Desert Biology
This morning I went out with Andy, the park’s one and only biologist, to check out the animal life in the park. Andy’s specialty is amphibians and reptiles and much like the other biologists I’ve met this summer, is extremely passionate about his subject matter. Andy also grew the park’s biology program from the ground up even designed some of the traps we’d be checking today himself.
With us were two park visitors; Jackie and her grandson Carter. Jackie started a tradition of taking each of her grandchildren to a national park of their choice when they turned 12 and Carter, who is a fan of reptiles and amphibians, chose Petrified Forest. I was almost late getting to the visitor’s center, which is just outside of the gates that they close every night when the park closes. Since I live within the park I have to get past the gates to get to the visitor’s center but the lock was still solidly locked at 6.50am. I called the visitor’s center and they said I’d have to wait for a park ranger to arrive and they weren’t sure when exactly that would be. Cue Hertz flashback. Then I remembered I had a key. Sarah had given me one the day before. Thanks morning brain, way to step up.
Out in the field, Andy gave us each a pair of gloves and a quick rundown of the kinds of traps we’d be checking and what we might expect to see. Within two minutes at our first trap site I spotted a snake just off trail. Andy grabbed it with his bare hands (is this a part of NPS training or are some people just born to snake wrangle?) and we went back to the truck to take it’s measurements and tag it with a small branding device. As we made measurements, we each held the snake and let it pass through our hands so it didn’t feel constricted, which is ironic because Gopher Snakes are themselves constrictors.
We checked three sites, each with about a dozen traps geared toward catching different animals. Here is some of the haul:
We also saw cotton tail rabbits, black eared jackrabbits, and we almost saw an elk. It was definitely close by, as evidenced by the smell and the warm, moist, elk droppings, but no such luck today. We did, however, stop by one of the prairie dog colonies in the park and watched as the sentinels stood on their hind legs, barked their warnings to the other p.d.’s, and ducked back into their holes. Burrowing owls stood beside them is if hoping no one would notice they weren’t prairie dogs. Good try owls but you have more leg than body. We know it’s you.
As we headed to our second trap site we passed signs of human biology, too, in the form of petroglyphs made by the Puebloan people 2,000 years ago. No one knows what they mean but there is rampant speculation. Ripe territory for a storyteller…
The highlight of daytime biologizing is herding lizards. Combine the nets that are used by bird banders with the group attack method of fisheries and you have lizard wrangling. Here’s how it works: as soon as someone saw a lizard everyone would crowd in behind it to rush it toward the fence that ran between traps. Once at the fence, whoever was closest would put a palm down over the lizard to catch it. You have to be quick. Once again, my vegan brain and my human predator brain are at odds with each other. This is way too much fun to be ethical.
Speaking of ethics and how we treat animals in scientific research projects, lizard biologists, too, use a little light torture to get measurements. This time, rather than tipping the animals head first into a prescription pill bottle to weigh them, they are enclosed in a plastic bag and hung from a hand scale. Also, they are tagged by the removal of their fingers. I kid you not. Certain patterns of finger removal denote specific lizards. They bled a little when tagged but Andy assured me that they hardly even feel it and function perfectly well without all of their fingers. Sure enough, this was the part of the process that seemed to stress them out the least.
The Field Institute at the park offers nighttime versions of biology excursions but no one had signed up for tonight so Andy offered to take me out on a road survey. A road survey is basically a five hour game of I Spy. We drove the entire length of the park and back collecting data on reptiles and amphibians that we saw on the road.
Catching toads, much like wrangling lizards, is easy if you know what you’re doing and a veritable cartoon if you do not. Andy could ID and handle toads with grace and aplomb. I spent most of the night chasing toads down the road with my hands cupped out in front of me saying things like “Come here, baby. Damnit. Get back here. Come! On! There we g- ahhh! Get back here! Um, Andy, I think it’s under the car.”
Even with the handicap of having me for a partner, we scienced hard tonight. Last night’s biology team recorded 57 specimens. Andy and I recorded 132, thus setting the record for most toad IDs this season!! We lucked out tonight because it was pouring rain for a good portion of the survey and while toads spend most of their time underground, they feel the vibrations of the earth when it rains and come up to the surface to breed and hydrate. So Andy and I would record their species, age, and location, and toss them off the road so we didn’t recount them on the way back. We had the luxury of being the only ones on the road because the park closes at 7.30pm and law enforcement kicks everyone out. It was only by virtue of science that we were there ourselves. Park employees aren’t allowed in the park after close unless they’re doing research because they can’t be afforded privileges that other U.S. citizens don’t have. I got kinda choked up at that. I mean, that is The Republic at it’s finest.
We got back to HQ well after midnight, bringing the total of today’s biologizing to 13 hours and roughly 150 specimens. Exhausted and rather more damp than I expected to be while living in a desert, I headed home, locking the park gate behind me.
