’ll be meeting on Monday to try and come up with some sort of a general plan, and I think it will be a good meeting – I like all the faculty members on my committee (which is why I chose it :D).

So, all in all, I’ve spent a LOT of time in meetings this semester, between weekly faculty meetings and various committee meetings. But I think it has been really beneficial for me. I enjoy being involved, but even more important, it means that the faculty and the staff are getting to know me . . . and, from what I’m hearing from a couple of reliable sources, I’m making a very good impression on people (part of the reason I’ve decided to stay at SSU for grad school).

So, that’s my semester in a (rather gigantic) nutshell.

Turtle Research

- Wendy St. John 1 Comment
Since I am pursuing a bachelor of science degree, I will be writing a senior thesis. Of course, this means that I first need to do some research, so I have something about which to write. It looks like that something will be turtles, more specifically the nesting preferences and nest site fidelity of western pond turtles. I spent a a good part of last summer doing field research at a site up in Lake County, and this semester I am working in the lab with the data we collected, but for my own project, and also for a continuing project on temperature-dependent sex detemination in turtles.

This all came about last semester when i was speaking with my advisor about possibilities for senior thesis topics. Dr. Derek Girman, my advisor, suggested that i speak with Dr. Nick Geist, as he does the kind of vertebrate stuff that interests me (he is also a paleontologist, which is also stuff that I love). As it happened, while Dr. Girman and i were talking about this, Dr. Geist walked by and saw us talking – he must have had a psychic moment because he veered over to join us, and a couple of minutes later he’d agreed to help me come up with a project in his lab. A couple of weeks later, he invited me to be part of one of his big research projects and join the Turtle Team. Dr. Geist is one of my favorite professors, and I was thrilled to be accepted into his lab as an undergrad!

After some discussion, we decided that I would work on nest site fidelity – whether or not females return to the same location year after year to nest. I’m also interested in whether or not they return to their natal sites – the place where they themselves were born – but that might be outside then scope of what in will be able to research given the time I have to work on this project.

So, over the summer, I spent a lot of time up in Lake County at our research site, helping one of the grad students with her project, and also beginning to collect data of my own. The main project involved tracking females who had come out of the water to nest. Sometimes, we just followed them and monitored them while they were nesting so we could get a count of their eggs afterward. (Later, the eggs were removed to be incubated in our lab to be head-started by one of the local zoos and released about a year from now). Sometimes, we tracked them using radio telemetry equipment – we glued transmitters to their backs, and then tracked them to their nests that way. Mostly, the work involved tromping around a really beautiful location up in Lake County, grabbing up turtles (who almost always peed on us when we picked them up), and keeping track of the nests they laid. I also collected soil samples from all nest sites, and got GPS data for nest locations. Since most of the work took place in the early evening (we were usually in the field from about four in the afternoon until nine or ten at night), so we camped overnight instead of making the long drive home. Super fun!

We went up there a couple of days a week during June, until the end of the nesting season. Later in the summer, we went back up to help collect eggs, and also to release the baby turtles who had hatched last yes, and been raised in zoos. That was also lot of fun, except my boots kept getting stuck in the mud.

Now that the semester has started, there isn’t any field work until next year, so I’m working with data – plotting my location coordinates on a map and eventually I’ll get down to analyzing my soil samples. Dr. Geist wants me to put together a poster and present it next year at a conference, so I’ll be working on that, too, eventually. OH YEAH TURTLES!

A Photo of Me!

- Wendy St. John 1 Comment

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If you’re wondering about the black thing on the turtle’s back, it’s a radio transmitter. This gravid female had been captured the night before and given an ID number, weighed and measured, and fitted with a transmitter. Then, she spent the night in my car. This photo was taken right before she was released back into the lake the next morning. Then, over the next few days, her radio frequency was monitored each evening in the hopes of finding her out of the water and laying her eggs.

That’s a Lot of Food

- Wendy St. John Leave a comment

Today, I fed all the animals at the Wildlife Rescue by myself, for the first time ever. (Usually there are at least two, sometimes three of us). I don’t usually feed on Saturdays, but today I was filling in for someone who had surgery earlier in the week. I fed 56 animals today (well, 57 including Gizmo, whom I fed at home before I left this morning :D).

There were some new arrivals this week, including a turkey vulture and a river otter. I have to fess up to making the vulture throw up. That’s what he did when I entered the enclosure. It’s a typical defense strategy, although I’d never seen a bird do it before. Poor guy. At least I brought him new food to replace what he lost. and I didn’t actually feed the river otter  -she’s still being bottle fed).

I also filled a lot of waterbowls and picked up a lot of poo. (Wow, mountain lion poo is pretty disgusting. I didn’t really mind picking it up, though, which is a sign that I really love those animals). 😀 It took me five hours, and left me with a very satisfied feeling at the end of the day. 🙂

I think I am entitled to put “gourmet chef” on my CV now. I know I left all of my little diners with happily full tummies today!

Dissections in Vert Morph – For Science!

- 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!

- 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

- 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

- 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

- 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

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:

Gizmo, sleeping

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

Syringe 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):

Gizmo and my hands

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.