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 [...]
Blanding's Summer 2020 Blog 3 The day we have all been waiting for is here: moving day! We finally moved our huge pile of supplies from the field closet into our car. With the help of caffeine, we made the 3-hour drive up to Lake County to set up our lab at Turtle Town. We [...]
Welcome to Blanding's Summer 2020 Blog 2 This week we further prepared for our move to Lake County by picking up our rental car and packing up the lab. Getting our car was quick and easy, but packing enough supplies for the summer is another story. It took us about 3 hours (and [...]
Hello readers, welcome back to another exciting installment of "Michelle and Alexis following protocol by basically hanging out". This week we settled in together and did a lot of what we like to call "anticipreparation". This is when you are so wound up with anticipation you start preparing and packing for something you do not really [...]
Hi everyone and welcome to the 2020 Box Turtle blog (a.k.a. The BEST blog)! My name is Kelcie Fredrickson and I am a rising second year veterinary student at the University of Illinois. The blog’s main focus will be on our health surveillance program which monitors box turtle population health and will feature my student [...]
Hello readers! If you're familiar with this blog welcome back for another summer of fun stories about field research. First time readers should be prepared to learn about wildlife and the work that goes into studying them. We are two veterinary students from the University of Illinois who will be journeying to the Kane County [...]
Welcome to Blanding's Summer 2020 Blog 1 Hi everyone, welcome to our turtle-tastic blog! Our names are Sam and Kayla and we are the vet students who will be showing you what it's like researching the Blanding's Turtle in Lake County Illinois. We are thrilled to get the chance to take you on our adventures [...]
What the heck is that thing? You may have seen it in your backyard, crawling on your tomato plants. It’s a hornworm! Hornworms are high in protein and fat and we fed one to one of our beardies this past week. There’s a video at the end that shows her eating it and loving it! [...]
Its been another exciting week for dragon team! With only four weeks left until classes start Ivana and Bryce are really trying to enjoy their last few weeks of summer with the bearded dragons and the epi lab before their lives get a little busier. Ivana doing a subcarapacial blood draw This week, [...]
