Babies!!

I was just starting to feel like I would never get to see a baby degu and then I finally got to hold baby rodents! Ok so that was about a month ago (sorry I haven’t blogged).  The mammal team was finding baby degus and abrocoma during their 9 day stint in the beginning of October. Juan took us to one of his grids and we found 2 very young degu pups (~20g) and a dozen or so older pups (40-50g). The little guys were not very mobile yet and they weren’t biting us. But the older ones were jumpy and tried to bite us, and would run away when released. One baby degu even decided that Megan’s shoulder was a great place to nestle. 

Doesn’t he look the happiest any degu could possibly look? 

 Megan also had the important task of warming up the little guys when they were hypothermic. She used her breath to warm them, and also had them bundled in her hoodie pocket.

The other guys found baby abrocoma and were nice enough to show us! They are so cute and silly looking. It’s something about their face and ears. You can see some very flattering shots of Jose Luis, Hector and Juan in the backgrounds.

In other baby news, birds have been nesting around the house, including a giant hummingbird! Juan showed us three eggs there and Jose Luis, one of the mammal guys, looked in there are saw a baby hummingbird! Like most baby birds it is really really ugly. I still can’t believe how strong that nest is. We have tornado like winds all the time and somehow that nest stays put.  Now he is pretty cute though. 

Momma giant hummingbird sitting on her nest

Baby on his own

Juan found a nest of baby Darwin's leaf eared mice! They were so precious and their nest was made from a lot of Megan's hair! It was so beautiful.

And there is a bird nest inside this little shed that also houses Juan’s outside oven. So we were worried about them dying of smoke inhalation.

But they have survived him making a few batches of bread out there and smoking a TON of meat for his bday celebration! Yesterday was Juan’s bday and it was really fun! 

His family came to the park and we all ate and drank jote (wine with coke) and took an impromptu trip into the forest to look at baby rayaditos with Matias, a field assistant that is studying them here. They were so cute!!! 

Rayaditos!

These crystals precipitated out of our wine/coke mixture...were we drugged????

It would make good eye shadow. I'm supposed to wear purple with my brown eyes anyways.

Me and Juan at his bday (he's sitting on my lap)

Juan's nephew Brandon in the forest on Juan's bday.

Terremotos from over a month ago!

Delicious chirimoya (a fruit that tastes like frozen yogurt!!)

My mom is always asking to see practical things like signs. Here are some from the park.

We perform the investigacion (research). We have to go through this gate to get to our house.

If I've learned anything from my nearly 5 month stay in Chile it's this:

This is posted on Juan's fancy new motorcycle!

 Below are views from the mountain. We feel so skinny after hiking this trail.

Can you spot the house?

This is where we pump our water from.

Our owl

Getting up early means we see beautiful sunrises.

Beautiful flower on our hike (reminds me of the flower in Tangled-even thought that one is yellow)

And the coolest thing ever....Megan found a fox skull!!!

Finally, it's the little things in life that can bring you great happiness. I've almost been here for 5 months and am starting to get anxious to come home BUT after about a month without hot showers we had a hot water heater installed and in our newest truck we have an antennae which means I can listen to fun North American and Latin American pop songs to and from my site. And these things makes me so happy!