I just came home from the local library where I got to check things out for the first time! Quite excited to enjoy the books, with the topics being India and the origin of American English language (not in the same book). I had also picked up some DVDs which I hope Colin will like. Burn After Reading definitely, Pursuit of Happyness maybe, and The Darjeeling Limited? Probably not, but who knows? I seem to have a soft spot for picking up those movies with skeptical quality ...
I was catching up on my feeds, mostly of the library flavor, when I suddenly felt the urge to click on the tvguide.com browser tab. Now, why? Why, in the face of such treasures I'd been so excited about just moments before? Why, in the face of intriguing, career-related posts including news of the LOC trying out cloud storage?
So the fact that I'd been sitting reading for two hours about North Korea and then sampling a bunch of books could have something to do with it. Perhaps my mind desired some wandering and easy entertainment. Junk food instead of whole grains. No matter how yummy and good for me the grains are ... sometimes I just gotta have the stuff that is pretty much worthless for me.
This laziness, opting for the easier path with more immediate reward, is both beneficial and detrimental for humankind as evidenced by our ability to use brains to make tools and tasks easier and faster, and the abundance of quick-fix, get-rich, etc. promises. My philosophy for most things in life is simple: balance. This means watching an irresistable episode of NCIS (with a blurb mentioning a frozen guy coming back to life, could you resist?) while looking to do some dishes, read "Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States" ... that is, depending on when Colin is done at work for the day and I pick him up.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Tales of Worms, Tadpoles, and a Rabbit
This is an extremely large post, and for that I apologize. I hope that the clean breaks help. I wrote two-thirds one day and then the remaining didn't get finished until six days later. I'm quickly (hopefully) relearning how to plan blogposts again. Of course, read any/all/none of wildlife stories as you wish, but my personal favorite is the bunny. I came across a cute overload today that makes me believe the bunny was much less than a week old.
Bucket of worms:
Among the crazy things that have happened over the last year, there have been a series of not-so-hidden attempts at keeping pets, starting with last year's tadpoles who had a happy ending. In August I decided to do more green things, so when I visited the Alworth family, they happily gave me a bucket of redworms for vermicomposting. I've grown up used to recycling and composting, but composting in a small apartment with no yard was a challenge I waited to tackle until I had some time to do research in the summer. I have always been amazed at how much "garbage" I manage to prevent from ending up in the trashcan. Still, I continue to be baffled at how to best take care of worms but since they've managed to live quite happily so far, I'm not too worried.
When I had to move out of my apartment, I tackled my worm bin, which had occupied space under the kitchen island for ten months. This turned out to be much harder and took longer than I'd anticipated, because it was more mud than dirt. I'd noticed the wet problem a couple weeks earlier but hadn't done anything with it (both because I was busy and didn't know quite what I was supposed to do). It was actually fun to spread it out on a plastic sheet on the kitchen floor and pick up clumps, finding a mass of squirming worms on the bottom (they get away from any light as fast as they can since it can kill them). These worms did just fine of a diet consisting mainly of eggshells (which you could still see chunks of) and coffee grounds. The mostly worm-free mud (it was impossible to get them all) I gave to Susan, who was happy to have it for her garden. The worms went north to Colin's new apartment in the bucket they came in many generations earlier.
Orphaned bunny:
Laura and Mom came to pick me up right after winter semester classes ended and we took a car trip to Georgia (this itself should be a separate post). They dropped me off in Bloomington the Sunday before my birthday. The next day, I decided to walk to campus. My internet wasn't working that day and I'd left my netbook cord in the last hotel we'd stayed at, so I was carrying my heavy laptop and it was hot. When I was almost to campus, I noticed something alive, pink, and squirming on the sidewalk. It took me awhile to figure out what it was; I realized it wouldn't survive if I left it, so I picked it up and a closer look at its ears confirmed that it was a very young bunny rabbit. It was less than a week old and I still can't fathom how it got where it was; there were no bushes or covering anywhere near it. Since I didn't have internet at home, I decided to try my luck at the library and pressed on, cupping the bunny in my hands to keep it as warm as I could. No one really seemed to have more than a passing interest in why I was holding my hands like that in front of me.
One of the benefits of being a library student, you get to know the people who work in the university libraries. So I walked up to the main desk and said to a classmate I'd had "Okay, don't freak out, but I have a baby bunny and I have no clue what to do with it." He and another guy cooed over it before suggesting I take it to the zoology department. I walked there but they weren't able to help at all (in fact, the guy who I ultimately talked to that was supposed to help said "oh we can't have those in here, get out" and wouldn't even give any suggestions).
Back at the main library, I looked online (while I hid the bunny in the roll of my shirt on my belly) and found out it's illegal to care for wild animals and very very hard to raise wild baby rabbits. There was an address and phone number for a wildlife rehabilitator so I went home and put the bunny in a box with a warm water bottle and a t-shirt, called the place, and then drove over to drop it off. They said it would have my name (they don't name their animals but distinguish them by the names of the people who bring them) yet it was too early to tell how it was doing. Online, I found out if it squirms, it is not too stressed but it is very easy for them to be stressed and they are very sensitive to it. Sometimes it just rested but many times it would wiggle to get closer to my hand for warmth or to just plain wiggle, especially when I had it in the box. I also know it wasn't severely dehydrated. So I was optimistic. However, I never did call to visit or find out about it; I want to think happy endings.
It was strange; I had very strong desire to protect it when I saw it. I vaguely thought about diseases and whatnot when I picked it up, but they were overwhelmed with what probably is a mothering instinct. And usually I don't find myself overly fond of rabbits. Young ones, like most furry babies, are really cute, but I never thought rabbits were nice and never wanted one as a pet. Also, I'm quite familiar with their notorious ability to breed plenty of offsprings. Even though not all of them make it to adulthood, they still manage to run rampant quite easily. So, while my reactions were not entirely surprising, their intensity was.
Tadpoles, version 2009:
Colin was visiting me the weekend before I went to Georgia and we decided to try our luck at raising tadpoles again. We went back to the same puddle and collected about 12 small ones. It seems really strange that they would be planted there; it's a very barren mud puddle is in a "parking lot" that gets a lot of traffic. We didn't collect any big ones because last year the biggest died very quickly and we figured if we can catch them when they're little we can make sure they're better nourished. Again, we had no clue what species they were; they could have been salamanders, even (http://thelivingclassroom.wordpress.com/2007/10/23/tadpoles-salamanders-tomato-tamato/). Since we (or rather, I) had named most of the ones last year after the seven dwarfs, this year I named them after Disney princesses. It was a fun challenge trying to come up with a dozen princesses, including Mulan and Pocahontas.
Since I was heading on a road trip, Colin took them home for the first couple of weeks. And the results were making him believe he was a horrible tadparent; they kept dying. I still suspect that there was some disease or other uncontrollable factor in play. Colin said, "Maybe we weeded out all the good tadpoles last year." Some of them were still alive when I visited him and took them home, but by Memorial Day weekend, we had one. In fact, there were two when I started north to get Colin on our way to Michigan City but the smaller one died in transit. The last one was the biggest, bigger than any of last year's, earning her the title "Princess Fiona." Her size is the leading clue that they were probably toads instead of treefrogs. But we'll never know because she died while we were at the McBrides' beach condo. Although somewhat discouraged, the emotions weren't as bad as when they first started dying. The whole story and how much was our "fault" will never be known but I, at least, am not completely discouraged from trying it again. I say "fault" because, remember, they were in a very poor location and had an extremely low chance of making it to healthy adulthood in the first place.
Bucket of worms:
Among the crazy things that have happened over the last year, there have been a series of not-so-hidden attempts at keeping pets, starting with last year's tadpoles who had a happy ending. In August I decided to do more green things, so when I visited the Alworth family, they happily gave me a bucket of redworms for vermicomposting. I've grown up used to recycling and composting, but composting in a small apartment with no yard was a challenge I waited to tackle until I had some time to do research in the summer. I have always been amazed at how much "garbage" I manage to prevent from ending up in the trashcan. Still, I continue to be baffled at how to best take care of worms but since they've managed to live quite happily so far, I'm not too worried.
When I had to move out of my apartment, I tackled my worm bin, which had occupied space under the kitchen island for ten months. This turned out to be much harder and took longer than I'd anticipated, because it was more mud than dirt. I'd noticed the wet problem a couple weeks earlier but hadn't done anything with it (both because I was busy and didn't know quite what I was supposed to do). It was actually fun to spread it out on a plastic sheet on the kitchen floor and pick up clumps, finding a mass of squirming worms on the bottom (they get away from any light as fast as they can since it can kill them). These worms did just fine of a diet consisting mainly of eggshells (which you could still see chunks of) and coffee grounds. The mostly worm-free mud (it was impossible to get them all) I gave to Susan, who was happy to have it for her garden. The worms went north to Colin's new apartment in the bucket they came in many generations earlier.
Orphaned bunny:
Laura and Mom came to pick me up right after winter semester classes ended and we took a car trip to Georgia (this itself should be a separate post). They dropped me off in Bloomington the Sunday before my birthday. The next day, I decided to walk to campus. My internet wasn't working that day and I'd left my netbook cord in the last hotel we'd stayed at, so I was carrying my heavy laptop and it was hot. When I was almost to campus, I noticed something alive, pink, and squirming on the sidewalk. It took me awhile to figure out what it was; I realized it wouldn't survive if I left it, so I picked it up and a closer look at its ears confirmed that it was a very young bunny rabbit. It was less than a week old and I still can't fathom how it got where it was; there were no bushes or covering anywhere near it. Since I didn't have internet at home, I decided to try my luck at the library and pressed on, cupping the bunny in my hands to keep it as warm as I could. No one really seemed to have more than a passing interest in why I was holding my hands like that in front of me.
One of the benefits of being a library student, you get to know the people who work in the university libraries. So I walked up to the main desk and said to a classmate I'd had "Okay, don't freak out, but I have a baby bunny and I have no clue what to do with it." He and another guy cooed over it before suggesting I take it to the zoology department. I walked there but they weren't able to help at all (in fact, the guy who I ultimately talked to that was supposed to help said "oh we can't have those in here, get out" and wouldn't even give any suggestions).
Back at the main library, I looked online (while I hid the bunny in the roll of my shirt on my belly) and found out it's illegal to care for wild animals and very very hard to raise wild baby rabbits. There was an address and phone number for a wildlife rehabilitator so I went home and put the bunny in a box with a warm water bottle and a t-shirt, called the place, and then drove over to drop it off. They said it would have my name (they don't name their animals but distinguish them by the names of the people who bring them) yet it was too early to tell how it was doing. Online, I found out if it squirms, it is not too stressed but it is very easy for them to be stressed and they are very sensitive to it. Sometimes it just rested but many times it would wiggle to get closer to my hand for warmth or to just plain wiggle, especially when I had it in the box. I also know it wasn't severely dehydrated. So I was optimistic. However, I never did call to visit or find out about it; I want to think happy endings.
It was strange; I had very strong desire to protect it when I saw it. I vaguely thought about diseases and whatnot when I picked it up, but they were overwhelmed with what probably is a mothering instinct. And usually I don't find myself overly fond of rabbits. Young ones, like most furry babies, are really cute, but I never thought rabbits were nice and never wanted one as a pet. Also, I'm quite familiar with their notorious ability to breed plenty of offsprings. Even though not all of them make it to adulthood, they still manage to run rampant quite easily. So, while my reactions were not entirely surprising, their intensity was.
Tadpoles, version 2009:
Colin was visiting me the weekend before I went to Georgia and we decided to try our luck at raising tadpoles again. We went back to the same puddle and collected about 12 small ones. It seems really strange that they would be planted there; it's a very barren mud puddle is in a "parking lot" that gets a lot of traffic. We didn't collect any big ones because last year the biggest died very quickly and we figured if we can catch them when they're little we can make sure they're better nourished. Again, we had no clue what species they were; they could have been salamanders, even (http://thelivingclassroom.wordpress.com/2007/10/23/tadpoles-salamanders-tomato-tamato/). Since we (or rather, I) had named most of the ones last year after the seven dwarfs, this year I named them after Disney princesses. It was a fun challenge trying to come up with a dozen princesses, including Mulan and Pocahontas.
Since I was heading on a road trip, Colin took them home for the first couple of weeks. And the results were making him believe he was a horrible tadparent; they kept dying. I still suspect that there was some disease or other uncontrollable factor in play. Colin said, "Maybe we weeded out all the good tadpoles last year." Some of them were still alive when I visited him and took them home, but by Memorial Day weekend, we had one. In fact, there were two when I started north to get Colin on our way to Michigan City but the smaller one died in transit. The last one was the biggest, bigger than any of last year's, earning her the title "Princess Fiona." Her size is the leading clue that they were probably toads instead of treefrogs. But we'll never know because she died while we were at the McBrides' beach condo. Although somewhat discouraged, the emotions weren't as bad as when they first started dying. The whole story and how much was our "fault" will never be known but I, at least, am not completely discouraged from trying it again. I say "fault" because, remember, they were in a very poor location and had an extremely low chance of making it to healthy adulthood in the first place.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Marmots of an undetermined species
Warning: I wrote this about three weeks ago but found it dry and long even for me, so I didn't want to feel guilty posting and boring people just when they are like "whoa! post from karen! finally!" So since I just posted a better first finally post, I don't feel as bad.
For those who decide TLDR: Basically I am talking about weird mammals I saw a year ago near my old apartment and how I couldn't figure out what they were. Probably marmots. There's also lots of librarian thoughts about trying to find out what it was.
Last summer was the first time I noticed a pair of strange furry creatures at a heritage farm called Hinkle-Garton Farm near my apartment complex. I saw them multiple times on my walk to and from school but never got a close-up view. I was surprised that any mammals larger than a rat would be living there; there are very busy roads, train tracks, and many buildings in the immediate vicinity. For me, it's similar to seeing a turkey downtown. Colin joked I that I must be making them up, until he saw them himself.
I wasn't sure what they were - pictures online of woodchucks and prairie dogs didn't look right. I'm familiar with beavers and felt certain they were not those; this was confirmed when I spotted the decidedly skinny furry tail. I was fairly confident they wasn't any other aquatic mammal such as muskrats. Further Google image searching led me astray to wild ideas such as the nutria (eradicated a few decades ago from Indiana) and capybara (found only in Central and South Americas).
The one trait that was unique was the shape of their heads. It's not at all like the round ones found in the pictures of woodchucks but much more like the angular ones of the capybara. I discovered the woodchuck is a type of marmot and felt like I was getting somewhere when I saw pictures of other marmot species with the right head shapes. However, I only found instances of high mountain-dwelling types.
There is a library-related tangent to this post topic beyond mapping a research attempt: the value of niceness. One surprisingly helpful resource was Yahoo answers, which I've bumped into many times in other research. The particular page was started with a person who seems dumb since he/she was wondering if it was a capybara and hadn't been able to find information online. This earned him/her ridicule from some people who answered but the best answer gave conducive guidance. I wouldn't be surprised if this person was a public librarian; no matter what you think of the person asking you the question or the question itself, your goal is always to give them the answers they're looking for (which is commonly not the direct answer to their question, but found through what librarians call "reference interviews" since people frequently don't know exactly what they're looking for, even if they think they do). Being nice and helping people who ask for your help is not only common courtesy but a habit that benefits everyone. Seth Godin (who writes blog posts much more frequently than I do) stresses the value of niceness:
If I'm arguing only for my personal gain, I would have had a harder time searching for the answer to my very similar inquiry if the person hadn't answered.
The search of the elusive furry neighbors remains inconclusive, but I'm happy (for now) to call them "marmots of an undetermined species".
For those who decide TLDR: Basically I am talking about weird mammals I saw a year ago near my old apartment and how I couldn't figure out what they were. Probably marmots. There's also lots of librarian thoughts about trying to find out what it was.
Last summer was the first time I noticed a pair of strange furry creatures at a heritage farm called Hinkle-Garton Farm near my apartment complex. I saw them multiple times on my walk to and from school but never got a close-up view. I was surprised that any mammals larger than a rat would be living there; there are very busy roads, train tracks, and many buildings in the immediate vicinity. For me, it's similar to seeing a turkey downtown. Colin joked I that I must be making them up, until he saw them himself.
I wasn't sure what they were - pictures online of woodchucks and prairie dogs didn't look right. I'm familiar with beavers and felt certain they were not those; this was confirmed when I spotted the decidedly skinny furry tail. I was fairly confident they wasn't any other aquatic mammal such as muskrats. Further Google image searching led me astray to wild ideas such as the nutria (eradicated a few decades ago from Indiana) and capybara (found only in Central and South Americas).
The one trait that was unique was the shape of their heads. It's not at all like the round ones found in the pictures of woodchucks but much more like the angular ones of the capybara. I discovered the woodchuck is a type of marmot and felt like I was getting somewhere when I saw pictures of other marmot species with the right head shapes. However, I only found instances of high mountain-dwelling types.
There is a library-related tangent to this post topic beyond mapping a research attempt: the value of niceness. One surprisingly helpful resource was Yahoo answers, which I've bumped into many times in other research. The particular page was started with a person who seems dumb since he/she was wondering if it was a capybara and hadn't been able to find information online. This earned him/her ridicule from some people who answered but the best answer gave conducive guidance. I wouldn't be surprised if this person was a public librarian; no matter what you think of the person asking you the question or the question itself, your goal is always to give them the answers they're looking for (which is commonly not the direct answer to their question, but found through what librarians call "reference interviews" since people frequently don't know exactly what they're looking for, even if they think they do). Being nice and helping people who ask for your help is not only common courtesy but a habit that benefits everyone. Seth Godin (who writes blog posts much more frequently than I do) stresses the value of niceness:
it doesn't matter who's "right". What matters is that giving people the benefit of the doubt and treating them with respect is not only more fun, it works better too.
If I'm arguing only for my personal gain, I would have had a harder time searching for the answer to my very similar inquiry if the person hadn't answered.
The search of the elusive furry neighbors remains inconclusive, but I'm happy (for now) to call them "marmots of an undetermined species".
New places, new dramas
So finally summer vacation is here! I just finished the final project for my summer class this afternoon. Scary to think it's the last, but I think it's mainly because change of any kind tends to be at least a little scary. And it's gonna be short - 7 weeks left, I read in the Indiana Daily Student this week.
Lots of changes have been happening, including officially moving into my new room across town yesterday (I actually first slept here two days before that). Fountain Park, the big ginornous apartment complex, told me I couldn't live there for only six months. Twelve, maybe ten, but not six! Even though they happily let me move in with a signed six-months' lease in the first place. So started a long arduous journey to find another place to set up my stuff for the last semester of grad school. Lots of trawling through ads, craigslist, and campus site for housing. It'd be fun to count all the emails I sent and either didn't get a response or they replied with a "no." Not really.
There was a house with a room for only the fall semester. Perfect, even very close to campus. I even went to check it out. Problem was that right then I was waiting to hear if I had landed a dream summer internship at Yellowstone NP (I didn't get it). I was told I'd be called if the other person moved forward on the offer. The next week, when I finally got the Yellowstone response, I emailed back and found out that the other person had grabbed it up the day after I was there. I did have misgivings about the extremely small kitchen for five girls (most undergrads), but I was gonna take anything except frat/sorority crap at this point.
Another offer was a guy who was looking for roommates but he didn't currently live in Bloomington. I still don't know where he actually was living, but his job was going to relocate him here and he was always running around on business trips and it was hard to get ahold of him. I did meet up with him and liked him but the house was not a done deal; it turned out the people who lived there (and owned the house) didn't actually know if they were going to rent it out. In the end, they didn't and I wished the guy good luck.
At the same time, I was juggling an offer from a recent SLIS alumnus, Duane. Turned out we had been there together last winter before he graduated but apparently never really met. He was info sci not library sci, so really not a surprise. His house was outside of the city limits, about five miles from campus, but the price was right and he was willing to let me stay there for just six months (after I offered to pay two extra months' rent, which is a deal at this point). The previous roomie had moved out abruptly and he wanted to keep up with his mortgage payments. So here I am, living with two guys.
Oh, and neither are Duane. I have yet to meet him in person; he's got a job in England. The two others are Robbie and Chris, both journalism majors (Chris undergrad, Robbie is working on his master's). Robbie also has a teenaged son, Tim, who is hanging around for the summer. The two of them plus Duane's ten-year-old dog Hank spend most of the time on a boat. I still think it's weird, being so into sailing and living here. All the lakes bigger than a pond are man-made and are or were the city's reservoirs. Lake Monroe, the biggest, is fairly large but it's still smaller than Lake Charlevoix. There's another unofficial housemate, Ray, who acts like he owns the place ... I don't understand the whole situation, but Robbie allowed sailing people to stay in his master bedroom and Ray just hasn't exactly left since he was first here two months ago. He isn't here every night but I don't really care for him. Apparently he has a girlfriend that I know was here last night but I only saw her car and flip flops as evidence.
I bump into Chris the most. He likes to talk and although he has very different views and opinions, I certainly don't mind listening. He usually sits in the middle of the big couch with his laptop and tv on. Since he saw the new Star Trek movie, he's been watching a lot of episodes. Between Whitney, Colin, and Chris, I'm feeling my disinterest (not dislike) won't survive much longer...
I don't plan on staying away as long this time, but things never go according to plans. (Do you ever wonder if we just planned for the opposite of what we want to happen, things would end up going the way we want?)
Lots of changes have been happening, including officially moving into my new room across town yesterday (I actually first slept here two days before that). Fountain Park, the big ginornous apartment complex, told me I couldn't live there for only six months. Twelve, maybe ten, but not six! Even though they happily let me move in with a signed six-months' lease in the first place. So started a long arduous journey to find another place to set up my stuff for the last semester of grad school. Lots of trawling through ads, craigslist, and campus site for housing. It'd be fun to count all the emails I sent and either didn't get a response or they replied with a "no." Not really.
There was a house with a room for only the fall semester. Perfect, even very close to campus. I even went to check it out. Problem was that right then I was waiting to hear if I had landed a dream summer internship at Yellowstone NP (I didn't get it). I was told I'd be called if the other person moved forward on the offer. The next week, when I finally got the Yellowstone response, I emailed back and found out that the other person had grabbed it up the day after I was there. I did have misgivings about the extremely small kitchen for five girls (most undergrads), but I was gonna take anything except frat/sorority crap at this point.
Another offer was a guy who was looking for roommates but he didn't currently live in Bloomington. I still don't know where he actually was living, but his job was going to relocate him here and he was always running around on business trips and it was hard to get ahold of him. I did meet up with him and liked him but the house was not a done deal; it turned out the people who lived there (and owned the house) didn't actually know if they were going to rent it out. In the end, they didn't and I wished the guy good luck.
At the same time, I was juggling an offer from a recent SLIS alumnus, Duane. Turned out we had been there together last winter before he graduated but apparently never really met. He was info sci not library sci, so really not a surprise. His house was outside of the city limits, about five miles from campus, but the price was right and he was willing to let me stay there for just six months (after I offered to pay two extra months' rent, which is a deal at this point). The previous roomie had moved out abruptly and he wanted to keep up with his mortgage payments. So here I am, living with two guys.
Oh, and neither are Duane. I have yet to meet him in person; he's got a job in England. The two others are Robbie and Chris, both journalism majors (Chris undergrad, Robbie is working on his master's). Robbie also has a teenaged son, Tim, who is hanging around for the summer. The two of them plus Duane's ten-year-old dog Hank spend most of the time on a boat. I still think it's weird, being so into sailing and living here. All the lakes bigger than a pond are man-made and are or were the city's reservoirs. Lake Monroe, the biggest, is fairly large but it's still smaller than Lake Charlevoix. There's another unofficial housemate, Ray, who acts like he owns the place ... I don't understand the whole situation, but Robbie allowed sailing people to stay in his master bedroom and Ray just hasn't exactly left since he was first here two months ago. He isn't here every night but I don't really care for him. Apparently he has a girlfriend that I know was here last night but I only saw her car and flip flops as evidence.
I bump into Chris the most. He likes to talk and although he has very different views and opinions, I certainly don't mind listening. He usually sits in the middle of the big couch with his laptop and tv on. Since he saw the new Star Trek movie, he's been watching a lot of episodes. Between Whitney, Colin, and Chris, I'm feeling my disinterest (not dislike) won't survive much longer...
I don't plan on staying away as long this time, but things never go according to plans. (Do you ever wonder if we just planned for the opposite of what we want to happen, things would end up going the way we want?)
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