Half Way There

I've been working on my PhD project for several years now and have just passed the official half way mark. My second field season ended Sunday with a big gear cleaning session and a BBQ on my balcony. I always end a season of field work with mixed feelings. The field work is the reason I am a wildlife biologist, spending my days in the woods, breathing the fresh air of the mountains, watching the sun come up over the Black Forest hills, commradery of co-workers (I guess I'm the boss now, so my employees!) and just being surrounded by nature. Every other project I've ever worked on has involved camping for up to weeks at a time in primitive settings with complete immersion in the project and city life as distant as a dream. In Europe, it's almost impossible to get far enough away from civilization to escape the sounds of vehicles and you're always confronted with some aspect of human life. My farthest site is only an hour and fifteen minutes from my front door, so there's no need really to sleep out. This combined with the fact that the small mammal population density was so low this year that we were sometimes getting as few as 2 animals in 147 traps and getting done at 9:30 in the morning, negated the necessity of camping. So back to Freiburg we drove and back to my city life. Oscilating between these two poles all summer was extremely exhausting for me.

Marking a yellow-necked mouse (Apodemus flavicollis)

The field week began on Wednesday and ended Sunday, with my Mondays and Tuesdays belonging to the medical technologies company where I also work. My friends of course all had weekends, a luxury which I am only now enjoying again, so I would get invites to go to the beer garden, to this concert, to that movie, all of which began at the time I should have been going to bed! The new Libby cannot miss out on any such things, so I ended up getting sometimes as little as three hours of sleep a night, getting up at 5:30 to go back out and check on my mice. I am only now beginning to recoup some of my lost sleep. I'll miss being out in the woods all the time, but I certainly am glad to sleep again!

Garden Dormouse (Eliomys quercinus)

The big boss, loungin' on the job

The Sir Mix-a-lot "big butt" bag in action

- Libby