Meg's Adventure Down Under: I've been up since 3 am!

But it was totally worth it! I woke up today at 3 am. Liz, the honors student doing this research project, picked me up at 3:30 and we headed off to the cane fields first. Imagine walking through dense cane fields feet taller than you in the pitch black with nothing but a headlamp! See pictures from the daytime below. It was actually a great time. We went through all the traps we had set up the night before and checked to see if there were any little critters inside! We actually caught about 11 animals. melomys, which are kind of like a mouse, and some rats. They were both very cute. We took their tail length, pes length (foot pad), weight, sex, etc. etc. Lot's of data recording. Oh and I got to ear tag the animals we caught! We did that until almost 6 when the sun was coming up.

Then we headed over to the rainforest and did the same thing. Except we unfortunately caught nothing but cane toads, an annoying invasive, which don't count. It was an absolutely beautiful morning. It is so cool to be able to hike through there. But omg! There was a horrible moment when this spider, called a shield spider, I guess got on my head because all of the sudden I see it dropping in front of on one of it's threads! EW. I nearly died. Look it up though, it's pretty cool looking. We ended pretty quickly because there were no animals to record.

I got back a little before 8 am. I got some breakfast then took a morning swim! I was pretty gross. I looked like I was rolling around in dirt and prickers. I'll have to show you a picture of how ridiculous I look in my long pants and k-mart boots! I fell asleep by the pool for a bit, then I went back to my room, where I slept some more, then I went to lunch, went back to the pool, swam in the rain for a little bit, which quickly turned to sun, burned my chest, then came back did laundry, tried to put my clothes in the dryer, paid 3 dollars to have the drier eat my money and not work, so hung my clothes up to dry. So frustrating. Then went back out in the field at 3:30 to rebait the traps and collect scat samples. Of course when I left it downpoured but my roommates were nice enough to take in my clothes for me. :) Once it got dark we did spot lighting! I saw 9 wallabies and a snake!!!! So cute. Thats when we got caught in the downpour and had to leave.

Sorry this was so long and choppy, super tired!!! But so much happened today and I want to remember it all.
Love and miss you all whoever happens to be reading this!