June 3rd 2017
Weather: Sunny and in the high 80s F, so in better words HOT, when not raining
Location: Springfield, Roseau, Stinking Hole
What I did:
After breakfast, we headed into the town of Roseau to do some shopping. We left around 8:30 am and it was bout a 20 minute drive. I’m not a big fan of cities in the first place, but I like shopping but I wasn’t fond of the city. Most of the shops had the same little trinkets but I managed to find something for my little brother and boyfriend. I also got sandals from the leather shop. The man traced my foot and drew the design I wanted over it. Kylee and I got the same sandal but I got a red accent and she got a teal color. We did, however, get amazing pizza and it was the highlight of our trip into town. It was from Perky’s pizza. Kristin and I shared a 12′ cheese pizza and oh my gosh, it was so good. I have missed pizza so much. The first thing I’m doing when I get home is ordering a Domino’s cheese pizza with extra cheese. Cheesy goodness.
Finally we came home an all us bat circles crammed in a nap before we had to leave for stinking hole. I was still pooped after my nap. We got ready and left around 4:154 pm. We drove up the long stretch of drive before the forest. We thought we could make it to the parking lot. Keyword: thought. We started drive up. We hit a few rough spots in the road. It was scary. I felt like we were in Jurassic Park. I literally thought the car was going to give out. We thought we made it up the worst parts but we were wrong. Dr. Lacher couldn’t get the car up this one area. We were beginning to get close to the edge. At one point the back right tire was smoking! He made us get out of the car and stand a safe distance away. At this point the back tires had like no traction. It was driving my anxiety up just watching him trying to get up this rough patch. He got very close to the edge of the cliff.
Eventually we got a stick under the back right tire and us 3 girls pushed while Dr. Lacher gassed it and we got the car over the rough patch. He then decided to just park the car and us hike the rest of the way. We hiked the 15 minutes to the parking lot. It was another 20 from that point to Stinking hole. Once we got there we set up one bat net across the path down from the smelly hole. We watched some of the emergence and it was so freaking cool. There were so many bats! We caught about 24 bats before we started catching and releasing bats. Those 24 were all the same species, and this was a good sample size. We caught three Brachyhylla though. The were huge and mean! And they screamed like crazy!
Aroudn this time was when I asked the question “What would we do if it started raining?” Dr. Lacher was unconcerned with this question and told me that it wasn’t supposed to rain so it was no big deal. Five minutes later it sarted to pour. I jinxed our luck! I am no longer allowed to ask weather related questions ever again.
We covered the bats in socks with the corner of the tarp. Dr. Lacher and I began to process them while Audrey and Mattie caught the remaining bats in the net. we were like am achene collecting data from all these bats. We were so muddy and gross from all the rain and mud! Mattie was the worst, though, she fell int he mud an then sat in the mud for most of the bat data collecting. Our blue tarp we sat on was disgusting! The underside was cleaner that what were were sitting on.
We finally packed up and hiked back. Matting slipped like another two times and I slipped once. The drive down was much more uneventful than the way up and we made it hoem safely.
Project Updates: Netted at stinking hole. caught 40 bats total and released 12 Monophyllus plethedon. We processed 27 bats total. 24 were Monophyllus plethadom and three were Brachyphylla cavemanum. We took their measurements and collected ectoparasites. Most were streplid bats and one other something that needs to be identified. One bat either escaped the bat sack or escaped before the sack was closed.