A new "Bitey"

There’s been a lot I wanted to share but I’ve been too busy with work or fun and/or lazy in my free time to write another blog post. But this week something happened that I didn’t expect ~ one of the cute little mice bit me! Through a plastic bag and a latex glove! Of course it is always a possibility an animal will bite you but I thought we had these ones handled pretty well. This one just happened to be WILD! He was too much for the field assistants to handle so I tried to get him scruffed so they could ear tag him and then BAM he got me! There’s always a few animals you work with that are just crazier than others, and I often refer to them affectionately as “Bitey”. There was a narrow-headed gartersnake I worked with at the Phoenix Zoo’s Conservation Center that we named Bitey. There was a degu or two over the years that I wrote down as “Bitey” and now we have this guy.

A little juvenile mouse or "juvie" as we call them

But really, what else have I been doing? We’ve been radio-tracking 6 mice. Some days are easier than others ~ on hard days it might take us awhile to locate an animal. One we couldn’t find for 2 days, but she could have just been sleeping in a weird place. Today I was having troubles tracking a little lady mouse- she wasn’t in her usual spot. The signal was very strong but I couldn’t quite pinpoint where she was around this tree off one of our trapping lines. I looked at the tree and I noticed some nestlet material in a little hidey hole. We put these cotton nestlets in the traps with the bait so any animal caught in the trap can make a little nest with it. So I see the nestlets and I’m thinking she’s in there, and then I see a little ear tag! I could see her sleeping face in the hole, she was so sweet. I was shocked she didn’t wake up while I was taking pictures of her. But right before I left to track the next animal she had moved further in and all I could see was her tail!

If you look closely you can see her shiny ear tag, and her cute little face

Trackin' some mice ~ the antenna kinda blends into the background

I’ve adjusted to life here and a lot of the things that used to freak me out don’t anymore. Rides in the gators don’t seem as treacherous now, although we haven’t been going to the sites that were the scariest. We’ll be back there in about a week. Some parts still feel like the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland, only not in the fun way. For a bit I had a strong fear of seeing a rattlesnake at the field site. Every few steps I would be certain I saw one, and really it was just the pattern of the brush on the ground. It’s no wonder they have the pattern they do here because they would blend right into leaves on the ground. Which sucks for the humans that might step on one on accident (I know, not very likely). But seriously my mind was playing major tricks on me for awhile.

For fun we’ve gone to the lake (with hot pink inner tubes). I went to a SF Giants vs AZ Dbacks game which was AMAZING! We lost but I still loved being at that ballpark on the bay for the afternoon. We found a local bar that does weekly trivia nights which if you know me you know I LOVE IT. A few of the rounds that we’ve crushed so far have been Science, Broadway, and Netflix Originals. Sometimes we do well at the Current Events round, and sometimes we flop. So far the Golden Girls are a team we see there regularly, but they suck. 

Fun at the lake

The beer wall at Green River Brewery, where we do trivia. You have a little card that measures how much you take and you're running total. Awesome for me because I can have little amounts of different beers I want to try!

Last but not least, an update on research. Trapping has been going well, although for my dissertation I really need to be trapping and collaring juvenile mice, and running behavior trials on them. I want to see how behavior and testosterone levels might be related to their dispersal patterns/tendencies. We've caught only a few juveniles and they were too small to collar in the first round, so I'm hoping in about 2 weeks they will be big enough to collar for the second round of tracking. In another part of my dissertation I'll be looking at food availability and diets of the mice, so for that I need to measure insect abundance at their site. My field assistants and I will be digging 36 holes to bury 36 little containers into the ground. When I open the containers at night they will act as traps so I can collect insects that fall into them, and identify them in the lab back in NM. 

Little juvie has no idea what is going on. Don't worry, this is how you weigh many rodents and it doesn't hurt them!

My pitfall trap

We babysat for our neighbors kids and this is all I could come up with during arts and crafts. Pebo stands for Peromyscus boylii (the brush mouse). The flowers represent ear tags 😂

Firefighters have been out around us doing preventative burning I think??? It was mild at first and then the other day I drove through a more intense one. They shuttle all the traffic through the area. I wanted to take a video of it because it looked so crazy....and then I felt the heat when I drove by it!!! You hear my reaction...