My Average Day

Kevin wants me to write more blog since he is bored with Mein Kampf, so here I am, writing more blog. In an earlier post, I had expressed the wish that people write in my comments anything they would like me to post about, as eventually, I will run out of ideas of new things to write if nothing I feel is of interest is happening. However, anyone reading this, may have a different idea of what can be called interesting. Although this was not in my comments, Eliott has expressed the wish to hear what my average day is like. I was going to wait until my weeks became a little more routine, but it may be a while until that happens.

So here is my average weekday:

6:00-6:30am: Wake up, change into field clothing, eat breakfast, brush my teeth

6:30-7:00am: Get field bags from the lab and drive to field site. At least twice a week, if we are driving on a particular stretch of road, we are required to perform a wildlife survey where we mark down how many kilometres we have travelled from the field station, the number of each animal, the species, and whether there are any roadkills when we see an animal. This data may eventually be used for someone’s Honours Thesis project. Typical animals we see include mule deer, white-tailed deer, elk, bighorn sheep, ravens, and robins.

7:00-~9:30am: Walk through the grids we have set up at a particular field site. If it is one of the long-term grids, we check all traps along the grid, which vary between 30 and 45 usually, and when there are animals, check tag numbers, tag the deer mice or red-backed voles that are missing tags, check their sex and reproductive condition, write down all the information, and let them go. If it is a grid that we’ve set up for ourselves to bring mice back to the lab, we check the traps that have something and take back the animals we need. We lock the traps open when we are done checking them.

~9:30am-5:30pm: This is where we are a liberty to pretty much do what we want. Usually we spend at least some of this time doing work. Right now, what has fallen under the category of work for me includes taking an online animal care course (which I have now passed and finished) and figuring out the protocol for my own experiment. In the future, I will be taking care of my animals in my experiment, and researching and working on the proposal I am supposed to submit sometime this year to my committee. Although this is only really due, I think, at the end of the school year, it will be good for me to get it over with now as I am doing the field work since during the school year, I will be busy with my courses, TAing, and doing the lab work for my own experiment. Occasionally, we devote some time to getting traps ready if we need to set up new ones anywhere. During this time, we also do normal things such as shower, eat a second breakfast as well as a late lunch. Often we combine our meal times with T.V. time. Right now, we are finishing up the first season of Lost. When I feel like procrastinating, I also watch the T.V. shows I’ve been missing over the Internet, take naps, or think up blog posts. Obviously I haven’t been doing an awesome job at the latter, so you can imagine what I’ve really been doing.

5:30-~7:00pm: Drive out and set and bait the traps for the next morning. We use sunflower seeds and oats as bait.

~7:00-8:30pm: Make supper and eat it while watching Lost (this will change once we are done the second season of Lost).

8:30-10:00pm: Free time. I usually use this time to call Eliott, read a bit, and then get ready for bed.

So what does all this mean in terms of my average week? We have three long-term grids that we have to take care of, and two of them need to be done twice a week, while the other one only needs to be done once a week. If this was all we had to do and we did the first two on the same day, our week could be done by Wednesday morning. However, we all have our own projects, so it will not work this way for the most part. For my own project, I need 30 male mice, so I have to keep going out until I catch that many. I think Crisia needs 10 male mice once a month, while Nikhil needs a number random species at varying times. This could mean working every day of the week at some times or only until Wednesday later on when Nikhil and I have all that we need and Crisia has done her monthly quota.