My grandpa used to always tell me that "You're a fool if you don't make a plan, and you're a fool if you think your plan is going to work." I feel like if this summer taught me anything about myself (other than the tremendous amounts of clinical and field experience), it's that I am [...]
Back at it again this week with another return to the swamp for the 9th Annual Blanding's Bowl with the Lake County crew. Every team of biologists, vets, and students set out traps at the beginning of the week and spent the rest of the time checking traps and tallying points. The stars of the [...]
One of the best things about working with wildlife is that you never know what the week is going to throw at you. This past week Maris and I took a break from our work in the lab at school and headed up to the Chicagoland area to join the other turtle teams. We started [...]
I have never been much of a writer, and this past week all seems to be like a blur in my mind. With that, I have decided not to muster up a conjugation of letters to form a weekly report of events, but rather to tell you the story of this past week through movies. [...]
We took a quick trip up to our field site in Northwest Illinois to sample ornate box turtles this week, meeting up with the turtle dogs and having super successful sample collection day with 55 turtles! Getting to interact with an amazing conglomeration of biologists and researchers for the betterment of box turtle conservation is [...]
When I first began to pursue veterinary school seriously, my mom gifted me the beloved James Herriot books. As I flipped through the pages, I, like many others, began to fall in love with the veterinarian's expeditions through rural England. Every day was different. Every day was magical. Veterinary medicine was exciting in those pages, [...]
The long-awaited return of field season is finally here and with some new faces! Both Maris, having just finished her first year of vet school and entering into her first year in PhD land, and myself kicked off last week at the Nachusa Grasslands, a prairie restoration site in northern Illinois. Reunited with the infamous [...]
The last time I was at Nachusa, I was in elementary school. Back then, we called it “the buffalo place”. Cue Hannah Montana, “You’ll Always Find Your Way Back Home”. I have changed a lot since Monroe Center Elementary took a field trip out to see the Lee County buffalo. I think at that point [...]
