Life in Twin

Just to update you all I will tell you a little about things in Twin Falls. Twin is a very white city but everyone is very nice here. In fact the realty lady's secretary is from S. California and she said she calls this place Twinkie Falls because it is very white and very sweet. I agreed. Last Wednesday four of us went downtown and listened to a band along with a couple hundred other natives. It had a small hometown feel to the get-together and I think they do it every week with different types of bands.
There also seems to be really bad fire seasons here. Every week we have a new fire that takes a couple days to put all the way out. It is kind of neat though because when we are in the truck driving and driving all day we can listen to the two way radio and hear all the details of what is going on and how contained the fire is and such.
The fourth of July should be pretty cool too. They are setting off fireworks at the college which is about a mile from our house. We get a front row seat. I also saw someone in our neighborhood wheeling some bleachers in here. I don't really know what they are for but I'm thinking the 4th.

I'm Melting!!

Not much new has gone on since my last post. I have crazy busy but it is all the same. Checking traps, taking bird song surveys, setting up and taking down transects. However, yesterday and today have been way too hot to work 13 hour days out in the field. I think I almost got heat stroke yesterday. We started at our usual 6:30 in the morning and I was pretty warm already by the time we got to our plot. By noon I was sure I had a white nose with a red face, by 4:00 I was so hot I had goose bumps. We decided to take a break and go to the store to get more to drink and sit in the truck. Then we went back for two more hours and I got goose bumps again right before we headed back to Twin. At least this time I wasn't dehydrated but I was defiantly overheated. Today was still pretty bad but we were back in Twin by three and got to enter the data in a nice cool office.
This weekend I am supposed to go camping in Rock City, about 45 mins from Twin, with some co-workers. I think I am going to take Monday off as well as the 4th. I have the choice to work regular hours on the 3rd like everyone else, use one of my two paid holidays or use some of my overtime as comp time. No matter what I do I will still get my 40 hours. I really wanted to go see my sis but it does not seem possible to watch fireworks in Seattle on the 4th and get back to Twin by 6:30 the 5th.
I can see that everyone appears to be melting right along with me no matter where you guys are. If anyone has any good ideas to stay cool when outside with no shade please send them my way!! I have been thinking about just jumping in the Snake River at lunch instead of eating but haven't had the guts to yet.

Graduation

As most of you know, I graduated last Saturday with my bachelor's in Biological Sciences. It was a very short visit but very tiring at the same time. I had an absolute blast though. I got in on Friday night only a few hours after my big sis did then basically went right to bed after getting in. The next day I was up early due to my current early bird schedule for work and the time difference. My mom, dad and I chatted and waited for my sis to wake up so we could open presents and go to my graduation dinner. When she finally got up we opened presents, which I love all of them and thank everyone for them, then we ran off to Outback. YUMMY!! All this took just the right amount of time for us to arrive at my school. After getting me a lai my family went off to find seats and I went to check in. I saw many of my classmates from my vertebrate class but not from many other classes. It was very good to see them and find out that many of them are also doing internships like mine but most were in California.
As we walked out onto the track field the graduation song was playing (of course) and I got a good size bounce in my step and began to walk with deliberation. I had finally made it to the day I get to wear the crooked hat and become an official success!! After we all made it to our seats there was a whole bunch of talking by faculty, past graduates and current graduates, I don't remember much of it. Then came time for me to walk across the stage and shake hands with the important people and get my stand in paper. No nervousness here just pride and excitement. After a few more words we switched the tassels to the other side and sung our alma mater. Then we were released.
I really should have kept my cell phone on me cause it was terrible hard to find my friends and family in the crowd. I was about to walk the long distance to the bell tower (that is where I said to meet) when one of my friends found me and called everyone else. Soon after they "kidnapped" me and my sis then we hung out all night.
It was such a short but wonderful visit.
Then came the trip home to Idaho. My first flight leaving Ontario was delayed two hours so when I finally got to Salt Lake City the last flight to Sun Valley had already left. Delta put me up in a hotel and gave me a $7.00 voucher for food and put me on the first flight to Sun Valley in the morning. It was a very good thing the airport had a Starbucks.
By the time I got back home I had missed 4 hours of work but it was o.k. since I had called them as soon as I found out about the delay and I have some overtime hours saved up. I would rather use the hours on a vacation or something like that but I guess that is what they are there for. I was still able to get 9 hours of work done yesterday though so I only had to use 1 hour of overtime to get my 10 hours. Today at work was more of the same, I was able to log into the computers at work but I still don't have an account. I have some cool pics to look at of gopher snakes and such. My mom still has all the graduation pics but I was able to get pics of the day at the falls onto my computer so take a look at that entry to see my friends and roommates.

Cold to Hot

First of all let me give you a run down of my day at work. We did another bird survey, not many birds due to the cold weather, then we checked the traps again and there were many more than yesterday but I don't have the exact numbers with me. The first mammals we found were two voles in the reptile array bucket, voles are like mice but they have really furry ears, shorter tails and flatter faces. I thought it was funny that there were two recaptures that got trapped in the exact same traps as they did yesterday. During all this it began to rain but we had to get the mammals done so they could eat breakfast and feed their babies. I got soaked and frozen so we decided to go to the truck and warm up which felt great. Then we looked for more reptiles and found none, even though the sun came out a little, so we loaded up and went to our next area to eat lunch and start setting that area up. While eating the rain began again so we took a little cat nap while waiting for the rain to stop or at least slow down. This new area is completely different even thought it is only 1-2 miles away. Check out the photos, old area is the sage brush and the new area is the grass. Finally we were able to start building a hexagon in the new area and got half way done then had to go back to the old area and set the traps again.
Tomorrow I will tell you more about my house since I should get off work around 4 I can take photos in the daylight and give you a virtual tour. And yes I seem to be destined to live above garages and no we don't have furniture, well with the exception of a couple canvas chairs. (Mine has a foot rest.)

Building the case

My week is now half over since I only work Monday through Thursday. At 6 am today we went out into the field again and took some surveys. The first was a 10 min survey of the bird calls in the area, then we went to check the small mammal traps we set out yesterday. We caught two Great Basin Pocket mice and four Deer Mice. (The one with the big ears is the Deer Mouse).
Not great numbers considering we set out 80 traps but at least none of them were dead. I suppose it proves the point that the habitats that have been overrun with cheetgrass can't support a large diversity or number of animals and the reason the cheetgrass has taken over is because the cattle have destroyed the ground crust. Then as my two other teammates set up another reptile array I walk the reptile transects and I found absolutely no reptiles. Same case in point. I also took a picture of a lily which is the state flower of Utah for you Mum.:)All that grass in the background is cheetgrass.


Back to my personal life I finally took some pictures of my house and the window above the garage is my room. It is a nice four bedroom house with three baths and it is only about two years old. It has a nice size backyard but it is not done being landscaped yet.
Today a windstorm with a little thunder and lightning rolled in at about 4 pm and that is why the sky is all grey in the middle of June. It was rather fun with all the wind!

Transects

Today we started to do our transects. This consists of a hexagon with each side being 200 m. The first one we did today was the vegetation transect. This consist of going on each line plus the baseline which goes down the middle of the hexagon and dropping a stick every 10 m then recording what vegetation is growing in that spot. Then after that was all done and running out of water, we set up small mammal traps on the same lines only they were set every 20 m. Needless to say all three of us got dehydrated today so tomorrow I will be bring a whole gallon of water instead of just 1 liter. After I got two bottles of Gatorade in me I felt just fine. I think I should go to Costco and get a whole case of Gatorade. Today was a good day (except the dehydration thing) we finally started doing what we are here to do! Well I have got to hit the hay now because I am exhausted, but in a good way, and we start at 6 am tomorrow. Love you all.

The Falls

Yesterday was mostly the same as Thursday except since Albertson College is a lot closer to Twin Falls than BYU we got back in town in time to check some of the traps we set out. The only things we had trapped were a scorpion, which was very cool and fluorescent green and yellow about 1-2 inches long without the tail, two voles that had starved to death and a bushy-tailed woodrat which drowned. We didn't realize how low that one trap was and we got some good rains on Thursday and Friday but we fixed it by putting some pieces of wood in the trap so they could get above the water next time. 75% mortality rate, not a good start considering we are going for <1% mortality.
Today my roommates and one of the other wildlife technicians who lives in the trailers all went to the Shoshone Falls and hiked around for a few hours. It was beautiful even though we were told right now they don't do themselves justice since most of the water has been diverted for irrigation. However, coming from S. California I thought they were spectacular. While hiking around out there we saw several of the lizards we are supposed to be catching and I believe we correctly identified them since 2 of them are ones that I became quite proficient in identifying while in the Mojave Desert. I was able to identify most of the birds we saw also but I will definitely have to pick my binoculars up when I come home for graduation.
The order of the pictures is: Alaska, colorado, Arizona, New York and all of us except Alaska (the photographer).

Day 4

Day 4: 6-8-06

The week is almost done and I am so tired. Today was very easy physically because all we did was go to BYU and look at stuffed samples of the mammals we will be seeing in the field next week such as squirrels, mice, voles, rabbits and shrews. However, the trip to BYU one way is 5 hours. We didn’t get back home until a little before 10 pm and on top of that I fell asleep in the car and now I have a huge crick in my neck and shoulder but some Motrin and a hot shower will hopefully fix that. Tomorrow we will be doing the same thing only at Albertson’s, a college in Boise. I have a key now so everything seems to be progressing quite nicely.

Day 3

Day 3: 6-7-06

Today we went out into the field again and set three array traps up. They were 1 ½ hours out and 1 ½ hours back. When we got back we learned how to do the data transfer on the GPS units then that was it for the day. The array traps consist of three funnel traps each 120 degrees apart connected to a central bucket by heavy black plastic which snakes and other reptiles will follow because the heat from the plastic. Then the animals fall into the buckets or climb into the funnel traps.
The other wildlife technician that is living with me for now and I went to the gorge since we didn’t have a key to the house yet and our roommates weren’t back yet. It was beautiful. Then all the wildlife people plus our two roommates and one of the girl’s husbands went to a Thai restaurant for dinner. It was my first time eating Thai food. I got the chicken stir fry with carrots, broccoli and cabbage and found it to be pretty good.

Day 2

Day 2: 6-6-06

Today we waited for an hour a biologist to come here from Burley (the next town to the east), then we headed to the field to practice identifying birds by their song or call. I have no idea of the actual location but it was about 2 hours out and half of it was on dirt roads. We were too late in the day to get most of the birds but we were able to identify the Western Meadowlark, the Sage Thrasher, the Brewer’s Sparrow and the Horned Lark. After a while we took off down the road towards the Pygmy Rabbits but got side tracked by a Burrowing Owl nest. At the nest we got our GPS units out and recorded the point where it was so we could download it into the computer when we got back to the office. Since we had the GPS unit out already we decided to plot a point and have the unit lead us there. We had some trouble but we eventually figured it out and really learned how to use them in the process. By the time we got to the Pygmy Rabbits we only had time to find one of the nesting areas before we took off back to the office again.
When we got back we were supposed to learn how to do data transfers from the GPS unit to the computer and back again but the lady that was supposed to teach us forgot so now we are supposed to do it tomorrow. Since we had some extra time we set up our rooms in the new office as best we could then went home a little early.

Day 1

Day 1 at the Jarbidge Field Office: 6-5-06

Today was an interesting day. When we first got there we got handed a bunch of equipment such as compasses, gloves (which I only got one), one of those metal clipboards with the lids, a 300 foot tape measure, 2 cds (one of bird songs and one of amphibians), a calibrator, some scales, a thermometer and some flag. We also got to pick out some markers, pens, erasers and pencils from the office closet. Then we got given the key to one of the trucks here even though we haven’t signed anything for it or gotten the background checks back. We also got a key to the office on a hush hush basis.
We met the other wildlife technicians that were already working there then we all went over to the new office, which just so happens to be down the street from my new house, to set stuff up but we couldn’t do anything because we didn’t know where the wildlife section was. Then back to the old office to build some snake fences which consist of wooden planks screwed to heavy plastic. The snakes follow this black plastic into a funnel trap then we can survey them. After that was done and all the supplies were put away we received some handouts and reviewed what we are here to do, which is basically survey the land to see exactly what is out there. Then we ate lunch.
After lunch we went back to the new office along with everyone else except the botanists (they were in the field) to get our GPS units and digital cameras. We went outside to learn how to use them because they don’t get satellite reception in the building. I proceeded to realize I was sunburned, probably from building the fence but I think it got worse at this time, so I went inside and put sunscreen on but it was too late. Oh well. During all this we did an awful lot of waiting but at least we got to talk to each other and I was able to meet one of the Chicago Botanic Gardens interns from last year and she is still working for the State Field Office in Boise.
We then went back to the old office and added some pieces of two by fours and flat pieces of wood for the snakes to hide under to the funnel traps. After that it was time to go home. Today was interesting but hectic and unorganized. I also found out that the reason all us interns are here is because an environmental group sued the Bureau of Land Management for not figuring what effects the grazing would be before they allowed it. So we are here to discover the effects.