You’ve heard of the Super Bowl. You’ve heard of the Puppy Bowl. You’ve probably even heard of the Kitten Bowl! But none of those come even close to the prestige and the legacy of Blanding’s Bowl. For those of you that live under a rock, let me explain what it is. Once a year, all of our techs and vets make teams and set out traps to catch as many Blanding’s as possible. Snapping turtles are negative points (I know, it’s sad. I love those guys), and painted turtles are +2 points each. Frogs are 0 POINTS which is heresy but we still enjoyed catching them. On our first day, we caught a a little Blanding’s and named it after the great Dr. Allender. Later in the week, we found another and named it Dr. Laura! We’ve got some of the best mentors around, and the least we can do is name some turtles after them.
We sampled over 100 turtles that week, and had a blast doing it! With all the extra hands to help out with labwork, even the late days were an absolute blast. THINK OF ALL THE DATA WE GOT. At the end of the week, we had a pizza party to celebrate the winners who won some VERY cute mugs with everyone’s favorite turtle on them. Last place got a 6-pack of beer, which is pretty good too.
As the summer winds down, we’re slowing down on sampling and working on writing our papers. We’ve only got a few weeks left – this summer really flew by! Finally, the moment you’ve all been waiting for – the frog of the week. This week’s is an American Toad, or toadlet, which is the scientific term for a lil’ tiny baby toad!!
