Wetlands

Today was amazing. The perfect storm of learning, teaching, parenting, friendship, and SUNSHINE. I'm sure you are all aware that sunshine makes everything better. If you are not aware of that fact, you are a nocturnal cave-dwelling bat with no business being up and reading this. GO BACK TO SLEEPING UPSIDE-DOWN WEIRDO!

I'm taking a fabulous ecology class this quarter titled Nature in the Northwest and our culminating project is leading our colleagues on a field trip. Today we led a field trip thru some wetlands in our area and then took a field trip thru a forest. It was 60 degrees and sunny (thank YOU El Nino) and the absolute PERFECT day to be outside!

Daughter joined us as our official photographer and did a damn fine job if I do say so myself. Here are some of the better pics of the day.

Artsy shot of the fence at the beginning of the wetlands trail...

bird on a tree (I don't know what kind of bird, another student was in charge of the damn wildlife)...

me holding a glob of salamander eggs. I took one for the team - that nasty jelly stuff was, um, NASTY!

At first we thought this was a BIG fucking rat but our professor (brave, crazy man that he is) lifted the corpse OUT of the water and is pretty sure that it was a young muskrat. I have to say that the damn thing was the same size as our cats. *shudder*

Lichen which illustrates a mutualism in the biological community of the wetlands. Heh. I love college.