Mammalogy Field Trip

I never wrote about my field trip, so here it goes. I could just give you my field notes, but I'll summarize since you probably don't care about the precise temperatures and GPS coordinates of our traps.

The field trip was Thursday through Saturday. We got to our campsite at Huntington State Park and set up our tents. I shared my tent with my friend Kyrie and another girl who rode in the same truck as us and needed somewhere to sleep. It's a big enough tent that we weren't too squished together, even with all of our stuff everywhere inside. We got our tent set up and were unpacking some stuff when someone outside yelled "we're gonna leave without you!" Apparently we missed a first announcement, which I was a little annoyed at. Our professor needs a whistle or something. We ran over to listen to directions then got some stuff together really fast. We went about 15 minutes down the road to set some traps. 40 traps per pair. Kyrie and I were a pair and we were in a group of 4 with another pair. We got our traps set up in about an hour and got back to camp before dark. The other groups were a lot slower than us so they showed up just after dark. We had dinner (my professor made chili), and went into our tents to try to warm up. It was in the low 40s all afternoon and the overnight low was a chilly 34. I did not sleep well. My face got so cold, and it's not all that comfortable to sleep in so many layers of clothes. My sleeping bag was pretty warm though. (Thank Mom and Dad!)

Friday morning we didn't have to get up until about 8:00, but I was awake by 6:45 and I was tired of trying to sleep. I just sat in my sleeping bag snacking on rice cakes that I had brought. I finally got out of the tent a little before we were supposed to get up to go use the bathroom the sinks got busy. Thankfully, the sinks had nice, warm water. The site actually had showers, too, but we were planning to stay at a different site (it was closed for the winter) that didn't have showers so I didn't have shower stuff. I was feeling pretty nasty by Saturday. Anyway, they had oatmeal and hot chocolate and bagels and fruit for breakfast, so that was nice. Then we went back to check our trapline. 9 of our 40 traps had little mice and things in them. The first one that I checked that was full kinda freaked me out. I picked it up, but it felt too light to have anything in it so I thought maybe the trap just went off so I started opening the trap door and it hit the mouse inside. I screamed. Then I felt ridiculous. The group we were paired with heard me from their trap line and asked us about it when we met up later. :)

After all the groups had gathered their full traps, we met up as a big group and Dr. Rogers told us what we caught. If any of you care, we caught 7 deer mice, a long-tailed vole, and a harvest mouse. We went back to camp while Dr. Rogers euthanized the little critters and then he showed us how he prepares them to be a museum specimen (skinning and stuffing them, and explaining how they prepare the skeleton). It was interesting, but watching that stuff makes me a little queasy. We had quite a bit of free time during the day, so we had lunch and studied for an exam and took a nap in my tent for a while. It was nice and warm in there when the sun was out.

That evening we went out to reset the traps that we had gathered in the morning. We had left the empty traps out there. We also set some larger traps to try to catch some carnivorous mammals. Then we went back to camp and helped prepare stuff for dinner while the other groups finished their lines. Dinner was tinfoil dinners, so we had some little fires to hang out around that night. It was fun to get to know some of the people in the class. My like 8:30, I was ready for bed. It gets dark so early now. I thought it was at least 10:30. So, I crawled all the way into my sleeping bag, including my head, and tried to stay warm. I slept better that night. Maybe because I actually kept my face in my sleeping bag, but maybe it was just because I was so tired.

Saturday morning we got up at 6:30, ate breakfast, and were ready to leave camp by 7:45 to check our lines and gather all the traps. 10 of our 40 traps were full this time, but none of the larger traps had anything in them. I was kinda happy that they didn't. The whole group met up and we looked at what everyone got again. Then we went back to camp, packed up our tents and hit the road. We were back in Provo by 1:00, and I was so happy to see Spencer. I was also happy to finally take a shower and be warm again. I hate being cold. I spent the rest of the weekend catching up on homework and studying for exams. The trip was actually more fun than I had expected it to be. That was partly because I had low expectations going in, and partly because it didn't rain like the forecast said it would and my group was fast and fun to be around.

The beginning of our trapline

We had a beautiful view at the end of it though!

Me on Thursday. Looks so nice and warm, doesn't it?

Checking traps. There's one in that bush. It was full.

Huntington Creek

Me and Kyrie with our full traps. 

Dr. Rogers telling the class about that little mouse.

More of our trapline.

Me and Kyrie again

I really was beautiful there, and on Saturday it was a little warmer. 

Oh, and we saw this guy (he has a crow in his claws) in parking lot of the campground!