So... you do WHAT in Chile??

So I understand that what I am doing out here in Chile is somewhat of a mystery to most of my friends and family back home. "Chasing degus" doesn't really conjure up a full mental image for most people, so I'll explain some of the finer points of degu-poking just so we are all on the same page.

The Degu Crew. Morgan, Raúl, Tina, Loren, Me

I am helping study the home range of degus- where they go, who they hang out with, who they sleep with (haha) day and night. We do this by putting little radio collars on the animals and following them with telemetry- during the day we locate them once an hour, 6-8 hours a day, for 6-12 days.
The first step is to catch a bunch of animals and collar them. We use wire traps and bait them with oats. When the animals walk in they step on a treadle that shuts the door behind them, and then we walk around and check the traps every few hours. We take them out of the traps, determine the sex, reproductive status, weight, and snip a bit of the ear off to both mark that we have caught them before and for genetic analysis (at Rinconada, the field site near Santiago, the animals have ear tags with ID numbers on them).

Tina with a fat lady-degu in a trap

Animals that were over 150g were big enough to be collared, which took about 4 people to successfully do! Someone holds the animal, another person holds the paws so they don't get stuck in the collar while it is being fitted, another person puts the collar on, someone pulls the ends of the wire to tighten it, another person crimps the wires once it is the proper size, and then the ends are trimmed. We put plastic tubing around the wire collars so they don't rub the animals' necks. When we are done with all this, they look like little remote control degus with their antennas sticking up!!

Poor little degu getting fitted with a radio collar!

The radio collars emit a particular frequency, and so using 2 teams with antennas and receivers we search for the beeps until we can get a good fix on their location. Then we take a compass reading of the position and record it. We take GPS coordinates of our radio towers, and Morgan is plugging all the data into a program now which will tell us, based on the GPS position and compass readings, where the animal was at that moment in time. With 40+ points, you can get a good sense of how far an animal travels.

Morgan with the radio tower. She was the degu finder, I was the compass reader.

To figure out where they sleep at night, we use a single hand antenna attached to a receiver and walk around in the dark, pointing it at bushes until we find the strongest beep. It really is as bizarre as it sounds!! Some animals sleep in the same burrow system every night and are really easy to find, but other ones move around a whole lot and we have to tromp around the field site for a while to find them.

Me, Tina, and Morgan finishing up night telemetry!

Finally when we are done with telemetry, we have to set traps again and catch the animals with collars so we can cut the collars off. And that's it! No more robo-degus!Morgan and Raúl removing a radio collar

Back in the City

Back in Santiago!! After spending 3 weeks in Parque Nacional Fray Jorge chasing degus, poking abrocomas, and getting spied on by guanacos, Tina, Morgan and I are back in our apartment with... INTERNET!!! This fantastic new development means we have been able to chat online and on skype, post a million photos to facebook, and look at way too much cuteoverload.com. It also means we haven't watched our usual single TV channel, gone to our favorite @SNS cafe, or even, um, bought groceries yet (it's only been 3 days!).

This is the beginning of the end for our band of "gringos". Loren (the boss) leaves tomorrow, Michael in a week and Morgan in 2. Triste!! Tina, Monica and I have to leave the country before the beginning of September to essentially renew our visas. I am thinking of heading to Buenos Aires, Argentina and going to a language school for a week. While my Spanish (Castillano) is improving (I have mastered the all important words like tuerto- cyclops, or one eyed person; acurrucarse- to cuddle; and arrastrado- creeper) I think I might need a few more fillers before I can have a decent conversation. Or, you know, some verb conjugations.

In the next few days I hope to catch up on my blog- so many stories and a zillion photos from the last few weeks! I have started to catch up on laundry, took a shower TWO DAYS in a row!! With hot water!! Such a luxury. And might even shower again tomorrow! That's pretty much all the excitement I can handle for now- more to come tomorrow:)

Parade in the Street

This morning we walked out of our apartment to see the military band piling out of their bus on our street. It could only mean one thing- a parade!! Our apartment is 2 blocks from La Mondeda, the Presedential Palace and government building. It is like being in Washington, DC and living 2 blocks from the White House. But apparently here they do a changing of the guard ceremony every other morning, just like London (as our friend aptly put it). Naturally, when there is a parade on your street, you follow along, and this morning was a real treat.


Our street, Zenteno (our apartment is on the left)La Moneda, the Presedental Palace

View of the Andes on our walk to Catolica

Field Trip to the Andes

We took the truck to Cajón del Maipo this weekend, a valley of the Río Volcan. The road heads East towards Argentina, and after turning into a rutted dirt track, abruptly ends in the “town” of Baños Morales which houses the entrance to Monumento Natural El Morado, a small National Park. In the summer you can hike to a lake with views of Glacier San Francisco, but with the danger of avalanches in the winter, you can only get as far as Cerro el Morado, which is a stunning peak, especially covered in snow.

We hiked up the mountain in the snow for about an hour. It was a gorgeous winter day with the sun shining and a cold win- perfect walking conditions. On our way back down Morgan (from Minnesota) taught us proper “penguin sliding” techniques. It involves flopping on your belly and sliding down steep icy hills. Pretty much the best thing ever.

On the drive home we stopped at a little semi-hidden café Monica remembered from when she was here last year. It was like walking into a hobbit hole with small doors and ceilings and little tables. It had incredible hot chocolate and cakes, and Michael ordered 2 desserts and the poor little old lady who brought us our food nearly died from surprise and delight.

Practical Spanish 101

Learning Spanish in a classroom can never really prepare you for life in a foreign country, especially doing biology fieldwork every day. I have begun to put together a dictionary of my own most commonly used Spanish phrases from sitting on a hill everyday, using telemetry to track radio collared degus, watching owls and foxes, and walking around town. Here is a sampling of the collected works:

Oh chasquido! = Oh snap! As in, “oh snap, owl! You just tried to eat my degu!”

Oh Chasquido! (proper noun) = name given to said burrowing owl

Tu travieso pequen = you naughty burrowing owl (usually in reference to Oh Chasquido)

Phantasma degu = ghost degu (we think he was eaten by Oh Chasquido a few days ago)

(Searching Oh Chasquido's burrow for the remains of Phantasma Degu, who we are now quite certain got eaten)

Cortecésped degu = lawnmower degu (his radio signal sounds like he is mowing the lawn)

Extraterrestre degu= alien degu (sounds like an aliean)

Taxista degu = taxi driver degu (we pick up some taxi driver static on this degu frequency)

*For fantastic drawings of our favorite degus, check out Morgan's blog!!!

El zoro = the fox

Bocando = snack (update. Apparently in Chile, "snack" is also used, as is aperitivo which is harder for us to say and thus not as popular).

Perro con Manoplas = Mitten Dog (the oldest, fattest dog who has incredibly fluffy paws that look like mittens)

Juliano = Military Dog (not really vocabulary, but actually his name. We know that because he has a military name tag sewn onto the back of his military dog jacket. He also usually wears a purple scarf, depending on how cold it is).

Play time!

(We bought light up Chile horns to wear during their match, even though we couldn't watch it. We did, however, listen to the end of it on the radio driving home from the field. A true test of Spanish vocabulary is listening to the radio!)






In the last week I have spent almost every day in the field, doing radio telemetry and tracking degu movements. In the time off from the field I have watched as many World Cup games as possible (adios Chile, England, and USA :( ). We discovered a fantastic pizza place with trees growing through the building. We also tried the "national soda", Pap, which has the most unfortunate name ever, and a color and taste to match. Yuck.

Morgan and I had an exciting night involving soccer, pub food, dessert with absurdly large utensils, a grocery shopping trip that resulted in a giant bag of mustard which was a) chosen not only for its giant size and amazing cheap-ness, but also because there is a picture of a fried piece of chicken with a face drawn on it with mustard and b) when asking some local colleagues what to do with a giant bag of condiment once it is opened, were informed that those are for restaurants and not normal houses. So now we have about 6 months worth of slightly weird tasting mustard in a bag that cannot be resealed in our fridge.

Also on the way home from our very exciting game/pub/grocery store/riding the metro night, we arrived in front of our apartment to find a small crowd of people taking pictures of some guy. So we naturally decided to take a picture as well, because clearly he was famous or something. One of the guys from the crowd came over and asked if we had taken a photo. Morgan replied yes, and asked who the person was. Guy was surprised we didn’t know, and explained he is the singer from the Screaming Trees, a grunge band from the 80s. Seeing our blank looks he added- “from Queens of the Stone Age” and we said ohhhh, we’ve heard of them! So we had a semi-famous person sighting to top it all off!

San Cristobal

Last weekend we went up the big, BIG hill, San Cristobal, in Santiago on a funicular railway!

Michael, Morgan, Monica & Tina

Monica has palm tree hair!

The semi-clear day

The giant statue of Virgin Mary you can see from most parts of the city

He was so cute!