July 31st -- More Interviewing/Investigating Day!

Today started off with more interviews for the flying squirrel technician position -- my position.  I just want to say we have had so many great candidates that it has been very hard, even after interviews to choose people!

After interviewing I went out with Terry from the West Virginia Department of Natural Resources to follow up on that bait site we found way back in June I believe it was.  It feels so great to be able to help out in any way I can!

After helping Terry I headed back into the office for some more interviews and then met up with Lon to go out and check the hair snares -- it felt good to be back in the routine!  We went to the State Park sites and I was very surprised that we had NO squirrel activity at all!  It was very weird!  These are the three theories we have come up with as to why the squirrel activity has slowed way down:

1) The squirrels don't like the sunflower seeds
2) The squirrels don't like the snares after we removed the plastic on the bottom because it was just catching all their urine and feces
3) There are so many food sources right now that the squirrels aren't paying any attention to our bait

Possible solutions would be to try a different bait -- the bears seem to have moved on so I could try peanut butter again to see what happens.  For the bottom plastic I was thinking of maybe cutting and placing pieces of cardboard to place in the bottom to see if that seems more appealing to them.  There is nothing I can really do about the ample food sources right now so that would just have to wait...Hopefully we can figure this out so we can continue to gather squirrel hair!

 Some starlings and robins using a puddle for a bath

 Well, even though it's spelled wrong I still find it cool!