I started off today like any other day -- checking the sites in the State Park first. Everything was A-ok on the Shay Trace Trail, except no hair to be collected. I moved right along to our Yellow Birch site and everything was going smoothly -- lots of hair samples, great weather, and all that. Then I got to snare #8...I noticed immediately that it wasn't sitting right on the tree (we use 2 nails to attach them to the tree and it was only hanging on by one). I moved to the front of the snare and noticed it was triggered so I thought to myself 'ok, the squirrel most of been very active in there...then I noticed something else...there was a red squirrel in the snare still...not alive :( From the clues I could find, it looked like it chewed the zip ties that we use to deactivate the locking mechanisms so squirrels are able to get back out once the snare has been triggered -- locking itself in there. I did not check them over the weekend so the poor thing was in there all weekend. I feel so awful about this. The only good news about this is that there are TONS of red squirrels so they ARE NOT threatened or endangered, and thankfully it was not a flying squirrel. I will be talking with one of the head PhD's on the study about using wire instead of zip ties to hold open the locking mechanism so squirrels will no longer be able to chew them off and lock themselves in there.
I then headed to the very bear active sites and started with Red Run -- boy was that interesting! Cathy forgot to flag from the road to our first snare (this site is not off of a trail) so I got turned around a little, but finally found the snare...along with some bear tracks -- that really brings the whole bear aspect to life for me -- along with a bunch of bear scat. Bears seem to like the sunflower seeds just as much as the peanut butter because there were 2 snares down! I'm getting to my wits end with these bears!! I found myself singing and talking out loud to try to distract my mind from the thoughts of being mauled by a bear LOL!
I then moved on to the last site for the day -- Canaan Loop Road -- and made record time, 25 minutes, due to a fast moving thunderstorm headed my way! There were 2 triggered snares with the use of seeds and 1 down snare from a BEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!! AAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!
All in all, I brought 2 traps into the office to be revamped from bears...bears, bears, bears...what am I going to do with you??
HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD! I love you!
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