As much as you think you know what each day will be like, the marsh is quite an unpredictable place. Between cattails trying to take out your eyeballs and brownie batter trying to eat your boots, you definitely find your inner strength in this line of work. Along with working with our seasonal worker Oscar, these past couple weeks we had another face joining the team. An IMSA student joined our turtle team and spent her time learning all about Blandings and experiencing field work. Carly and Surina took to mentoring her right away and helper her prepare for her ending project.
As difficult as the labor may be, the team always finds a way to have fun. Here are a few highlights from the past couple weeks:
Carly not only caught the chunkiest bullfrog ever in one of her traps, but she also caught…a chicken? Yes, that’s right. A lone chicken decided to wander onto the preserve from way down the road. Of course Carly being the goofy country girl she is, she scooped her up and got the sweet girl some water to drink. The chicken then got a little ride down the road to be returned home.
Rainy days do not stop our work in the field. The rain is the easy part. The worst part is the mosquitoes. Avoiding becoming a mosquito buffet, the turtle team worked up a few turtles on the playground a few times. We even finally convinced Bill to ride the little turtle-horse thing and snatched some good photos.
Setting a new area either has major perks or lots of disappointment. We experienced both of these at two different sites over the past couple weeks. We decided to set a new area at Freeman where we caught six snappers in four traps! We took the opportunity to wrangle our snippy snaps and take a group picture in the marsh with our dinosaurs.
Maddy spent another week in Kane and this usually means there is never a dull moment. From providing company to Carly at the field house to hours of laughter in the field, Maddy sure knows how to make field work a riot. Carly and Maddy dueled with their marsh wands and even reenacted parts of Lion King. Are we just delusional or maybe just dorks? Probably a bit of both.
Carly and Oscar have been meeting at the station at 6am lately to check snake boards. The hope is to pit tag and survey for smooth green snakes in the area. However, Oscar and Carly have only found Eastern Garter snakes. Even if we are not finding the snakes we are after, Carly is enjoying learning all the native plants in the area and getting pretty good at identifying them!
Surina has still been spending her off-time planning her brother’s wedding and Carly has still been exploring the area. She has now officially visited Brookfield Zoo. She also attended the Chicagoland Pro Rodeo in Yorkville and had a blast. We are now up to 75 Blandings and almost finished sampling our 50 paints and snaps! Can’t wait to see what the next weeks will bring!
