Adventures in Porcupining Cont.

Today I went back to Sandhill after over a year of being away and hiked around for a while and did some radio telemetry to locate the two radioed female porcupines in the park. I arrived around 9:00am today and by that time it was absolutely gorgeous out. After catching up with Dick I packed up the backpack of gear and began to hike the couple of miles into the interior of the park along the D flowage to locate Fiona and Arethra near den AD-5. As I went I enjoyed the wildlife and the sounds of all the animals returning to the area. There were geese, ducks, cranes, and turtles moving around in the marsh and the ice was beginning to melt which provided me with some great photo opportunities. The frogs were starting to sing and there were even a few butterflies starting to move around. The ticks were also out in full force.

After hiking into the interior I set up the gear and antenna to see if I could pick up Arethra or Fiona's signal. I was able to pick up both and Arethras signal seemed to be the stronger of the two so I set off into the brush towards the marsh to see if I could figure out which tree she was in. Even though there were very few leaves on most of the trees I had a feeling that she would be hanging out in one of the large white pines, which always seem to be the porkies favorite treat. There were several large pines in the path of the signal so I took extra care in checking to see if I could see any porcupines among the foliage. On the way I also took advantages of some really cool photo ops when I came across some unique fungi.

After moving past several large white pines and seeing no signs of porkies I moved towards the last white pine before the marsh. As I approached I saw not one but two porcupines lounging in the tree. After checking the signal I was sure that one of the porkies was Arethra but I did not know who the other one was. I took some measurements of the tree and then paused to take several pictures of the two porkies before moving on to locate Fiona.

Fiona was much easier to locate. I know the AD area of Sandhill very well and there is one "island" in the D flowage marsh that has a large white pine in the middle that frequently has a porcupine sitting in it. I cut across the marsh and was please to see that there was indeed a porcupine sitting in one of the uppermost branches. I turned on the radio and verified that it was indeed Fiona and again paused to snap some photos.

Adventures in Porcupining

Backstory: Starting in Fall of 2003 I began working with a research project at Sandhill Wildlife area that was studying Porcupines. I was able to leave school once every other week and snowshoe around the wildlife area in search of porcupines. We would arrive at the Skills Center at 8:30 in the morning, record weather observations, and gather up the supplies for the day. Supplies often included snow shoes, one or two large otter sleds, tarps, iron posts, chicken wire, several bales of hay, and a few live traps. After gathering the supplies we would head out to check traps that had been set by the previous days crew (see images below) and would carefully

remove the tarp and hay to see if we had caught any porcupines. The dens that the porcupines stay in are used year after year and are located in hollowed out trees, fallen trees, or rootball clumps...anywhere that they can be safe from predators and stay a bit warmer during the cold winters. After we would locate a porcupine that had backed out of its den into the trap we would then scan it to see if it was a known animal or a new individual. We would scan between their shoulder blades in an attempt to locate a pit tag. After scanning we would either release the animal after taking a weight if it was a known individual or we would transport it back to the

Skills Center for processing and naming if it was a new individual. If it was a new individual we would then take it back to headquarters and then put it to sleep for about 30 minutes while we took measurements, temperature, and inserted the pit tag. The porcupines that we caught were usually between 7 and 22 lbs and were a wide range of colors. Some were blonde, some had orange -ish colored fur, some were the color of dark chocolate, and some even had distinctive moles.

The pictures above depict the process of measuring and pit tagging a porcupine before release back into the wildlife area. At the very end of the process before we returned them to the release cells we would spray a portion of the porcupine with spray paint so that we would not have to recapture the same individual twice in the same winter but could instead identify them in the tree based on their coloring. This allowed us to put less stress on individuals over the course of the winter.

I have worked on this project for the past seven years and have held, named, or worked with over 80 different individuals. Some of the names of porcupines running around the Sandhill Wildlife Area include Bootstrap Bill, Legolas, Janet and Micheal Jackson, Halo, Senora, Snooukummns, Banana Slug, Aphrodite, among others...

Update coming soon about my day trip today back to the park...

Found this and thought I would share...

DIET FOR STRESS

This diet is designed to help you cope with the stress that builds up during the day.

Breakfast:
1/2 grapefruit
1 slice whole wheat toast
8 oz. skim milk

Lunch:
4 oz. lean broiled chicken breast
l cup steamed spinach
1 cup herb tea
1 Oreo cookie

Mid-Afternoon snack:
The rest of Oreos in the package
2 pints Rocky Road ice cream, nuts, cherries and whipped cream
1 jar hot fudge sauce

Dinner:
2 loaves garlic bread
4 cans or 1 large pitcher Coke
1 large sausage, mushroom and cheese pizza
3 Snickers bars

Late Evening News:
Entire frozen Sara Lee cheesecake (eaten directly from freezer)

Rules for this Diet:
1. If you eat something and no one sees you eat it, it has no calories.

2. If you drink a diet soda with a candy bar, the calories in the candy bar are canceled out by the diet soda.

3. When you eat with someone else, calories don't count if you do not eat more than they do.

4. Food used for medicinal purposes NEVER count, such as hot chocolate, brandy, toast and Sara Lee Cheesecake.

5. If you fatten up everyone else around you, then you look thinner.

6. Movie related foods do not have additional calories because they are part of the entertainment package and not part of one's personal fuel. (Examples: Milk Duds, buttered popcorn, Junior Mints, Red Hots and Tootsie Rolls.)

7. Cookie pieces contain no calories. The process of breaking causes calorie leakage.

8. Things licked off knives and spoons have no calories if you are in the process of preparing something.

9. Foods that have the same color have the same number of calories (Examples are: spinach and pistachio ice cream; mushrooms and mashed potatoes).

10. Chocolate is a universal color and may be substituted for any other food color.

11. Anything consumed while standing has no calories. This is due to gravity and the density of the caloric mass.

12. Anything consumed from someone else's plate has no calories since the calories rightfully belong to the other person and will cling to his/her plate. (We ALL know how calories like to cling!)

13. If you eat ice cream with a fork, it has no calories.

REMEMBER: STRESSED SPELLED BACKWARDS IS DESSERTS

Following through on an idea from 7 years ago...

I have wanted to do the peace corps for years. I have started the application process several times and have always let myself be dissuaded from it. Education was more important, travelling was too dangerous, 2 years was a very long time...these arguments worked because I had not done my research and really did not know why I wanted to join the peace corps, other than that it might fulfill my desire to do something.

I think that I am a master at not doing something because I allow myself to be talked out of it and then years later (after never really stopping thinking about it) I actually follow through. For almost all of these things it only served to delay the inevitable or put the event off until I could better articulate why I wanted to do the particular activity. Examples include my tattoo-wanted it for 4 years before I finally got it, my nose piercing-wanted for 3 years before I finally got it, study abroad-put off applying to because I was afraid to not graduate in 4 years but ended up doing during a summer, and Peace Corps-have wanted to do since Junior year of High School.

This time I am not going to dissuade myself before doing my research and actually finding out more about the program, process, and without fully exploring and articulating why I am interested in a 27 month stint in another country. I began filling out the application last Friday and already have about 5 hours invested into this process. I will keep you all posted.

Poetry Post #2

beautiful blackness settles
down
around the silent
seeking solace.

wrapped in the curtain
of perfect calm
and absolute dark,
fingers waving
in front of eyes
that are sure
they can see.

faint splashing echoes
without breaking the
natural silence of obscurity.
the darkness is in perfect
balance,
without the illumination of
light and the hide and seek
tendencies of shadow.

and yet something within
the darkness brings emotion
to life, making what was
once a safe and silent spot
into a claustrophobic space
without an exit sign to
give a quick way
out.

The thing about being angry...

I woke up this morning and I was pissed...no reason, just was. I was angry I had to get out of bed, angry that I had eaten all of my cereal the day before and had not bought more, angry that I was cold, angry that I couldn't find my towel, angry in general. For no reason what so ever.

Today I woke up and said "I am pissed...it can't be healthy to start you day off angry without even having done anything". I have been angry for days and have never said so out loud, especially not to myself. Anger is one of those emotions that fuels itself. You start out angry about rational things like being woken up by your neighbors in the middle of the night, or at the person who scratched your car, or at people who fail to follow through on commitments and leave you to foot the burden-these are all relatively rational reasons to be angry. Somehow I have strayed from being rationally angry and ended up in what I am calling the irrational realm of ANGRY. Angry when it snows, angry when it doesn't snow, angry when your roommate showers, angry when your roommate doesn't shower, angry while brushing your teeth, angry when you forget to pack a lunch, just plain angry.

The irrational realm of ANGRY takes a lot of energy. It makes you tired (which makes you angry) and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that supports a perpetual subscription to Anger Monthly (or Weekly, or Daily, or even Anger Constantly). I will admit I am afraid of anger. Not just irrational anger but anger in general. Anger is one of those things you are not supposed to be. Anger is one of those things you hide. In my family emotion falls on a spectrum from acceptable emotion to unacceptable. Happy is a fully acceptable emotion in almost any setting. You can even be happy in the right circumstances at a funeral. It is occasionally acceptable to be annoyed in public. There are rare occasions where it is ok to be sad, but it is never ok to be angry. If you are angry at someone else it is really your problem. You do not say anything and you find a way to not be angry at whomever or whatever has made you angry. You stuff it deep down, smile, and find a way to be (or at least appear) happy. This is crap.

I have realized that not only is this crap for me but it is crap for the people around me. It is crap for the people I am rationally angry at. It is crap for the people I am irrationally angry at and it is most crap for the people I am not angry at and do not want to be angry at. The anger becomes a film that changes the way I interact with other people, the way I enjoy being out with friends, and even serves to ruin what could have been good, genuine relationships. I am slowly coming to realize that there is nothing wrong with saying "It bothered me when..." in fact saying that when you are mildly annoyed is much better than when you are ANGRY. When you are angry it is much more likely to come out as "I hate..., you suck, @@@@ you, GRAHGHEHEGG" or something equally incoherent and often not at the person you were originally upset with in the first place.

Today I decided to combat ANGRY by 1) allowing myself to feel upset, annoyed, and angry and not pretending that spectrum of emotions doesn't exist, 2) by making a better effort to tell people when the upset me and not immediately assuming that it is me causing the problem, and 3) by doing something. In reference to my earlier post the elusive something is something to strive for and something that I find motivating. My something starts with this blog and talking about emotion and feeling. Additionally, I have decided to purchase a plane ticket to Costa Rica which not only gives me something to look forward to but also starts to calm my "I need to travel" cravings. :)