Mi Semana
Last Tuesday my co-workers and I volunteered with the local Valles Caldera National Preserve on our day off. We participated in a calf mortality study for elk. The gist of the project is that they tag calves' ears with radio transmitters. The radio transmitter emits a steady tone that can be picked up in a fairly wide range. If the calf doesn't move, not even a twitch of the ear, for two hours than the radio emission changes to a slower pace and when researchers hear this slower pace, they go to find the transmitter and whats left of the body.
I was on a team with Jaye and a wildlife biologist named Billy. After stalking a cow and her calf for about 30 minutes the calf finally "bedded" and we instantly moved in. Bedding is the term for when a calf lies down, this is their form of protection. If a predator is approaching a cow and calf the mother will run and the calf will just plop down in the high grasses and hope that the predator loses sight. It sounds like a pretty lame tactic, but you know what, it really works. Even with the current drought we're in causing the grasses to be low, I could not see that calf our entire hike up to it until she was 5 feet in front of me. Billy calmly approached the calf, threw a tarp over her, and carefully put a blindfold on the calf to help keep her calm. The first thing he did was put the radio transmitter on her ear. The elk's squeal brought me back to my 15 year old self sitting on the fuzzy pink stool in the middle of Claire's at the Coral Square Mall grasping my sweaty hands together as an employee punctured my ear lobe. Same exact sound.
The entire process lasted about 4 minutes. Billy barked measurements and observations as I frantically tried to find the right places on the 3 page data sheet to put the different figures. We let the calf go and she frolicked off (in bloody fear) to the bushes where her mother was waiting for her. Cute.
The rest of our morning was spent locating slow-beeping transmitters.... dead calves. We found two, both were bear attacks. There are really cool ways to identify how the calf died. Both of the ones we found were victims of bear attacks. One had bearly (hahaha..) anything left but a few scattered bones. However, a big pile of bear scat gave it away. On the second one, we found a lower jaw bone. The jaw had a red tint from dried blood, indicating that the calf had circulation when it was struck in the face. That's how bears kill, they hit their prey in the head. So that let us know the 2nd one was also a bear attack.
Billy told us that once they found the remains of a calf cached under a log and inside the corpse of a female elk. Mountain lions. Pretty twisted.
We got off volunteer duty around 2 pm, and I decided to head further North to the Bandalier National Monument. It is run by the National Park Service, and therefore gets somewhat zoo like but luckily it wasn't too packed for a late Tuesday afternoon. They have an "educational trail" that includes some ladders to climb up into the ancient dwellings of the Anasazi/Pueblo people. If you're a Westerner, you already know about this. The Anasazi are famous for the architecture of their cities. They utilized the steep cliffs of soft volcanic tuff to carve homes directly into the rock wall. I was really impressed with the monument. At one point there were 4 long ladders in a row going up a steep and exposed cliff side. Other than the precautionary signs, there was nothing stopping you from taking a potentially lethal fall from the ladders. No guards, nothing. It was awesome. The public needs a little "danger" when they are experiencing the outdoors. The government doesn't tend to offer that. Safety First.
A Kiva, a room used for community meetings and spiritual rituals by the Anasazi
Saturday night we did a presentation on Pollinators (I wrote the lesson plan!) We had 54 attendees, mostly consisting of a rambunctious boy scout troop. The energy levels were fantastic and everyone seemed to have had a good time and maybe even learned something. The highlight by far was a relay race of team butterfly vs. team hummingbird. The butterflies had straws to represent a proboscis, and the hummingbirds had spoons to represent lapping up with tongues. They raced to see who could fill up a small cup with nectar (kool-aid) faster using their "appendages". Butterflies won!
Here is a snippet of the presentation if you're interested. I swear there were other parts where I wasn't obviously reading off the back of flash cards....
I was on a team with Jaye and a wildlife biologist named Billy. After stalking a cow and her calf for about 30 minutes the calf finally "bedded" and we instantly moved in. Bedding is the term for when a calf lies down, this is their form of protection. If a predator is approaching a cow and calf the mother will run and the calf will just plop down in the high grasses and hope that the predator loses sight. It sounds like a pretty lame tactic, but you know what, it really works. Even with the current drought we're in causing the grasses to be low, I could not see that calf our entire hike up to it until she was 5 feet in front of me. Billy calmly approached the calf, threw a tarp over her, and carefully put a blindfold on the calf to help keep her calm. The first thing he did was put the radio transmitter on her ear. The elk's squeal brought me back to my 15 year old self sitting on the fuzzy pink stool in the middle of Claire's at the Coral Square Mall grasping my sweaty hands together as an employee punctured my ear lobe. Same exact sound.
The entire process lasted about 4 minutes. Billy barked measurements and observations as I frantically tried to find the right places on the 3 page data sheet to put the different figures. We let the calf go and she frolicked off (in bloody fear) to the bushes where her mother was waiting for her. Cute.
The rest of our morning was spent locating slow-beeping transmitters.... dead calves. We found two, both were bear attacks. There are really cool ways to identify how the calf died. Both of the ones we found were victims of bear attacks. One had bearly (hahaha..) anything left but a few scattered bones. However, a big pile of bear scat gave it away. On the second one, we found a lower jaw bone. The jaw had a red tint from dried blood, indicating that the calf had circulation when it was struck in the face. That's how bears kill, they hit their prey in the head. So that let us know the 2nd one was also a bear attack.
Billy told us that once they found the remains of a calf cached under a log and inside the corpse of a female elk. Mountain lions. Pretty twisted.
We got off volunteer duty around 2 pm, and I decided to head further North to the Bandalier National Monument. It is run by the National Park Service, and therefore gets somewhat zoo like but luckily it wasn't too packed for a late Tuesday afternoon. They have an "educational trail" that includes some ladders to climb up into the ancient dwellings of the Anasazi/Pueblo people. If you're a Westerner, you already know about this. The Anasazi are famous for the architecture of their cities. They utilized the steep cliffs of soft volcanic tuff to carve homes directly into the rock wall. I was really impressed with the monument. At one point there were 4 long ladders in a row going up a steep and exposed cliff side. Other than the precautionary signs, there was nothing stopping you from taking a potentially lethal fall from the ladders. No guards, nothing. It was awesome. The public needs a little "danger" when they are experiencing the outdoors. The government doesn't tend to offer that. Safety First.
A Kiva, a room used for community meetings and spiritual rituals by the Anasazi
Saturday night we did a presentation on Pollinators (I wrote the lesson plan!) We had 54 attendees, mostly consisting of a rambunctious boy scout troop. The energy levels were fantastic and everyone seemed to have had a good time and maybe even learned something. The highlight by far was a relay race of team butterfly vs. team hummingbird. The butterflies had straws to represent a proboscis, and the hummingbirds had spoons to represent lapping up with tongues. They raced to see who could fill up a small cup with nectar (kool-aid) faster using their "appendages". Butterflies won!
Here is a snippet of the presentation if you're interested. I swear there were other parts where I wasn't obviously reading off the back of flash cards....
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