Kalysha Clark

As I type this, I am sitting in my boss's house. I flew back to Tucson this morning after a short trip home for my sister's high school graduation. It was so nice to see my family and my boyfriend. I hate that I was only there for three days. It felt so short.

Alas, I must get back to work. I got my first paycheck for one week of work and it was nice to see the hard work pay off.

I struggled during my first week on the mountain. I felt unprepared for all the work and was constantly exhausted. I didn't realize I would be up every morning at 5:30 AM. And while I realized that there would be hiking involved, I didn't realize how much and I certainly didn't consider that there would be less oxygen at 9,000+ feet elevation, making it harder to breathe.

We go back up on the mountain tomorrow. I am hoping my second session is more successful (and has less early mornings) than the first. That being said, I am still excited to be learning the techniques that I am learning and to be involved in hands-on research. It really is a great experience.

I have been reading up on scientific papers for the last several hours in order to decide how I want to approach the side project I will be working on. The project will be focusing on perceptual range, which is the distance from which an animal can perceive key landscape elements (Zollner and Lima 1997).

It looks like we will likely be trapping the chipmunks, dusting them with fluorescent powder and then tracking them with a UV light after displacing them into a new habitat. This will show us from which distance(s) the chipmunks can detect habitat.

Also, I've got some photos. Check out below.

As always, I will keep you all posted and updated. Thanks for all your warm wishes so far!

The community cabin.

The desk area with the computer that has internet access.

Kitchen area in the community cabin.

Our two fridges. Left is electric and right is propane.

The sitting area of the community cabin.

The bait shed (right) and trap shed (left) and our bathrooms (AKA port-a-john's).

My cabin from the outside.

The view when you walk in my cabin. My "room" is to the right around the corner.

My (roughly made) bed with Harvey.

My terribly messy bookshelf, which houses all of my things. Since it was the end of the session, all of my clothes had been worn and packed up to be washed.

My toiletries hanging on the wall.

And lastly, a chipmunk selfie. :)