I touched it!!

This past weekend, to top off my 52 hour work week, I took a 2 day long training course. It was frought with parties, a murder mystery, and larvae handling.

Alright, the party was in the hotel room next door and kept me awake. And the murder mystery, well...I'm not quite sure if there was an actual murder, per se, but there was a whole lot of screaming and thudding and a eerie silence (I did my good samaritan duty and called hotel security and then hid under my covers until the aforementioned eerie silence...But the larvae handling, that was allllllll real baby.

I got to take a class on sampling the Threatened (and in some areas Endangered) California Tiger Salamander larvae (pictured below)

Now, when I'm at work, I get to get close to these animals, but touch them? No thanks, I don't have $50,000 to fork out for "harrassing" them without a permit. But at this class, it was allowed. They teach you how to grab these guys using a dip net (a "D" shaped net that you run along the bottom of the pond and catch all kinds of cool stuff with). I was totally sucking and only catching treefrog tadpoles (NOT a threatened OR endangered species and therefore, not as cool).

Then, the instructor (who does a majority of the research on these critters) said,"You have to go faster. They swim really fast and they can sense you coming." So I RAN (as fast as as you can in felt soled chest waders) with my net firmly pressed against the bottom of the mud, quickly pulled up my net so no one could escape my grasp and there he was: a 105 mm (tip of the nose to tip of the tail) California Tiger Salamander larvae.

It was so exciting. Not only did I capture, but I was holding an endangered species in my hands. I got to transfer it into the bucket and measure him all by myself.

I'm so cool, I know you're all jealous!