Monday was probably the busiest day I’ve had so far! Having sampled 14 musk turtles last Friday, I knew I was up for a challenge when I walked in and had 23 more musk turtles to sample and run blood work on. I got to our site very early and started right away, working as quickly and efficiently as I could. I was done with physical exams at around 1pm, and then headed to my lab so I could start the lab work. I turned on some tunes and got down to business since I knew this work would take me a hot minute. I had a frequent visitor come around the garage—an opossum that looked like he was at least 150 years old. Not kidding! He was also one of the biggest opossum’s I have ever laid eyes on. But he was harmless, just trying to get into the trashcan right next to the garage.
   Chris, the biologist for Cook County, was kind enough to set up traps for me while I worked on those musk turtles. Our goal was to catch a few softshell turtles. On Tuesday, we both ventured out to collect these traps and see what we had in them. We pulled the first trap and found a juvenile snapping turtle! Chris let me do a physical exam on her so I could practice with yet another species. We released her and moved on to the next trap. Nothing. Then the next trap. Nothing. Last trap? Nothing! It was a bummer, but we knew we had to take these traps out of the water because the weather forecast predicted 3 straight days of rain. Our next assignment was to drop off a few sliders at Brookfield Zoo. I got to see the pathology lab and even got a mini tour of the zoo’s animal hospital!
Technically I was off Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday since we pulled all the traps. But I wasn’t about to sit at home and do nothing for 3 whole days! Plus, I LOVE being out in the field! I offered a helping hand to the other counties. Maura and Dylan were the first ones to claim my offer, so I headed over to Kane County for the remainder of the week. 
Maura and I tried tracking headstart Blanding’s together while our leaky waders slowly soaked us with swamp water. Key word: TRIED. We had one Blanding’s that we knew was within a 3-foot radius of us (thank you telemetry), but after one whole hour of searching through the muck, we couldn’t find it! We felt so defeated. But we quickly bounced back with finding 2 headstart Blanding’s after that. I also helped Maura and Dylan pull traps where we found one slider and one juvenile snapping turtle. I made a deal with Maura and told her that if she taught me how to draw blood on a snapper, I would teach her how to identify tree species (I’m kind of a tree ID master, no biggie). The funniest part of that day was goofing around with Maura in the ATV as we played the Pirates of the Caribbean theme song and drove through mud and muck.
Next week I’m hoping to get some more traps out so I can finally catch my first softshell of the season! I hear they are quite hard to catch, but I am super optimistic especially with the good weather we are about to have!
