Grass!

The weekend went fairly uneventfully, I mostly did my last bit of homework for my physics class, and studied for my final. Did some laundry, and other chore-y like things. Tried to go to the grocery store Sunday evening, but they close at 5!

Yesterday, I did my ATV "road" training. It was a little intimidating at first, but pretty fun after a while! I felt like a little kid, though, I was afraid of letting it go too much, so I kept easing off the little gas lever, so my ride was kind of jerky. I smoothed out as I got more confident, though, so hopefully next time I go out it won't be so bad.

Today was fairly interesting, I hung out with the biologist again, this time learning about "vegetation surveys." We - along with another intern/biologist duo from a close by refuge - drove about an hour away for what basically amounted to a workshop on grass identification. Some of the people there were way too enthusiastic about, y'know, grass, which was kind of funny. Part of it was weird because there are a couple different surveys/methods going on, so there was the "South Dakota" group, and the "Minnesota" group, aka, the 4 of us that rode together. Apparently, being just a mile from the border results in the fact that we have extremely different prairie types, too, so not only did the methods not apply to us, but we didn't have to worry/learn about the same types of plants. As a result, my biologist would often pull me aside (or we'd kind of meander away), and he'd point out more interesting/relevant things. I learned more from just chillin' with him than I did from the workshop!

Of course, as soon as we got to work in the morning, at the top of a big hill, it started to thunderstorm out! We got fairly soaked, needless to say, as we made our way back to the field classroom. I just felt bad for the kid who had to carry 4ft long iron stakes...! We saw some amazing lightning, though, absolutely huge!

Learned a few interesting things, though...like that a type of milkweed we were looking at is toxic to everything but butterflies! And that the spikes on a rose (we were looking at prairie roses) are soft until the plant is fully grown, and are either "thorns" or "prickles," depending on which part of the plant they grow on!

Well that's all for now, but I'm sure the next entry will be much more eventful - I'll be working on trying to band Canada Geese for the next few days!