Degu Fitness

I am in a cafe in Ovalle this morning. We were all soooo excited to get online to look up things, read the news, hear things from home, etc. Friends and family: please send emails! I am going crazy thinking only about degus, telemetry, and driving the same road everyday! 

It is pretty great watching the sunrise every morning.

Right now we are working on trapping degus to find prospective social groups for my project. I am studying this Fray Jorge population of degus to understand the correlation between sociality (group-living) and fitness. And no, fitness does not mean lifting weights and working out. In ecology, fitness refers to an animal’s ability to survive and reproduce, so it is a measurement of life time reproductive success. I wake up every morning at 6am to set traps as a group and then we process trapped degus a little later in the morning. We've been practicing putting the tiny radio-collars on degus. My mom always said I would be good surgeon because I have tiny hands, but I've found my true calling with these radio-collars! My small hands are perfect for screwing on the itsy bitsy nuts on the collar, so I can be very quick which I'm sure the degus appreciate. 

The afternoons have been pretty free, although Katie’s project is starting soon. Then we will be busy from 7:30am-5pm. We all have positive attitudes about it but I will miss seeing and handling the little degus (for hers we will be tracking their home ranges with daytime telemetry). Right now I spend the afternoons reading, watching futbol games with park employees (Chile lost to Brasil), entering/analyzing data, watching degus, and recently attempting some yoga and work outs :) Megan and I have figured out that 2L juice bottles filled with water or sand will make great weights for our bicep curls!

I’ve been waiting to see a guanaco in the field and was shocked the other day to see one moving through my traps! It didn’t register right away and I was scared to see such a big animal!! He was being stalked by a fox, and after they had a face off the fox just laid down in the dirt. Then 2 more guanacos came through and had a little tiff with the rogue guanaco. Katie's blog has pics/videos! http://atacamalove.blogspot.com/

We have a pair of owls that live right by the house. 

This fox was trying to stalk me yesterday.

And here is a picture of our family out for Megan's bday!