Typicalllll

June 16, 2013

First of all- get on YouTube and listen to "Sin Wagon" by the Dixie Chicks. Go ahead. Open up a new window. And turn your volume up.So now I'm gonna talk to you all about how a typical data collection work day goes. We wake up and go out to where the monkeys slept that night. I have a backpack strapped to my back that contains the following items: 2 water bottles 1 pen 1 handy dandy notebook My lunch box A spoon A small snack/candies bug spray My sexy black pocket knife My iPhone GPS Simple Medical kitMy pack is heavy in the early morning. We walk and walk. We are usually with two or three of the "guides". These "guides" are Maria's sons. Lol but they know the layout of this huge plot of land about as well as you know the layout of your local Walmart. As soon as we find the monkeys, Allison and I choose our focal animal of the day. This is the animal that we will be following intently. We only follow adults for her project, so we have 9 choices. Once we pick our focal animal, I take out my handy dandy notebook, pen, and GPS. Allison fires up her IPad. And we begin the data collection process wooooooo. This is usually at 8:00am or earlier. My job on Allison's project is to collect GPS data on the focal animal's movement throughout the day in the conventional fashion. This means that I stay close to the monkey and every 3 minutes (or 5) I take a GPS point for its location. Then, I write down in the dandybook the time, GPS point number, and the monkey's behavior. For our purposes I code the focal animal as either stationary, socializing, locamoting, foraging, or self-caring. Then, in 3 minutes (or 5 minutes, depending on the day. Same difference.) I do it all over again. All day. Meanwhile, Allison is taking GPS points in the way that she invented... Using an iPad app! She has downloaded a satellite image of this area, and using the ipad's GPS function- she pinpoints the monkey's location and behavior. This is really neat because, unlike on the old fashioned GPS, she can pinpoint exactly which tree the monkey is in. In addition- this gives her the ability to track the monkeys even when we can't physically be right next to them- like when they are up on the huge cliffs. Old GPS users can't get exact data on how the monkeys navigate around when they are up on the cliffs because they can't climb up there! But all Allison has to do is project the GPS points up to where the monkeys literally are. Get it? It is kinda neat... Lol but you might have to see it to really get it. I don't know if I explained it well enough. Forgive me if that was as boring as drool. So basically we walk around the forest all day and climb the cliffs that are possible to climb. While dodging insects and snakes and pumas. Jk about the pumas. It gets kinda wild when the monkeys run... We are usually struggling to keep up or to keep them in sight. We lose them often, honestly. But give me a break- trees are tall and I am small. When we lose the monkeys, that means we can sit down and have lunch. But also, when the monkeys calm down and decide to rest- we also get lunch. 2 o'clock is when shade is desired by both parties. Sometimes I drop everything I'm holding. Sometimes bugs go in my nose. These are things that also happen in Georgia. The monkeys don't care how hard the woods below are to walk through. They just climb over heavy brush... Leaving us to bust all through it. Whatever. When I complain to Jatoba about how hot, dangerous, and scratchy it is... He tells me if I wanted an easy vacation then I shoulda gone to boy scout camp this summer instead. Anyways. Eventually, the monkeys decide on where they are gonna sleep. Just in time for the sun to start getting sleepy. So then we leave the woods. And we have a beer. What!? This isn't rehab! That is a typical day. It is pretty fun.... But still hard. And I am getting used to it. Except I had another tick today. A few days ago Allison and I both fell off the same barbed wire fence. Lol I will leave you now with a quote from a rapper who I have never heard of: "I'm not a player, I just crush a lot." - Big Pun