August 18th -- Carrie's First Day!

Today was my replacement's, Carrie's, first day on the job!  I took her to all the hair snare sites to show her how the hair is collected and all the special protocol we follow.  I think today went very well because we collected a lot of hair samples, and even beat the rain! 

Since we currently only have 4 active sites right now it didn't take us too long and Carrie seemed to pick up the system pretty quickly. 

Today we also looked at the results from the e-coli test Lon and I collected and prepared on Friday, and we had 3 blue dots -- e-coli -- and a bunch of red dots -- other coliforms!  We put it back in the incubator because it looked like there were some more dots coming into color, so we wanted to see what another day in the incubator would result in. 

Tomorrow Judy is coming to help Carrie and I in moving the hair snares from Pendleton Lake to a new area we picked called Cherry Lane Trail in the Blackwater Falls State Park.  It should be a good day, and I will get to show Carrie how we place and hang the hair snares! 

Crazy/cool looking spider Carrie and I saw on the trail today!

 Look at all the sori on this fern!  How neat is that?

 This snail decided to make a home in one of the bait trays in one of the hair snares!  Silly snail!

What the e-coli culture looked like!