Earthquake!

Today is Chile’s Fiestas Patrias, or their Independence Day and it is also my assistant Sara’s bday!! We came back from trapping to find that we had power again! I also found a new very large (hopefully pregnant) female! So it was an all around good day.

On Wednesday night around 8pm I felt some shaking. I assumed it was a temblor and would only last a few seconds. But it kept going…Sara hadn’t felt a temblor yet and I was about to call to her something about it. Bu then it got scary and she peeked her head in my room, and as the whole house began to move we ran outside. The power went out and I heard something break in the house. I have never felt anything like that before. The ground was moving like jello. It felt hollow beneath me, like it was about to collapse and I would just fall in. I couldn’t believe how much the house was moving. I think at least one tire of our truck was in the air throughout the earthquake.The scary part was that the cats that lived next door started sprinting up the hill by our house, and women started wailing and men started yelling to each other. That did not make me feel very safe. I did not know how long it lasted at the time, but the news stories say 3 minutes and I believe it. One of the construction workers came over and told us that it was just the first wave and more would come in the night, but that was the worst one. He said to leave our door open in the night because sometimes they get jammed shut if you close them and then you are trapped. When we were getting ready to go to bed, still a little shaken up, we were wondering if Zorro was still outside running around but then I went into my room and found him curled up on my bed, clearly a little nervous. I moved my bed away from the window and hunkered down for the night with Zorro. I felt some big shakes, sometimes they seemed almost as big as the first one and there were about 40 aftershocks throughout the night, including a magnitude 7 earthquake and a handful of magnitude 6's.. But I was actually able to sleep. We had decided not to trap in the morning since we didn’t know what condition the roads and the park would be in. It was very unsettling to keep hearing the house start rattling and feeling the rumbling of the Earth. The construction workers said that those aftershocks would continue for the next couple months since the plates will continue to butt up against one another. We have been feeling them throughout the day and night and sometimes it really makes my stomach flip. I swear animals can feel those things ahead of time, because the night before the earthquake there was one shudder (just a temblor) but the dogs were freaking out barking for the rest of the night. Zorro even went to the door and was incessantly barking in the middle of the night. The nights following the earthquake, Zorro would get into a really nervous mood and start shaking, or just Velcro himself to my body for long periods of time. Soon after there would be some really strong tremors. Poor guy.

I have been doing yoga every night for the last few weeks and I always start off on the ground thinking about something one of my yogi’s in Chattanooga always says: feel the Earth coming up to hold you, to support your body in your practice…”. Soooo that doesn’t have the same effect when the Earth is literally shaking under your body and you feel like it’s going to swallow you up. That’s how I feel when I do yoga in our house now!

The other day I was sitting cross legged at my site in the morning when I felt an aftershock there for the first time. That was crazy because the other times I was in my house, in the car, or standing on the ground. Sitting on the actually Earth and watching it move back and forth was super weird. And it made me wonder what the hell the degus must be thinking about these shakes! I feel bad that their babies are going to be born in these conditions!

That being said, we really don’t have anything to complain about. Nothing in our town or house was damaged, we still have clean drinking water, we only lost power for 2 days (and our neighbors said it would be at least a week!), and no threats of tsunamis. Our neighbors said that a nearby town that is closer to the ocean did experience some flooding and was 1 meter under water L That would be horrible.

Sara and I walked up this hill by our house the other day and found that there is a view of the ocean up there. Granted it is very far away, but I will take an ocean view any way I can!! I plan on spending more time up there as it gets sunnier and warmer. We are still having cold and cloudy days here, but with Spring right around the corner it should be really nice weather soon.

My next blog will probably be less dramatic, but who knows, maybe it will be about me finding degu pups!

Update: So we've been feeling a lot of aftershocks, and apparently 2 more earthquakes on Saturday, one this morning and just now in the cafe we felt a 6.5 earthquake.

Time Travel

I recently read Amy Poehler’s book Yes, Please, and in it she talks about time travel, which she has experienced a lot in her life. She describes a way in which we all time travel. It is that time when you buy some clothes and think about when you might wear them, or when you are anticipating some big event in your life, and then before you know it you are in that moment and still remember the time when you were just imagining being there. When I told Megan about this she knew exactly what that felt  like and we talked about feeling that way in elementary school and thinking about being a 5^th grader one day, or thinking about when you would finally get your driver’s license. I keep thinking about time traveling to the end of November when I am back in the US, or to the day when I have officially completed my Master’s degree. Before I know it I will realize I time traveled there. I am experiencing somewhat of the opposite right now. I can’t believe a year has passed since I started my field season last year. I feel like I have gone back in time. I experience the same emotions: wondering if the degus are actually pregnant, excitement when I see that they’re gaining a lot of weight, worrying if I have enough social groups, and thinking about all the other measurements I will need to be taking soon. When I’m out in the field I feel like I’m back in 2014. Of course, I’m in a different house (with a fridge, real bedding, an adorable dog, and electricity!) and I have a different assistant, but it is still very familiar, which sometimes bums me out since it makes me feel like nothing has changed and my degus will fail to have pups again.

Luckily, I don’t think that will be the case! We have females that are steadily gaining a lot of weight (ok, that happened last year, too), but they are definitely more pear-shaped and are even heavier (one is already 208g) than last year.

This season is very different because of all the rain from last month. I swear every day it gets greener and greener with more and more flowers (pics below). I love seeing them push up through the dirt! I’ve seen a few guanacos at my site in the last month, and this time they were moving slowly through, so no threat of getting run over J The other day a big group of donkeys came to hang out in our front yard. One night a gigantic spider came out from under a blanket that was on the floor by my bed, and I was too freaked out to even scream. Besides a tarantula it was the biggest spider I’ve seen, and last year we saw a few tarantulas here that were smaller than this spider. The picture doesn’t do it justice, it was scary. I think its diameter was around 4 inches. I put it outside and besides googling it to figure out if it was dangerous, I tried not to think about again (and I haven’t until now). Please don’t tell me if it was the Chilean recluse, I don’t want to know.  Our dog Zorro is finally getting over his social anxiety! He has made friends with other dogs and knows how to play now. We have a cat that hangs out with us when we’re home, and even though she hisses like crazy at him, he doesn’t bat an eye. I respect him for that because she can be horrible for no reason. He is ridiculous with his separation anxiety though. When Megan was still here there was a day we left to go to the field and at that time we were still leaving him outside the house. We knew he chased our truck in the mornings, but he would always be back at the house when we got home in the afternoon. One day we left really early so it was dark and we couldn’t see if he was chasing us. As per usual we had to stop at the gate to the park to get the key from its hiding spot, open and close the gate. It didn’t appear that he’d followed us. We got to my site and after a few minutes of getting equipment ready, I hear a weird noise, look over and see Zorro running at us. He had sprinted 10 miles to my site in the park! I don’t even know how he got in through the gate because there is another fence to keep wildlife out. We left him in the truck (with the windows cracked and with water) while we worked. After that we started leaving him in the house. He doesn’t do any damage and probably sleeps all day, but acts like we are leaving him forever as we pack up in the morning. Seriously, he starts shaking and tries to go out and get into the truck with us. When we come home he is just as emotional. Luckily, he seems to understand the routine now.

This Friday Chile celebrates the Fiesta Patria, which is their independence day. It is the biggest holiday they have and we’ve been invited to celebrate with our neighbors. We’ve been chatting with them a little more, and one even brought us eggs from his chickens. We’ve learned that they’ve only had electricity here for 2 years. Before that they said they just carried candles around at night. It’s interesting to speak with them about the animals we see in the park, because they have different names for them. One of our neighbors is involved in educating the public about Fray Jorge, and he says it’s hard to talk to biologists that work there because they use the scientific names and he knows the informal names (not even the common names). They call the degu the rat with the paintbrush tail (ratón cola de pincel), which is a very accurate description. 

Zoom in to see the guanaco

Zorro with his friends

 I take lots of flower pics when I'm walking around my site

It is pretty cool that I get to witness the sun rise daily

Finally taught myself how to do the 'inside out' braid!

scary spider

Zorro does this a lot.
 I always hear Mufasa  in The Lion King:
 "Look Simba, everything the light touches is our kingdom."

after his 10 mile run

The cat rules the house during the day