This week has started off quickly and it blows my mind that it is already Wednesday. On Monday, it was a whirlwind of activities and the student discover team got to experience an actual citizen science project at Prairie Ridge Ecostation by capturing dragonflies. I never knew there were so many species of dragonflies and the different activities that they do. Of course, I wanted to take a picture with Kerrie and Dayson to look like “legit scientists” which I have posted below 🙂 Unfortunately, none of us captured any dragonflies but we got to see a lot of them as they flew right past our nets. After we roasted outside for a bit, we came back to the museum for an in-depth tour of the exhibits. The coolest part of the tour was when we got to go down in the basement. I felt like I was in the Night at the Museum movie in the collections room. There were creepy white cabinets full of drawers with different specimens in them, random labeled bones, and old exhibits (some of them dating back over 80 years old).
Tuesday is where the real fun began. Dr. Shuttler had an interview so we went to collect the camera traps with her interns. I got to ride in-between Dave and Dayson for hours in the backseat so we got very familiar, very quickly LOL! The funniest part of the day is when we drove to my school, Hilburn Academy to collect the two camera traps. At first, Troy (one of the interns) went bounding down the hill towards the trap, and as I was following her she shouted “gross I almost stepped in that”. Well…do bears poop in the woods? Yes, they should! However, do humans poop in the woods by a camera trap with toilet paper? Well, I didn’t want to believe it was so but Tuesday proved me wrong. Yes, that’s right folks! Some nasty individual took the time to get toilet paper and then go down a steep hill to defecate by our camera trap. Dayson, Dave and I did not jump at the opportunity to retrieve the camera and fortunately one of the interns went and unlocked it. The interns were excited to look at the memory card to see if we caught the individual who decorated our camera trap area but all we found were deer. However, it was amazing to find out that at my school we have a family of deer with two fawns! I am extremely excited to see what the next couple of weeks will bring! Hopefully, no more human surprises though lol!
