Nubz and river trekking

On 8/1/14 Megan found a really tough lady degu with a nub for an arm! I was still in Valley #1 when Megan and Erin were in Valley #2 and apparently there was a lot of excitement upon her discovery. The crazy thing is that we ear tagged her in June and have trapped, handled, and weighed her many times since then and somehow did not notice the nubbin!! We can’t decide if it is a birth defect or maybe she survived a fox attack? Anyways, Nubz was an exciting find.  

I’ve been trapping a lot and started radio-collaring ladies to find out where they are sleeping so I can trap all the right burrow systems once my project officially begins in a few weeks. Katie came with me the first night and I was terrified the whole time that a puma would jump out at us. I feel more comfortable doing it in the morning when I know the sun will come up. The trouble with radio collaring now is that the females have to be heavy enough that the collar doesn’t add too much weight but at the same time we don’t want to collar ladies that are too far along in pregnancy.  

Little lady enjoying some oats after radio-collaring

We visited Juan’s family again. He had to go home to get something for his motorcycle and we asked if we could come along for an adventure. Juan brought out a bunch of books for us to pick from so now I will be really challenging myself by reading Spanish! He also brought out many photo albums to see pictures from his past! It was great!

I finished the book Cloud Atlas-it was so good! Megan and Erin have also seen the movie and say it’s really good. It’s so weird though that I can’t really picture it as a film. I’m out of physical books now. I have many on my computer but the battery charger doesn't always work in the house so I can’t read on it all the time. Hopefully the Spanish books will be interesting!

River Trekking- Juan took us on another adventure! When I was opening traps in the morning I saw a falling star (estrella fugaz) and thought that meant it would be a lucky day. Trapping did not go well but I was excited that Juan was going to take us swimming in the river. We had a great time (except when my Chacos were almost lost in the mud). But we went swimming with Juan and laughed a lot.

String of frog eggs

The gang minus Erin- Megan didn't have shoes on so Juan carried her around!

THEN… we realized when we were almost back to the house that we had a flat tire. Juan, Erin, Katie and I spent the rest of the day and night driving around the highway trying to find a mechanic to patch up the tire. Not exactly a lucky day. But we had fun with Juan and we decided to drink a lot of wine to forget our bad luck. ALSO, Juan made picarones that night. Picarones are a peruvian donut dessert made with a squash called zapallo. He had made us another dessert with squash a few nights before that was more like fry bread. 

Picarones

Picarones with the syrup like sauce

Megan and I will be taking Erin to Santiago in a few days because she is going back to Tennessee. I don’t know what I’ll do without her here. She has the best attitude and great positive energy. I am excited to visit Santiago again, but I have to do a lot while I’m there- meet with colleagues, change out the truck, pack up the new truck with traps and supplies, and wait in line forever to extend my tourist card. 

The next exciting thing for the blog will be the arrival of my new field assistant in about a week!