Hedgehogs are cute.

For my Conservation Ecology course, part of our grade is taking part in monitoring the hedgehog populations on campus. Hedgehogs are not native to New Zealand, but they don't have the bad reputation that other invasives like possoms have, because they don't cause any direct harm to any native species. Because of this, they are very understudied. And, since they're nocturnal, no one ever really sees them, so don't even know they're there. 

Anyway, in groups, one week of the semester we had to set traps (baited with nutella and peanut butter) to try to catch hedgehogs so we could measure them and put transmitters on them, so when we let them go they then can be monitored over the rest of the semester to track where they go. 

There's a cemetery in the middle of campus, all the headstones from the late 1800s; creepy, weird, kinda interesting....anyway, the hedgehogs like to live here.

This is Igor, he's adorable. The thick gloves are because hedgehogs tend to carry nasty diseases in their saliva, soooo didn't want to get bitten by one.

He loved us so much, he crawled into our trap 3 days in a row, even after we moved it to a different location. Then during our monitoring week (which monitoring had to be done at night since they're nocturnal), we chased Igor around the cemetery trying to find him; looking foolish carrying around a radio antennae, wearing head lamps, creeping around a cemetery at night....probably not the weirdest thing I've done, soooo whateves.  :)

Christelle and Cheng, my trapping/monitoring partners, with our child Igor.

Other than chasing hedgehogs around Wellington, I also started being a TA for the undergrad Biochemistry laboratory. Yay me! The undergrad biochem course has the lecture part the first half of the semester and the lab part the second half, which is why I just started now, not earlier in the term. I last took biochemistry 4 years ago, so I get to spend 4 hours every Monday trying to convince 2nd years that I know anything about biochem. It's all slowly coming back....I think. They're even paying me for it!

Hmmm, what else.....

On Saturday May 12th for my Ecological Restoration course, we went to the Wellington Restoration Day. It's an annual event put on by the Wellington Regional Council and restoration groups from the area gather to basically discuss different strategies, share what they're doing, meet other groups, etc. It was interesting, but we definitely brought the average age down by quite a bit! lol. Here's DoC's website with the Restoration Day info....oh, that's a nice looking red hat that person in the middle is wearing...oh, wait, that's me! Such a nice looking hat.

Alright, I've got one more essay, one more project, and two finals and then I'm halfway done with my Masters!

Peace.