Buggy Bugs

Yesterday (Thursday 6/18) started off pretty crazy - we were listening to a lecture on first aid, when one of the YCC (high school volunteers) kids starts having a mini seizure! He was OK, though, fortunately; they think it was due to a combination of low blood sugar and being squeamish about the lecture. After that, though, things quickly became pretty boring. They didn't really have anything for me to do, so I basically filled in the shoes of the kid that had to leave early, and did hard labor with them. Ugh. We had to clean out an old fly and mouse-infested trailer, and other stuff. I don't envy them, having to do it all summer.

Today was more interesting, since the biologist was back. In the morning, we had to work with spurge beetles. They are itty bitty beetles, probably about the size of this letter "o," that ONLY eat a certain type of spurge plant. Problem is, they can wipe out an entire thicket of the plants, and apparently can't figure out how to move on to a better source of food, therefore killing the entire poplulation. To remedy this, another team went out a few days ago to collect about 30,000 of these critters; today, it was our duty to search around the refuge for other unclaimed patches of these plants and chuck the beetles on them. We drove around all morning (aka 8-12), and we found some pretty cool things, including some wild prarie rose, a mink, and a type of butterfly that even the BIOLOGIST didn't recognize! Crazy, huh? I hope he figures it out! It was small (the wingspan was probably about 2 inches), and was black with white blotches on it.

Then this afternoon we had to pin up gypsy moth traps - even though the refuge/area doesn't get them (fortunately!), i guess they're still required to do the sampling. The biologist had to leave early, after we finished this, so the last 2 hours of the day i just kind of hung around my friend, the office manager/administrative lady (not my boss, she's more of a secretary deal...but does a lot more than your normal secretary!).

Anyway, I'm glad for the weekend! A chance to catch up on sleep!