Last summer I took a summer field course at my college, the professor is a herpetologist and has been studying the lizards in the Alvord Desert, southeastern Oregon, for about 14 years. So basically it was a dream come true for me.
I won't give you the gory details of all the human drama that arises when 14 odd people live in tents in the middle of nowhere without showers for three and a half weeks, but I can tell you it was certainly a learning experience. I will tell you that yelling, crying, injuries, grudges, and harsh words were involved.
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| Imagine driving for 14 hours with 11 people and their bags crammed into this van, and was only getting there, on the way back nobody had showered for a week. |
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| Home sweet home... |
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| I slept in that catastrophe if you can believe it. |
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| The living room, and the only shade for miles. |
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| The kitchen, with the two ramshackle "showers" in the back that cause more grief and harsh words than they had any right to. They went largely unused as form of student protest. |
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| The Gambelia wislizenii, commonly known as the leopard lizard |
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| A very pretty Phrynosoma platyrhinos, commonly called a horned lizard or horny toad. But to me he will always be a "Phrynie Poo," we biology nuts are a strange bunch... |
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| Aspidoscelis tigris, the Western whiptail. It is so hard to take a picture like this, they run so fast and just slip right out of your hand. |
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| Crotaphytus bicinctores, the Great Basin collared lizard. Best known for their habit of crushing the skulls of other lizards before eating them. |
Continued in:
The Trials and Tribulations of a Herpetologist Part II
The Trials and Tribulations of a Herpetologist Part III
Just had to share this picture with you, it is amazing.
The Trials and Tribulations of a Herpetologist Part II
The Trials and Tribulations of a Herpetologist Part III
Just had to share this picture with you, it is amazing.
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| The night sky over the Alvord Desert. Only place I've ever been where the sky just meets the horizon. |
A wonderful "behind the scenes" look at the glamourous life of a Herpetologist! It's amazing to me that you can get any pictures at all of lizards that aren't blurry.
ReplyDeleteGlamorous...hmmm. When I told one of my roommates about it she said that she would never think of scientists as stuck up people in laboratories ever again. I mean really, we're the weirdos that dig through animal poop.
DeleteSo I've seen posters for that study abroad all over the Bio building here on campus, and every time I wonder why the heck anyone would wanna stay in the desert for so long. On my Mexico study abroad, we stayed in a hotel except for a few camping trips, and by the time we got back from each one of those, no one was missing the sand that had coated our bodies, trying to find the best bushes to pee behind, or uncooked food. I guess it goes to show how important these lizards are to you because you were willing to do that!
ReplyDeleteYeah it was pretty hard but you actually get use to it fairly quickly, I think the heat was the worst part. And catching lizards made it all worth it.
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