Well, no need to join a gym for a while

Today I slept in for the first time till like 10 and it was great! I lounged around, did some skyping and then went to the Smithfield Shopping Centre to pick up some hiking boots and sunglasses for my fieldwork today! I successfully scored a size 5 pair of men's workboots at Kmart.

Then at 3:30 pm, Liz, the student working on her Honors project, picked me up and we headed off to the rainforest! We drove up a bit and then we got out and did some serious hiking up through the mountain to where she had different traps set up in grids for the small mammals she is trying to catch. I apologize for not taking any pictures but the inside of the rainforest is amazing! It is so dense and green and lush. And theres always something scurrying around your feet. The bait we used was some sort of mixture of peanut butter and granola I beleieve. We opened and rebaited all the traps so that hopefully tomorrow at 3:30 am when we go back to check them, there will be lots of little critters! Apparently there is a high trap success rate. We went through grid lines of traps which took somewhere over an hour before heading back to the car to our next location. There were so many "mozzys" but Bushman bug spray works amazing!! I highly recommend it.

The next spot was at a cane field. The cane was high over my head and the traps were set along narrow trampled paths in the fields. There were three more gridlines here that we went through, opening and rebaiting them where necessary. Liz saw a dingo while we were there but I missed it! Apparently there are a mom and cubs nearby. After that we got a few scat samples for testing, recording the GPS location each time for when she compiles the data.

All in all very exciting, but very tiring! I will be going to bed early tonight so I can wake up at 3 am tomorrow!