sunday is my day off from the field. i got up and did some yoga. it felt great! i really wish that i had time to do it during the week, but with 10-12 hour days in the field, my body is too exhausted. i cleaned the apartment and did my laundry. i don't know if its best to keep wearing one set of field clothes until they are all brown and stained, then switch to another pair - or just slowly wear them all out at the same time. i try to get them clean, but it seems like most of the time is spent picking off all the little sticky seeds. i try to imitate a washing machine and swirl my clothes around in the bucket after soaking them, but the dirt just doesn't seem to be coming off. i think we should have a moment of appreciation for whoever invented the washing machine!this second week started off a little rough. we wanted to go to a coffee farm that had predominately native trees because we had the mammal expert here with us this week. we
asked the farmer over the phone if they were done harvesting the coffee which they were, but we didn't ask if they were done picking pepper. so when we got there, there were pepper climbers, as they are called, all over the site we wanted to use. pepper (black pepper) is grown in clusters on vines that wrap around the tall straight trees. here, they put tiny ladders up the tree, tie bags around their waist, and pick the pepper. on one farm, we saw 2 young boys stepping on the pepper clusters with their bare feet to separate out the pepper corns it kind of reminded me of squishing grapes. after the pepper is dried, you have the black pepper corns.ok, back to the res
earch, so then had to collect and pack up all of the equipment, relocate to another site, and set up there. it was almost dark by the time that we were done. sanjay and his wife, who have been conducting small mammal surveys in this area for the past 6 years joined us this week to teach us how to do set up the traps correctly, how much bait to use, and how to handle the animals. but as luck would have it...we only caught 1 squirrel in the afternoon that they weren't there. regardless, it was so great to have them here. they were both a tremendous help. they said that they did not find a lot of small mammals in coffee farms and if pesticides or herbicides were applied- a lot of the times they found nothing. they said they witnessed birds falling straight out of the trees after pesticide applications. i only have 1 site right now that is native trees and organic, so i am going to add 2 more to see the effects of pesticides vs organic. sanjay and payal both work in wildlife conservation and sanjay's wife, payal, had the chance to go to the bronx zoo with the wildlife conservation society to do some training on their international research. small world, huh?
this week, i did get a picture of an indian palm civet with the infrared camera!!! i am super excited that it actually works. hopefully, i will be able to get more pictures of medium sized animals. (ignore the date and time...apparently, it needs to be reset every time you put in new batteries...)
on saturdays, we have to check the traps in the morning and then we collect them all to move to the next site. in between though, we have to wash all of them...this is a picture of us was
hing the 144 traps in a stream that people use to bath in and wash their clothes. it didn't smell so great because cows use it too, but it is probably clean enough for the rodents :)
we are still working to get the apartment set up. march and april is summer here in this region and it is getting hotter. right now it is in the 70s in the mornings and evenings and gets up in the 90s during the day with the humidity at about 75%. so my roommate and i have been discussing whether to get ceiling fans which are about 1200 rupees (about $30) or stand up fans which cost about the same. we also went to buy curtains for the windows - finally...we still have sheets up right now. we went to the fabric store and they only had 3 colors for curtains - cream (but they only had 1 for a door), bright yellow, or pea green. so we picked out some fabric in colors that we liked to have the curtains made. the fabric for the 3 sets of windows was 460 rupees (about $10), then the girl took us upstairs to where the tailors work. it was like a balcony with a roof the looked over the street with about 6 sewing machines and a man sewing away at each. we told the tailor what we wanted and he said it would be about 90 rupees and we should have them in a couple of days...we'll see what we get.
well, i'm off to make some mac and cheese. we only have bread, pasta, and cheese in the house right now. i'll bribe the field team with ice cream to let me stop and buy some vegetables on the way home tomorrow :)ps - i revised the comment settings have been changed, they were on some restricted setting before - so feel free to comment if you would like!
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