What the Hail

More Tas Fauna, yay! we had a giant excursion as well and were joined by the animal evolution class. Essentially it was a big zoology field trip. We were lucky and arrived while it wasn't raining. Then I encountered the first problem. I had borrowed a tent from Sam Clarke, and when he offered to show me how to set it up, we both agreed I'd figure it out pretty easily. Then I took out all the pieces and thought to myself "what the fuck is this?" After a good deal of effort and procrastinating I finally figured it out and set it up. Then I had to set up the rain fly because past experience has taught me to always have that set up, and I knew it was going to rain all weekend. There seemed like there was something missing, but I made do with what I had. The rest of the night started to consist of huddling around the fire and hoping it wouldn't rain. In fact the creation of the fire was quite odd. In short we failed to get it burning. We walked away when it started to rain, and then the fire started by the time we were back. Magic. Then Amy's, my prac partner and fellow american, housemates showed up with a little tent/covering thing and lots of firewood. So we had an epic fire and were able to run and hide in shelter when it started hailing on us. No you did not misread that, it started hailing on us for no goddamn reason. It rained off and on for much of the rest of the night, and the details of the night become foggier and foggier as the night progresses. We're not going to go into that. My tent collapsed turning the night and it rained on almost everything I had brought. I had very little dry clothing to wear for the next two days. Yay. I also thought I had lost my iphone, but turned out I stuck it in my sleeping bag.
This brings us to saturday. I woke up in surprisingly good shape, essentially ready to take on the day. Our first activity was bird watching, and not to brag, but i'm pretty damn good at that. We saw some birds, probably about a dozen species. But then it hailed on us again so we hid for a while. The birds love hail about as much as we do so there was probably a little less than usual. Still, not a bad start to the morning other than the off and on rain. No real highlights about that, it didn't compare to some of the other bird watching I'd done earlier in the year. Still no real complaints. We huddled around a fire for a while until our next activity. Our next activity was a two part thing. We set video cameras around traps, but I wasn't really involved in that part so it was kind of boring. The second half was tracking things with radio waves. It was fun, but also became very frustrating when I couldn't find it. It was also good because I was forced to meet new people again. The people I was most familiar with were elsewhere. Still good fun and got to meet people. People keep telling me I have a strong accent which is absolutely not true. I'm american, how could I have an accent? Final activity of the day was intertidal survey, and that was actually a lot of fun. We found some really cool things, like the biggest whelk (carnivorous snail) imaginable. Also we found a Elephant sea slug and some flatworms. I was able to keep mostly dry which was the top priority. Then it was time to go back and huddle around the fire. The only problem with this is that we were failing at setting the fire again. That is when my hero emerged. Her name was Anna and she actually knew how to set a fire. Now I also know how to set a fire, but she had lighter fluid. Now this would be more than enough to make her my hero, she also looked at my tent and decided there was something wrong with the rain fly. Rather than rolling her eyes deciding to let me live with it (my response the day before) she pulls out rope and fixes it up. Epic Win. The tent did not fall that night. The rest of the afternoon was very casual, just hanging out by the fire and meeting a large group of singaporean students who had set up their tents nearby us. That brings us to sunday. got up at around 6 am to go look for bats at 6:30. It literally took me 10 minutes to put in my contacts. Poking yourself in the eyes while shivering is a pretty risky activity. There were no bats. Then a small group of us peeled off to go look for penguins. We had similar success as with the bats. But it was fun, we got to see a cloudy sunrise and and I was hanging out with good people. One even went swimming in the freezing water. Then it was time to go empty possum traps. We had very little success at first. The only thing we caught was a currowong, which was hilarious. Eventually we caught a couple possums, the last of which did not even try to leave the trap until it was almost literally plopped on the ground. The waterrat cages were more exciting. We caught a swamp rat. It looked more like a mouse and wasn't the dirty things you see running around the subway. We caught one of those too, but no one cares about that. We also caught a water rat. Now I hear rat and think disgusting little rodent. Instead it turned out that it was more of a small, more colorful otter. It was pretty cool and they kept it in the cage so other people could see it later. Then it was time for the final activity: seining the ocean. Half the group had wetsuits and were ready to go, so we let them do the whole wet. We measured all the fish that they caught and enjoyed the suddenly beautiful weather. Overall it was a good weekend. My only regret is overdoing it a little while friday night. Good weekend, got to meet lots of people who also love animals and zoology and have a good time. The weather wasn't great, but it was more than survivable.