A Moment of Relaxation

Many apologies for the terse posts lately, it's been a very busy week and it's not likely to get better for a week or two. In a big rush to get all of my project setup, and the trial run is finally done today. FINALLY.

To put this into perspective for y'all, I spent the past 3 days cutting down the better part of a bamboo grove for materials (it's invasive anyway, haha), trimming the bamboo to size, placing cages, placing bamboo around them in precise increments, catching crabs, catching snails, putting them in the cages, zip tying it all together, and sweating my face off. Most of this I did alone or with one helping hand. I seriously cannot help that helping hand, who shall go unnamed, quite enough.

The bamboo grove was especially murderous, though. I have more mosquito bites on my body than I have ever had in my life. There were literal clouds of mosquitoes there, like the kind you see in children's cartoons. Makes me itchy just thinking about it.

But it's worth it! Because the trial run (Yes, the trial, not the main experiment. That's later. And harder work.) is finally ready and running. My fingers are crossed for good data or all this will be for naught. I will know more on Saturday. Also I promise I'll give a better write up of the main experiment when it's up, but in the meantime I am not risking jinxing this. Not for y'all anyway!

On a sidenote, two cool happenings. The first one merits a story.

So I'd been working hard this morning setting up cages and finally had gotten to the stage where I could start gathering crabs to put into them. I'd wandered into the grass, taking a PVC pole with me. Normally you use PVC to jam into the ground next to a burrow. The sudden pressure pushes water out of the ground (and the hole) which usually shoves the crab out with it. But this time, as I'm wandering, I find a ball of grass. A literal ball, folded delicately and woven. I give it a cursory poke, and out comes flying this small, roughly softball sized blur of orange-brown fur tearing across the marsh. It's squeaking in alarm. I give chase but quickly lose it in the thick marsh grass.

I'd startled a rather elusive marsh mouse.

Like this, only probably not the right species. This is a deer mouse, genus Peromyscus.

These guys are relatively rare. Nests are uncommon, and by the time one is found, the mouse is usually long gone. But I found one. It was so, so cool. I seriously regret not having any pictures of it or even a good species ID. But still!

Secondly, though, my lovely girlfriend Jenn is getting her SCUBA certification this weekend. I'm very proud of her, and also a bit jealous because I haven't been diving in a month and a half now. So wish her luck!

Me, though? I'm going to relax and let my mini-experiment run for a couple days and in the meantime make lots of cages and watch movies and stuff. Whee.