2/21/2010

In the morning, we had our final FFP lecture on plant defenses. It was very interesting; basically the entire time, the lecturer was trying to convince us that no one can study ecology anywhere else but Africa. Hmm. I saw his point, but still. After lecture, a bunch of us went down to the student office to use internet, and I submitted an application. Fingers crossed, this one will go through. Or just one of them, it doesn’t really matter which. I’d like to do any of these that I’m applying for. After lunch, we all relaxed for a while, as well as working on our Goldsworthy photo project. Mine is purty .
Tonight was my night to go out on bats. We left at 5, and by 545 we had found a herd. This was frustrating, as the whole point of the project was to find bats around elephants, as the theory is that the elephants “flush,” or disturb insects, which attracts bats. 545 is way too early for bats to be outside. We waited around the herd for as long as we could. During this time, Jeremy, our instructor found an acacia tree. Acacias have thorns. He decided we should all pierce our ears with acacia thorns. WTF. A couple of people did (not me, thanks). Very weird. Finally, when it got to be time to record for bats, the elephants got to be too far away. So, we moved on. After driving for about a half hour, we would stop and take a reading, whether or not there was an elephant. This happened more often than not; elephants are hard to find at night. While driving, we almost ran over a bird, which made a daring escape into the GDV, hitting Hannah in the face with its wing. Finally we found an elephant, took recordings, and then drove around for a while to wait for the elephant to leave, to record again for a control. We were driving when suddenly we drove through a massive spider web. We all laughed, until we realized the spider (about the size of a small toad) was still in the GDV. Then we laughed harder, except for Hannah, who had to get it out. Then we went back, took more recordings, and went home. Words of the day: Apple = apula; orange = lamula.