Slow Start in Week 2: Smithsonian Mammal / Coffee Study Blog

Week 2 updates from project leader Mandi: http://nationalzoo.si.edu/scbi/migratorybirds/blog/default.cfm?id=336

Things To Do On Your Day Off From Research Technician-ing

Have a day or two off between site surveys? Not sure of the best ways to rest your muscles, bugbites, and brain? Here are some suggestions from the mammal research crew in Chiapas:

- Do your laundry. Be sure to pick out the burrs first (there will be thousands). Borrow Tim's wizard staff to stir. Marvel at how brown just one sock turns the water. Sun dry on the somewhat inexplicable jungle gym in the backyard till crisp.

- Day off from hiking for work? Hike for fun! Or better yet, keep hiking for work, for fun! Form a scouting party to find the best way to your next sites. Map the entire area to scale.

- Exercise muscles besides your legs: try some yoga (in the afternoon it automatically becomes hot yoga), swing around on the jungle gym, complete the ab cruncher Chiapas special workout, chase some geckos, run from mosquitos.

- Write and illustrate with crayon a cookbook or Spanish storybook. Make Spanish homework for your friends. Improve your own language skills with trashy trashy Spanish romance novels.

- Job hunt for your next position. Bonus points if there is wifi available to check for job listings. Double points if you find tech jobs that pay. Triple points if the wifi and your will last long enough to submit an application!

- Take advantage of being semi-stuck at a resort in the mountains: go to the pool, drink a beer, watch a bad movie, make cookies for your neighbors and practice chatting.

- Study for the GREs. Discuss your 20-something conundrums with colleagues. Pressure boss to obtain tenure-track position and take entire crew on as doctoral candidates. Cross fingers, squeeze thumbs.

First Round of Surveys-- Done!

We wrapped up our first set of survey sites this morning! A flat tire yesterday afternoon raised concerns that we would have to hike the 150-some traps back home on foot, but fortunately new tires were found for our trusty Chevy Tracker rental, Esmerelda.

Before leaving the area, we passed out some 'dulces' to a dozen adorable youngsters living at the finca, whose parents work incredibly hard as mostly migrant coffee pickers. Four-year-old Niminito was the bravest, giving us his name and age in a squeaky voice while clutching his chocolate treats. Our guides and hosts at the finca got some of Megan's amazing carrot-banana-ginger dulce pan as a thank-you for all of their help.

This afternoon we returned home to no power at the house; no big deal, since our almuerzo coffee can be handmade with some ingenuity and a collander. Then came trap cleaning, scrubbing out all the Sherman traps with toothbrushes. Didn't take too long, but I am told it can be agonizing when all the traps need a serious scrubbing.

Handling small rodents is fairly different from bat handling. Mice are a lot twitchier, even than the relatively hysterical northern long-eared bat! Bats are also a lot more likely to just knaw on your gloved fingers and take comfort in trying to escape that way; pocket mice will flail, kick, and scratch as soon as they sense an opportunity! I will have aquired a lot more variety to my handling skills by the end of this project, I am sure!

Fieldwork Underway

Already two weeks in Chiapas! Our fieldwork is going well; we are completing a first round of sampling with Sherman traps (small metal boxes that live-capture small animals like pocket mice and mouse opossums) and camera traps (motion-activated infrared cameras locked to trees). I've been in charge of placing and checking our cameras, something I really enjoy. Every day checking the memory cards on my little camera's screen at lunch is like presents on Christmas morning, finding out what animals you've gotten! Common animals in this area include agouti, coati, and armadillo.

Last week on the project, we spent most of our time chasing local guides up and down mountains, through thickets and across rivers, to find and group together appropriate study sites. Even the combination of GPS, extensive flagging, and a seemingly-endless string of route-documentation photos don't always keep us from getting lost!

We've been wrapping up our daily duties-- checking and rebaiting traps, processing captured animals, sorting and prepaid equipment, and data entry-- by early afternoon. It's a respectable workday, considering it starts at predawn 5:30am. That's left a lot of time for afternoon activities and projects, like Spanish study, swimming, exploring the area, and hardcore silent group reading parties. We've also adopted a general regime of group fitness, incorporating p90x, yoga, junglegyms, and various acrobatic stunts. Got to balance out the leg-crushing slopes with something for the rest of our bodies!

An interesting idiom: to form a line is 'hacer cola,' literally to make a tail.

Photos: Grocery Shopping at the Tapachula Market

Official Smithsonian Mammal Study in Coffee Landscapes Blog

For updates from our project leader and more info on the mammal study I'm working on, check out her blog here:

http://nationalzoo.si.edu/scbi/migratorybirds/blog/default.cfm?id=335

Wrapping Up Site Selection

Today is our first day off after a strenuous but very rewarding first week doing site surveys! To examine how mammal diversity is affected by how a coffee farm operates, we will be selecting several sites on sun-grown, shade-grown, and bird-friendly* coffee farms and comparing the mammals we find there to those we find in forest sites. That means that this past week, we spent hours hiking around various fincas (farms), identifying areas with appropriate slope, usage patterns, amounts of coffee, and distance from roads and rivers to use in the study. The area is very mountainous, humid, and stunningly gorgeous. There is a distant volcán in the vicinity of our base. Although the volcano is dormant, we had a long tremor yesterday morning at breakfast that woke our sleeping colleagues up!

My mostly high-school Spanish is surprisingly adequate, though I'm still shy about striking up conversations with our guides and with locals. Things to work on.

This morning we had a group yoga practice (our leader Mandi is a former instructor), which was fantastic for working out the kinks that accumulated with extended travel and daily hikes. Breakfast was Megan-made french toast with generic nutella and our finca's bird-friendly coffee. I hand-washed my laundry and hoofed it over to reception to check emails, and this afternoon I plan on checking out the rest of this resort and probably spending some time at the pool. Oh, sometimes the rough life of field biology wears on me!

Tomorrow we will begin our first study site, hiking out about 150 traps to our first three locations and learning how to set things up. After that it's pre-dawn wakeups to check traps every morning before things heat up too much. Ready to catch some mammals!

*more on bird-friendly coffee forthcoming

Not sure what to feed your bimbo?

Volcano sighting!

Safe Arrival

Just a brief note that I have safely arrived at our rather luxurious base! Everything is fantastic so far and I'm already having fun. Having adventures daily. Details and pictures to follow!

A Very Full Day

Written 1/6:
Woke up 45 minutes too early thus morning, but I'm glad that I got up at 3am (!!!) because I was moving slow, walking slow, and standing in slow lines for my 6am flight. Which ended up delayed an hour and a half on the tarmac due to mechanical issues.
I made friends with two of the forty-five BU students heading to Honduras for a week of donating medical aid and education; they too missed their connection and I hope that they found a way to all make their trip.
Delta rebooked me automatically for my second leg, so I only had to hang around for a bit while frantically rescheduling my last flight. I've learned my lesson: whenever possible, put your whole itinerary on a single ticket, even if it's way more expensive.
Flew from Atlanta to Mexico City between an air conditioner salesman who has been all over Mexico and Central America and gave me some great travel suggestions for Chiapas, and a lovely woman going for a business trip who asked me if I was alright whenever I went rigid and pale during turbulence.
I'm not big on flying in general. A necessary and terrifying evil.
Now I'm hunkered down in the Mexico City airport, stealing hotel wifi. Impressions of this airport: medium-small, cold, few places to relax, but lots of vegetarian food and friendly friendly staff.
Another two hours till my last flight, now! I think I'll be about a 23 hour day of traveling by the time I get to a real bed-- yikes!

Arriving in Mexico City

Leaving Boston

Ready* to Go, but Grounded by Snow.

With a major blizzard howling towards the coast and the airport grounding flights night before my morning flight, I bit the bullet last night and rebooked for Monday. Delta had waived change and cancellation fees the morning before the storm hit, and I was fully expecting my flight to be cancelled or delayed for a half day at least.Turns out my original flight did get out of the airport with only moderate delays, one of the first flights out. However, with the entire state highlighted with scary red driving conditions and jackknifed tractor trailers blocking the major highways, rebooking was probably the best choice. I was able to catch up on some sleep and will use my extra two days to pack and prep more carefully, do some more Spanish immersion, and spend time with family.

* Ready is a relative term. See post on procrastination.

Snow Day Update

Looks like Logan will be shutting down tonight through noon tomorrow-- oh no! I was due to fly out late morning, and my biggest concerns now are 1) getting to the airport in the first place and 2) making my second leg with a different airline the next day. My biggest concern SHOULD be finishing up my packing, but I'll get to that later. I think my packing motivation over time follows a very similar pattern as my paper writing as an undergraduate...