Archive for March 2014

As I threw myself on top of the head of an 11ft American Croc with all my power and weight, I had another reminder of just how powerful these animals are as it just flicked me back up on the air with just his head.  Luckily his mouth was roped shut because that could have…

After a week of croc activities- catching crocs, collecting data, stomach flushing, etc., the heavens somewhat aligned for a day of pleasure.  Cherie from ACES had asked me to come back to Ambergris Caye for the day as a Mexican television show from the Travel channel was going to be filming ACES, and she wanted…

Collecting population census data and finding parasites on Caye Caulker was an absolute success!!!!  Although we didn’t catch any crocs that were a perfect size for stomach flushing, we did perform a population survey with the Fisheries Dept.  The Fisheries Dept on Caye Caulker, particularly Aldo, was amazingly helpful, and super supportive of my research.…

Through the several years of croc research, I am usually the only girl, or one of two girls doing research.  Well, that pattern of a male-dominated team was completely broken last night!  During the second night of our croc research on Caye Caulker it was Vince Rose from ACES, me, and an ACES intern and…

Last night on Ambergris Caye to catch crocs for my croc-parasite research here in Belize.  So far, my hypothesis that the crocs here will have a lower parasitic load than crocs from less urbanized populations or less polluted areas is appearing valid.  Much research has come out that a healthy ecosystem is one with parasites.…

11:55pm- My research assistants/friends and I board a red-eye flight to head over to our crocodile research destination… Belize.  After a year I’m heading back to Belize to collect some crocodile tissue and parasite samples for a side study I’ve been working on since 2010.  No, this is not part of my dissertation, but a…

In honor of today’s St Patrick Day’s earthquake, I had a sudden flashback of an incident that happened when I was young during one of the big earthquakes I experienced growing up.  No, this story is in no relation to my research or school, but according to my brother, it was actions such as these…

As a girl, I remember my Apache grandmother telling me the above Native American proverb, which has become influential in how I have approached conservation of the flora and fauna of our earth. Although many people are already in an emotional state of “doom,” that the world is spirally into disaster and destruction and there…

It’s been about 10 months since my last post, but that’s because I got stuck in the deep abyss of thesis writing.  I prevented myself from going on Facebook, twitter, and all other social media sites.  My communication with the outside world pretty much came to a halt as I just wanted to focus on…