June 10th, 2009
Today I went out with Faustio and a girl named Laura who previously worked on the wolf project and was visiting for a few days in order to finish up the last details of her thesis. Our mission was to “fix” the location of four bears. “Fixing” means that we use radio telemetry to locate the bear and then use a compass and topographic maps to figure out where exactly on the mountain the bear is located. We actually had a lot of trouble doing this since the bears we were fixing were most likely right on the edge of the mountain since we kept having trouble locating a signal. The day was also abnormally hot and sunny which sucked since in order to pick up a signal with no interference we had to sit on the road or in other large openings to locate the bears. We ended up spending about 3 hours trying to fix just one bear. After we finished fixing the one bear we headed back to Pescasseroli to have lunch. On the way back I ended up falling asleep due to helping with trapping previous night, during which Faustio and Laura actually located the 3 other bears. I felt bad about falling asleep but Faustio and Laura said it was no big deal since they had located the remaining bears easily within a 45 minute time frame. Around 4 we ended up arriving in Pescasseroli to have lunch at The Little Woodpecker (the local pizza shop). While we were eating Daniela and Tiziana came from the lab to sit with us and have a drink. Afterwards, I headed to the lab with Tiziana and Davide while Faustio, Laura, and Daniela ended up going back out to find one more bear. I only analyzed one scat before we headed back to Villetta Barrea. As soon as I got back I took a nap since I was still really tired. For dinner we had spaghetti with ricotta cheese and zucchini. It was an interesting yet delicious combination!
2 years ago