Here it is, our twelfth and final blogpost, buckle up folks we're going on a feels trip. If you have not read between the lines of our many previous posts, we have had an incredible summer. All the adventures we had, the challenges we overcame, and the friendships forged could not have been possible without [...]
Hello all! Typing this blogpost LIVE from Kane County where we are taking our final victory lap of turtle catching. We have picked up a hitch hiker named Kelcie who agreed to help us sample some turtles in exchange for a shared room. (jk she is a fellow WELian, check out some of her blogposts [...]
Hello readers! Although we know you come here for cute turtle pics and stories about us sloshing through marshes, unfortunately we have none of that this week. Having packed up the field lab, we have returned to the Wildlife Epi Lab headquarters to do lots of very important science. This means no more daily overdose [...]
Welcome back readers! Last week we packed up our lab and headed back to U of I to start lab work this week (which you'll hear more about in next week's blog). Don't fret though, as we will return to the field in August for one more week to recapture and resample all the headstarts. [...]
Ladies and gentlemen welcome to the the first Kane County Miniature Blanding's Bowl. Today our commentary will cover the exciting and cutthroat competition of turtle capturing. Last week Taylor, a member of our team, decided to make things a little more interesting and introduce a point system for our traps. The four of us that [...]
Welcome back to another exciting installment of Michelle and Alexis doing stuff! Reading our blog may make it seem like we are field research super cyborgs sent to Earth to save the Blanding's turtles, but in reality we are human and do things outside of the swamp and the lab. This week we'd like to [...]
Wow Michelle and Alexis haven't posted in a while, hope they haven't been eaten by a snapping turtle. Don't worry readers, the swamp has yet to take us and we have returned for another blog post. If Michelle could stay awake past 10 o' clock this would have probably been posted a lot sooner. Our [...]
Setting up some traps. Hello readers, welcome back to your weekly dose of fieldwork propaganda. Last week was relatively slow for us, and yet somehow our blogpost was still up late. Despite Michelle voluntarily eating one of the raw sardines we use as bait in our turtle traps (as an offering to the [...]
Hey all you happy herps and hatchlings! This week was a bit of a blur but we’ll try to enhance the highlights for you. We were off to a strong start with our first experience with fieldwork without the supervision of our certified adult, Dr. Laura. We helped set out traps on Monday, collected some [...]
First Blanding's turtle of the season. After almost two weeks of preparation, (and months longer of building excitement), this week we made it to the field. We were given the address of our worksite, two genuine WEL hats and we were off. We loaded the car up on Wednesday, moved to the site [...]
