As most of you know I've taken about 12 hours of classes this summer-just for fun. As part of one class we (my friend Laura and I are doing this summer crazy course load together) were required to find a scientist who is doing research in the field and volunteer 40 hours to help with their research. So today was our first day on the prairie assisting Liz Harp with her prairie dog research. It started at 3:12 am when my alarm went off and I rolled out of bed to make the drive to Ft. Collins to meet the field truck on the CSU campus at 4:15. I met Laura there and we hopped in the truck and headed out to the Shortgrass Steppe (SGS) Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site where Liz is studying three prairie dog towns.
First we set traps. This entailed a lot of obsessive compulsive removal of old prairie dog poo (you would be amazed at how much a prairie dog can produce), setting down the trap, and baiting them.
Liz is working on her dissertation on genetic diversity and pathogen resistance in black tailed prairie dogs. After we set the traps we traveled to another prairie dog town to pre-bait traps, which entails finding the prairie dog mounds on the map (they are all numbered) then setting an open trap with bait. We were all a little shaken at first because the week before there were some scary rattler sightings. We found most of the mounds and then quickly headed back to the first town to see if we trapped any prairie dogs before they got too hot. We did manage to trap 3 prairie dogs and 2 ground squirrels. By this time it was rather hot, which is normal out on the prairie, so we got to work collecting data.
Once they are trapped the prairie dog is anesthetized. Liz is amazingly efficient and I was impressed with the set up on the truck tailgate. After the prairie dog was put out, it was brushed for all fleas and ticks. These were collected in a vile. Then the prairie dog was weighed. Lastly, blood samples were taken from the nail. By the last prairie dog we were all helping out. It was quick, easy, and painless for the prairie dog.
In all her work, Liz has only lost one prairie dog. They think this one had a heart or kidney problem and reacted negatively to the anesthesia. If you think this is cruel, you should have seen the shell casings we found from those who find joy in shooting prairie dogs off their mounds to see how high they can fly.
After all the data is collected the prairie dogs are released.
I've always known that I love field work and biology/ecology so today was a great day. I think that Laura and I are going to try to do some prairie dog research on our own to study effective trapping techniques. Liz was saying that she combed all the research and still doesn't know the most effective and safe way to trap prairie dogs. It was a long day (12 hours) and that brings me back to thoughts about our early settlers. They were really amazing, and crazy...
No comments:
Post a Comment