So, I lied about not posting until I got to Guam. Right now I need a break from filling out incredibly large amounts of paperwork, so what better relief than posting to this blog? Of course, I doubt a single soul has really looked at this, and, really, why would they? Ah, the thrill and excitement! Why do I always end up talking to myself like this? Stop asking rhetorical questions? Okay.
Anyway, I arrived in Denver Tuesday night and hopped a shuttle to an American Legion just outside the Fort Collins city limits. There, I was picked up by Jim, the husband of Teri Kman, whose home I've stayed in for the past two nights. Both Teri and Jim were very welcoming (this was aided by some red wine in Teri's case). Once at the house, I met Brent, a California native who was hired as the other biologist II for the brown treesnake job. Brent is my age and he has a basic biology background, though he's aspiring to become a herpetologist. He's a really nice guy, very laid back, and seems to have a great sense of humor. He and I will be on the same incredibly long flight to Guam. We leave early Saturday morning (i.e., 7:10am) from Denver, which puts us into Guam at, that's right, 7pm Sunday night. The actually flying and layovers is "only" about 20 hours: the rest is lost in time zones and crossing the international dateline.
Since my arrival, I've been spending most of my time at the Fort Collins Science Center, filling out new employee paperwork, learning more about the project, and practicing data entry. They have a very well organized method of data entry, much of which was put together by one of my supervisors, Kathy Dean-Bradley. Apart from Teri, Kathy is the one with whom we've spent the most time. She's a really nice, intelligent woman with some impressive knowledge of Excel (a skill proven in her creation of many slick database templates and data forms that are, in a nutshell, idiot proof).
But enough about data, a topic so captivating as to put the average human being to sleep in under 10 seconds. Sorry about the keyboard marks imprinted on your face. To wake you up a bit, here's an amusing little task they had us do today to test our searching abilities: Gordon, one of the head guys for the project, came up with a test where folks heading out to Guam are given two "Where's Waldo?" books. You go through the books and time yourself on each page. Once you've done some searching for brown treesnakes on the island, he takes the observer data and sees in there is any correlation between your ability to quickly (or slowly as the case may be) find Waldo and your ability to quicky (or, again, not so swiftly) find brown treesnakes. So far, there's really not much correlation at all. Despite that, it's still a funny test and I came in 2nd, in terms of average speed of finding Waldo per page, out of all the people who have done it (about 20 or 25, I think). Sure, it doesn't really mean anything, but try not to crush this small personal victory, you heartless squanderer of dreams!
Last night we went to a place called Cooper Smith's, where good food, beer, and pool tables abound. Coincidentally, there was a black-footed ferret symposium going on that very evening: something none of us (Teri, Jim, Brent, and I) knew about. However, our Fort Collins hosts knew many of the people there, so we got to sneak in and play pool for free. Sweeeeet. We stopped short of raiding the buffet for which we didn't pay and ordered some of our own food. However, we did take advantage of the Wednesday special of getting 2 free pints with the purchase of a 14'' pizza. Let's just say we had a free round of beers and full bellies by the end of that excursion.
All is well here in Fort Collins and, with any motivation, I'll try and snap a few photos of the area before I leave. There's some really nice landscape around here, despite the fact that you can often smell cow and their by-products from the stock yards about 15 miles away. Yum!
Ah, to be knowing that within a few days you'll be sent off to the far ends of the earth, only to be thrown on a small island with thousands of venomous snakes. Now, this may sound like a Jonesian nightmare to some, but to an aspiring herpetologist, it's pretty cool.
The main aspect of this job that still remains in the air is when I'll be leaving. This really isn't a big deal, with the exception that I still have bills and no steady income. However, I'll probably be doing some field work for my uncle, who owns a surveying company (www.whitemountainsurvey.com) as a little supplemental income. Originally, I was probably going to head out at the end of this week. Now it's more likely to be the 26th or 27th.
I'm very excited about this job and it's really an amazing opportunity. This is a pretty well known study in the biological world: basically a worst -case scenario example of an introduced species. The brown treesnakes were accidentally introduced to Guam soon after WWII, most likely brought as stow-aways in cargo vessels. Once on the island, the snakes flourished due to an abundant prey base, ideal climate, and complete lack of predators. To make matters worse, they reproduce up to twice a year (about a dozen eggs every time) and the females can store sperm... for years. Thus any female snake that has ever mated has the potential to establish a new population elsewhere.
While reveling in their seemingly unending bounty, the snakes extirpated 9 of 11 native forest birds, 2 of 3 native bats, and seriously reduced the numbers of native lizards. Fortunately for the brown treesnake, introduced lizards are still plentiful (their favorite snack now). This destruction has lead to secondary ecological effects, too, where insects formerly kept in check by the now extirpated species are reproducing without impediment. Also, many native plant species are declining due to lack of pollinators and seed dispersers. All this before mentioning that the brown treesnakes have a tendency to bite infants and cost millions of dollars in power outages every year.
It's almost never (never say a definitive "never" in the biological world- this could be your demise) a good idea to introduce a species. This is a fact that has been proven time and time again, with wonderful things like kudzu, cane toads, gypsy moths, zebra mussels, and mongoose in the Hawaiian islands. In the latter example, mongoose were introduced to eradicate another introduced species: the rat (Indiana's father hates these particular lovelies). As well intended as this introduction was, there was a major flaw in the logic: rats are nocturnal while mongoose are diurnal. So, instead of eating the rats, the mongoose went after the quite defenseless native ground-nesting birds, whose populations were already in trouble from rat predation. Ugh.
So, this is a great job to be working on and, I feel, an important one. If I can play a part in reducing the population of brown treesnakes, helping to repair some of the damage they have caused, and prevent their spread to other islands, I'll consider myself a success. If, however, I go and get myself eaten by a belligerent pack of spit-snorting snakes, I'll be very ashamed of myself. Hopefully it will be the former.
My next entry will likely be once I'm on Guam. In the meantime, if you're interested in this study, definitely check out the USGS site Joe has posted in his January 8th entry (http://www.mesc.usgs.gov/resources/education/bts/bts_home.asp). This site is fantastic and has an incredibly thorough synopsis of the situation on Guam.