A Week of Mondays

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We had little fawns on all 3 arrays.

This session is that last session for the summer season for Bill and me because of fall camp which is an entire semester spent out in the field. Of course, because of that fact, everything that could go wrong did go wrong. We had heat indexes of 105 to 110 and some nasty storms. I was stung by a bald faced hornet and bitten by a shrew within minutes of each other! Buckets were flooded, a higher than normal number of mice captured, raccoons in distress from the extreme temps, a tree down blocking us from one array and loss of access to another because of an erosion project closing the road. And most of that was all on the same day! But, we made it through and it just made our days off after that much sweeter. The sardines are a huge success at our site. In array 2 on the second day we had one possum and two raccoons waiting for us. On the other hand, we have a very wiley animal in array 1. It is climbing into the tomahawks, stealing the fish and avoiding the treadle plate. We are trying to camouflage the treadle plate with detritus but on the last day of trapping, nothing was eating any bait in array 1 so I do not know if that is a good solution.  We had our first ever Eastern box turtle in the tomahawk.  It was trying to get a free meal but could not avoid setting off the trap. It has been an amazing summer and we have thoroughly loved being part of this project. Thanks to everyone for all the advice and the expertise you have shared with us!   ~Heather and Bill~