Elk at ONP's Elwha entrance

Carolyn with a "Pile O' Parasites"

The spring quarter is in its second week and the madness has begun to churn! This is the last week of otter work and we've had a stellar past few weeks. The insanely pleasant weather has provided us with a wonderful hiking ambiance - between the great hikes, Carolyn's birding skills, and the classic storytelling sessions, I have thoroughly enjoyed my time on this project. Last week we bushwacked the upper east side of Lake Mills and came across the most gnarly pile of parasites ever - the poor otter deposited nothing but a little jelly and 11 long, nematode-esque worms - it was an epic collection frenzy...Bear monitoring is next on the agenda, and I hope help out as much as possible!

The snow group is gearing up for next week's Western Snow Conference in Hood River, OR which sounds like a pretty cool event (with a pre-conference pit stop at Grandma Dona's for some out-of-this-world veggie lasagna ~ mmmm....) - Cheers to wrapping up the Deer Park stats analysis!