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 

Learning new moves

In general I believe that I am somewhat coordinated and have decent rhythm.  Maybe my friends and family will say something different. I know Alex, Kendra and Kendall can’t believe that at all after our recent experiences. We went out one night to try to find something called an “after office” or a party that starts around 8pm and goes until 12am (ish). Meant for people to be able to party and still go to work the next day. This was perfect because I wanted to go out but not at the usually time (1am-5am). It was a wild goose chase asking people who all knew where it was but were giving weird directions. Finally we discovered this after office was only on Wednesdays and it was Thursday. Bummer. So we went to a salsa club. It was really fun but I did not realize how difficult it would be for me to pick up the moves. Apparently I am a classic gringa when it comes to salsa.

The next day was our ski excursion into the Andes. I was so so excited for this, but knew that I would be scared, too. The lesson went well and felt like I had the hang of it, although I would panic when I started going fast and make myself fall over. I knew how to stop but it was really hard to stay calm in those moments. Kendall and I went up to a lodge area with a beautiful view of the Andes. But soon we were inside a cloud and couldn’t see up or down the mountain. Then it started flurrying! It was so cool but it was the only time I started to get cold. I also wondered if it would be more difficult to ski back down. We met up with Kendra and Alex, who are better skiiers/snowboarders and made plans to head down the mountain to return gear and meet the bus. I was petrified. Kendra led the way and I felt so bad because I kept falling over and having to take off a ski to get back up. She went down the mountain and got on a lift to come back up and help me because I was stuck at one point! But I managed to get up on my own and I came down the rest of the mountain without falling and had a lot of fun!!! My day ended with a hot chocolate and an amazing ride back down the mountain into Santiago. 

Hot chocolate!

Crazy icicles

Biggest jacuzzi ever!

Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof

So we had started moving into a new project in Fray Jorge since the team finished Megan’s telemetry project. We were going to start another stress study comparing the differences of stress hormones in degus between the predator exclusion plots and the control plots. We knew that a storm was going to come through and we might have a few rainy days in the house but we could not have predicted what happened next. We had one nice rainy day off where Alex baked cookies and we watched Slumdog Millionaire and read a lot. It was so great! The next day (Friday August 7) we realized we would be able to trap because the rain had stopped so we headed to the park. It started raining at my site so I went back to help the team with the stress project. It would start to rain and then stop so we stuck it out and actually caught degus! We left in the early evening and might it back to our house. We had a nice dinner and suspected that there would be a lot of rain the next day so we were thinking we would have another rainy day with more baking, movies, etc. We were so wrong! The winds really picked up and in the night it started raining. I was sleeping soundly when I started to here banging sounds. One of the windows in the house makes that sound when there are winds so I wasn’t worried. At 2:15 am I heard a huge crash that honestly sounded like something came through the house. I could tell Megan and Kendra were in the living room so I got my headlamp and went out there. Soon we were all out in the living room, scared but kinda laughing at the situation. We still didn’t know what the sound was, so Alex looked out the front window and saw that our patio roof had been ripped off!! It probably landed somewhere over by my window and that was the sound that woke me up (we did find it over there later). We decided everything was fine, just loud, and went back to bed. Later I hear Alex talking about parts of the roof dripping but I just drifted back to sleep. Then I hear the sound of water and Alex in the living room saying we might not be able to stay there much longer. When I go out there, there is a constant flow of water coming through the roof, and there is water running down the walls and through the door. Next thing we know, part of the ceiling has collapsed! We decided we couldn’t stay there any longer, since water was moving towards the bedrooms and other parts of the ceiling are also getting wet. I had  never been in that kind of situation before so I was panicked while packing. We could only take the necessities, and valuable/irreplaceable field equipment. Oh, and our dog Zorro made the cut, too J We didn’t talk much in the moment but later discussed how we were all terrified. We drove to the nearest town, Ovalle, and saw a decent amount of damage along the way. We made it to the hostel at around 7 in the morning. 

We had to sneak Zorro in and out while we were staying there since they did not allow pets. Luckily he is one of the most well behaved dogs I’ve met so we knew he wouldn’t damage anything in the room. One of the funniest Zorro stories was when Alex snuck him in at first covered in jackets, and then saw in a hall mirror that his tail was hanging out!!! I suspect that the staff knew our secret but didn’t say anything. One time he was stuffed in a backpack and they asked Alex what she was taking with her and she just said quickly over her shoulder “equipment”. We went around the city for multiple days trying to find him a home, and had some very interesting cultural experiences. It was weird trying to get people to adopt him as we passed dozens and dozens of homeless street dogs, but he is definitely from a house and is not able to live as a street dog, which most people understand. Some people told us about a guy with 40 dogs and directed us to his place. There was a sign that said Peligro: Perros Bravos which means Danger: Vicious Dogs. It wasn’t a joke sign. We met the guy and he said he has 100 dogs on the property. He said he could take Zorro but only on a day when he would be around to walk with Zorro and get the other dogs accustomed to him. Otherwise they would flat out kill him right away. And the guy was going to the mines that day so he couldn’t take him right then. We weren’t sure that would be a good fit for Zorro since he shows some aggression towards other dogs. So we finally told the hotel the truth and said could we please keep him one more night, and the manager said yes. We just had to hide him when we brought him in and out (no problem-we’d already been doing that), and we had to keep him off the beds (not a chance). It worked out OK because the next day we went to check on the house so we brought him back and left food with a neighbor to feed him. The next day we ended up going back to get the students stuff, and head to Santiago until the house was fixed. I’ll be going back to the house tomorrow and hopefully Zorro will still be okay. We’re still working on finding him a shelter or a home.

Last team Degu selfie!

Zorro enjoying the hotel

Plaza de Armas in Santiago (view from our hostel)

Hostel kitten

I love these hostel beds because of the shelf and lamp 

Rain, research, reading and rescues (sums up what I’ve been doing)

So since the last time I blogged (which was sooo long ago I know!), it rained for a whole solid day inside the park and out all the way to Ovalle where we go for groceries and internet. We set out to trap that day in the park and soon realized that what we thought might be a morning sprinkle was going to be a true “rain”. When we talk about rain here the people always say “was the water running?” which basically means was there flowing water moving down the roads. If not, then it’s not really a rain. So we had to stop working and took that opportunity to go to town for groceries. We noticed as we were leaving the park that there was some kind of bike event going on, we kept seeing groups of people biking through Fray Jorge and even outside the park by our town. When we left to go the highway some were sticking out their thumbs to hitchhike so we let them get in the bed of the truck with their bikes and dropped them off at the highway. They were very appreciative and asked us what we were doing here, and then said thank you very much in English to us. When I drove into Ovalle that day there were literally rivers flowing through the town. Luckily we have our high clearance 4x4 truck so the water didn’t stop us but I couldn’t believe how some of the little sedans were risking it. The rain is very exciting for me because it means that it might not be such a bad year for the degus food-wise, and the chances of them forgoing breeding this year, like last year, will be much smaller.

Wet pups

Each day Megan, Alex, Kendra, and Kendall go out to perform day telemetry from 9:30-5pm. In the morning I trap at my site to find degus that will be part of my official trapping in September-October. In the afternoon I move over to one of the enclosures to trap degus for Megan’s project. She still needs 1 more degu from an enclosure to give more power to her research, but unfortunately it is a very inactive enclosure biologically. We call it the ghost town. I don’t catch degus often, and if I do they are male (we need a female).

Megan's team ready to rock!

Simulating telemetry

Kendra's always making a silly face for pics

Some of my degus

We are very lucky to have Alex working here with us because she is a great cook and enjoys it (she says). After a long day in the field we are always grateful that she is willing to cook. Also, she makes delicious zucchini bread. We’ve had it so many times in Chile and you can imagine that between five of us it does not last long (doesn’t even usually make it past dessert).

I started reading an interesting book called What We Should Be Worried About. A group of scientists come together each year to talk about a specific topic and one year it was what they are worried about. They are psychologists, physicists, evolutionary biologists, mathematicians, economists, etc. It brings up interesting points for conversation but I know that since each point is the opinion of one specific scientist it is very biased. I asked Kendra about one piece that mentioned the Baha’i faith (of which her family are members). Specifically the author mentioned that Baha’i believe, like Christians, etc. that there will be Battle of Armageddon. She wrote to her mom and it seems that that is not in fact a belief of the Baha’i so that makes me question the fact-checking of the group/editors/etc. Nonetheless, it is a very interesting book that brings up topics like aliens, dependence on technology, population growth vs prosperity growth, and even some people’s concerns about future underpopulation on Earth.

As I was waking up the other morning I had that moment where I didn’t know I was here and felt like I was home and I genuinely felt that my dog Waldo was sleeping the crook behind my knees. He did this a lot and I would know that I couldn’t just kick my legs around as I might have if he wasn’t there. I quickly realized that there wasn’t an actual dog here with me and I was wishing that there was. I told the group about this as we drove to the park. We parted ways for our daily activities. When I was driving back from trapping before I could even get out of the car Juan and Megan were yelling to me about a little dog in the park and pointing out by one of the enclosures. Kendra was luring a scared little black dog to her with peanuts. I guess they had been seeing this dog around all day and fed it some of their lunches. Kendra managed to pick up the dog and we all agreed to take it back with us. We had this same issue last year when we found 3 dogs in the park and the park guards take it seriously about no dogs being in the park to the point where I remember us all being concerned last year that they were going to kill the dogs (we never were sure what happened to them). So we took him home. He was so scared of all of us at first and didn’t like the other dogs around the property which bummed me out because I was hoping he would just join their pack. We decided to let him hang out in the house, where he started to warm up to us, and immediately made himself home on the little couch we have. We gave him water and food and decided to keep him in the house overnight because he was skin and bones, scared, and it was very cold and very very windy that night. He didn’t have any accidents or anything, he has an instinct to pee outside, and didn’t make a peep in the night. We felt bad about leaving him the next morning to go to work, and he tried to chase our truck at first. We all thought about him throughout the day, and I was worried we would never see him again. Kendra and I were walking around the property looking for him when we got home and we both had a concerned look in our eyes, I think we were both assuming he was gone. And then it was just like the scene from Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey! He came running out of nowhere to us sooo excited wagging his tail and leaping up onto us!!! We were so happy. Today was much better, he was just sitting under my hanging laundry when we came home. Still soo excited to see us though!! He is very vocal and likes to “talk” to us and but his front paws and stretch on us, and almost leaps into our arms. He would be an awesome agility dog, but his is sooo tiny! As silly as he is in those moments, he will just curl up on the couch and sleep for the rest of the time. The first day we had him, a couple selling empanadas came to our gate and we bought some. I ate one and put one on the table meaning to bring it for lunch the next day but when I came out of the kitchen what do I see but Zorro up on the table and he grabbed my empanada!! We took it from him but he got a big bite out of it and then I figured he might as well have rest. It had some meat in it which we don’t keep in the house but clearly a dog needs in their diet so I was happy to contribute that to his dinner. We will be getting him dog food tomorrow in Ovalle. It’s so nice to have a dog inside the house to pet and talk to. But I do want him to join the pack of dogs that hangs out around the property so when we leave he will have that stability. They get fed by the construction workers and other people in the town. It was funny that we found him the day that I was wishing I had a dog to sleep in my bed. I restrained from bringing him into our room because he could have fleas, ticks, etc. but by the second night I said I was going to put him on my bed for the night. He was passed out on the couch when we came back from telemetry around 1130 so I let him stay put, and I’m very glad about that now because the next morning I discovered that he has worms! Not surprising for a stray dog. In fact, the dog Oso has the same problem (the construction workers told us about it a while ago). We are going to pick up some medication for him in Ovalle, where it is apparently pretty cheap.

The little prince. I know it's not good quality but I had to show him in his spot

The day we rescued him!

Sleepy Zorro

So that’s been the excitement around here! For anyone that’s wondering about my project, it’s going well. There’s not many degus, even compared to last year, but I’m working everyday to find active burrow systems. Due to the rain, there is actually green things sprouting from the ground which didn’t happen last year! Maybe I’ll actually have food to measure for my dataset this year (fingers crossed).

We've been braiding hair in our spare time

Pretty moon

Snowy Andes in the background