More from South Dakota!

Hey all,
Sorry for the long interval between updates! South Dakota has been going well. We had our first four day break last weekend. Becca's birthday was on our last day of work, so we hung out in the pool, had some cake, took groups tequila shots, and were able to go to bed at the ever-so-late hour of 11PM :) . People sort of split up for the break - some went home, a few people went camping, but I was looking forward to sleeping in a real bed, so I drove over the Pierre, SD and Bismarck, ND. It was probably the most boring drive of my life. For 200 mile stretches, you pass through maybe 5 or 6 towns, each of which have between 12 and 500 people apiece. Pierre was smaller than I expected - 14,000 people. I met this really sweet little old Chinese lady in a gift shop there who got into a half hour conversation with me about east coast colleges (I guess her son lives in NJ and works in a lab for Cornell Medical School). I told her about what I was doing for the summer, and she kept telling me how proud she was of me and asked about stuff for her family to do in the Badlands. She gave me a big hug before I left, giving me her business card and telling me to come back if I am ever in town again (which I probably won't be, but if I ever am, her shop will be the first place I will visit). Bismarck was actually quite nice, and much larger (around 55,000). I thought North Dakota was very pretty, and the city was cute. It has a really nice park system with walking trails, and there are actually trees there :) , so I went jogging through and explored the town. This mostly involved looking at trees, houses, and the small Dakota Zoo - Bismarck felt large, but this was a relative assessment, lol.

After returning from break, we split up some of the trucks so that now we visit different plots. I have been going to Plot 3, which is a nice change because the dogs there have fewer fleas and there have been fewer visible dead ones. I still can't get over how cute these guys are! Even when they bite you and pee on you (the latter of which happens quite frequently, unfortunately), it's hard to resist their chubby little faces. We caught an adorable little new juvenile today. A lot of the ones we are catching are recaptures, though, so we don't process them. There is a mangy one with no tail who keeps getting in on my side of the plot - I may have to move more traps soon. There is also Stump, who is missing a toe, who gets caught almost every time too. Some of them are getting sneaky with digging through the bottom to get to the bait, so we may start weighing some of the traps down.

While I am really enjoying work, I am starting to get bored of Interior. We went to the movies in Philip the other day, which was about an hour and fifteen minute drive - it should have only been about 40 minutes, but there was a complete upheaval of the road for 14 miles of construction. We had to follow a little pilot car for most of the way. At one point while we were waiting, this creepy guy with dogs in the back of his truck got out and went over to our car and asked us where we were from. Apparently he is the guy who owns the bar in Interior, and he kept asking us why we don't go there, because "us five ladies" should be visiting his bar. Our crew leader says that this guy has been known to put crap in people's drinks. Creepy! Yeah, so that would be why we never go to the bar....

Anyway, I hope everyone's summer is going well! Talk to you soon.

Erin

More prairie dogs

Hey everyone,
So prairie dog land has been going pretty well, although there have been some weather issues this week. The dogs don't really come out in the rain, and we have had some thunderstorms. Yesterday morning, the rain was so hard that it rocked our trailer - we didn't end up going out that day (nice to get a break from the 4AM mornings!) Just did some data entry and called it a day. Today, we had to wait in the trucks for almost 2 hours waiting for a storm to pass before could go out. The whole sky was lit up with lightening and there was this giant pink cloud opposite the rising sun. It was really gorgeous, but annoying to just wait there in the rain after getting up early. We still managed to do two round of trapping at both plots, though. Most of the dogs are recaps at this point, so we will probably move the traps soon. Tomorrow is our last day of work before break. Not sure what I am going to do yet. It is Becca's birthday tomorrow as well, so we went into Rapid City today and bought some alcohol (at Family Thrift, which has a surprisingly good selection, although I got my cheap B&J's pina coladas at Wal-Mart), and Amanda is making a birthday cake. We'll see what comes of the 4 day weekend - some people are going camping in the Black Hills, so I might join them. Or I might not rough it out....sleeping in in my bed sounds pretty good too, haha :)

That's all for now!

Erin

Prairie Dogs!

Today was our first day working with the actual prairie dogs - starting our daily routine. Goes a little something like this:

4:00 AM - Wake up to be out driving to the plots by 4:30 (sunrise is at about 4:50)
5:00 AM - Start opening traps and laying bait on the plots
6:00-8:30 AM - Sit around and wait. Sleep, read, take a walk, etc.
8:30 AM - check the first round of plots. Process the dogs we find. This involves putting them under isopropol to sedate them, combing off and collecting fleas, ear tagging them (or checking the ear tags they are wearing, which can be difficult b/c they are quite dirty), taking a blood sample, and weighing them.

After this, we lay second rounds of bait and repeat, usually until about 1 or 2 PM. Today we were out until 4:30 PM, but hopefully that won't be every day.

Interesting events of today:

I got bit by a prairie dog. Bled a little, but it wasn't too bad. Taking them out of the cages can be difficult, and so I guess I've learned my lesson quick that work gloves, not rubber gloves, should be worn for that. Let's hope I don't catch plague...

We went into Wall to explore. Went to Wall Drug again and back to the Cactus Cafe...not much new, as expected. On the way home, we noticed two of the guys we work with along the side of the road...apparently the radiator of Jordan's car was overheated because he turned off the fan when he wanted to use his laptop in the car. So we waited there for a bit while the radiator cooled down. While waiting we got to see the prairie dog dance! They have this cute little circular dance that they do when they are happy. These little guys are adorable :)

Now I guess I will be off to bed soon, as while it is only 8:30, I need to shower and get to bed early. As early as I am usually able to wake up, this 4AM on a daily basis thing will take a bit of getting used to...


Erin

Starting out with the dogs

Hey all,
So we started doing actual fieldwork yesterday. Got up around 8:30, loaded traps onto the trucks, and made prairie dog bait (oats rolled in peanut butter). We then went out to some of the plots and laid down traps. It was sort of crazy to see the warning signs telling you to keep out because of plague. We then laid down 10 each on each plot. It was really windy and started getting hot - there are big temperature variations here during the day. It gets around 40 at night and in the 90s in the afternoon. One of the trucks got stuck in the mud and we had to push it out - it was ridiculous! Mud everywhere. Overall, the plots weren't too muddy as long as you were careful about where you stepped. Not as many cacti as I expected, and we didn't run into any rattlesnakes - but I saw a couple of dead prairie dogs on a one of the plots (not a good sign - this usually means a plague death). We then watched an Animal Planet video on prairie dogs and pretty much hung out for the rest of the day.

There isn't a whole lot to do here, but actually a little more than I expected. There are a couple of small bars in town, but people say that they get kind of sketchy at night. A lot of people from the reservations nearby come and stay there for a long time, and it gets kind of depressing. There is a little inn called the Budget Inn Hotel and Suites that is a sort of cafe/lounge/inn place where you can get internet. The wireless we were getting in our RVs isn't working anymore - I think the guy who had it must have driven away or something. The badlands absolutely gorgeous though - I went running this afternoon and just starting at them off in the distance was awe-inspiring.

Today we went into Rapid City to do some shopping, which is about 1.5 hours away. That took up most of the afternoon. The morning was spent doing paperwork and safety training stuff - learning about the signs of the plague and stuff like that. Apparently it is very treatable with simple antibiotics (yeah penicillin!) It was nice to go into town, though. Rapid City isn't huge, but it has grocery stores and movie theaters and a Wal-Mart. More than we have here :). Everyone I am working with seems pretty cool - most people are from the east coast, but some from the west as well. I think I'm going to have a good summer here - what is especially nice is our work schedule is 10 days on and 4 days off, so there will be chances to take trips and get away for a bit throughout the months. I am hoping to visit a few new states if I get the chance.

Anyway, that's all for now. Hope everyone else's summer is going well!

Roadtrip

So....I've finally reached South Dakota. Actually, we got here late Saturday night, after leaving Wednesday morning. The driving wasn't nearly as tedious as I had expected. We probably could have made it in less time, but it was nice to be able to stop places along the way. Here's a wrap-up of the past couple of days:

Wednesday: Pretty boring. We drove across NY, the entire state of PA, and about half of OH, stopping in Columbus. The weather was kind of yucky, and there isn't much to do in Columbus. We got in at around 8:30 and after getting dinner, spent about a half an hour trying to decide what to do before just watching TV.

Thursday: Driving through the rest of OH, all of IN, a bit of IL, and into MO. This is where we made my personal favorite stop (*cough*cough*) - Boondocks Farm! I took the first leg of driving on this day, and after a couple of hours, I really needed to get up and stretch, so I told Joe that we were stopping at the next rest stop, regardless of what it was. Central Indiana, outside of Indianapolis, is pretty much farmland. And nothing else. So much to Joe's dismay, the next rest stop ended up being a little Evangelical Christian petting zoo. There was absolutely no one there, except for some cages of animals, a little wooden cottage, and a gigantic wooden cross. Apparently there was a wedding going on that day, although we didn't see any of the people - just signs directing traffic. Later on we saw some cars coming in.

We then drove the rest of the way to St. Louis, where we stayed with Joe's grandparents (who are pretty much awesome). His grandfather had a real tiki bar constructed downstairs in the house, which I thought was pretty sweet.

Friday: St. Louis Arch! It reminded me a lot of the Space Needle in Seattle - constructed in the same era with the same sort of futuristic-type sentiment. The view of the river was pretty nice, and overall, I really liked the city. The rest of the day was driving to Omaha. Not too much else, although Omaha was a surprisingly substantial town - I had imagined it to be a lot smaller.



Saturday: We reach South Dakota! The drive was long, and through the absolute middle of nowhere, but we got to see some really gorgeous land. The view along I-90 is pretty incredible. Stops along the way included the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota (not really worth seeing, let me tell you) and Wall Drug (as hokey as it is, definitely worth a stop, IMO). It is also very well advertised - between IA/SD border and Wall Drug, we managed to count about 100 signs for the place.

Sunday: Driving to Wyoming! Only a 60 mile trip one way - it fascinates me that out west, driving someplace 60 miles away is a short afternoon trip. But when you can drive 75 miles an hour the whole way, it pretty easy :). Wyoming was gorgeous and I'd love to go back, because I didn't really get to see much - just parts of the Black Hills and some gorgeous red mountains that start appearing along the border. Sunday night was Mount Rushmore, which I felt was a bit overrated. It was also FREEZING - temperatures drop quickly out here at night. Neat to see though, and nice that the parking pass is good for a year, so maybe I'll go back at another time of day later on this summer.

Monday: Driving Joe to the airport, taking advantage of the wireless here to update my blog, and now....checking out of the hotel and going off to the Conata Basin! Hopefully I will update soon (we'll see how easy it is to get online out there....)

Erin