Vanessa's Journal

Jan. 10

Today the team decided that they wanted to check all of the old traps on the way to making new traps. It seemed like a lot of work to me, but they were ambitious and decided that I needed to take a rest from checking traps. It was actually good because I felt like I needed to catch up with some computer stuff. I worked on some organizing of my field work finances, which is important because you definitely don’t want to get to the end of the trip and run out of money or wonder where it all went. I think we are doing pretty good with it right now.

I also worked some more on the third panda survey book. I’m still on Chapter 2 but making headway.  I read the part about how they describe how they differentiate among  individuals based on different location and size of panda droppings. They talked about consideration of factors such as feces coloring, integrity, and the bite size of the plant matter.

Panda feces is interesting to study because pandas eat more than 95 percent bamboo but they have digestive tracts that don’t process it very well, so it ends up going right through them and you can tell exactly what they ate. In that sense, panda feces is easy to study because it is so transparent. However, it is hard to tell what is feces from two different pandas and what is from the same individual.  It’s obvious when it’s an adult and a juvenile who are at the same location because of the size difference, but when you have two adults in similar locations, there is a definite gray area.

It is not an exact science, but neither is anything else we do.  There is always a degree of uncertainty in science which I think sometimes the greater society forgets that when interpreting results.  We really can never know for sure how many pandas are out there but we just make our best guess. 

On a sad note, Lao Wang was telling me that a few days ago there was a black bird that I gather was a crow hanging around Wuyipeng and making loud calls.  It wouldn’t go away.  I was not here at the time, as I was still in town.  Lao Yang was here and he announced that it was a foreboding sign that someone would pass away in the near future.  Today around lunch time we got a phone call from Lao Wang’s wife.  She said that one of his neighbors in the town of Shawan passed away today. He was only 56.  I gather that he was sick for a few years, but that his passing was unexpected nonetheless.  Lao Yang was not at all surprised about the news, given the visit from the bird.  Our thoughts go out to his family and I hope we don’t have any more black crows hanging around from here on out. 

The trap construction team did not make it back to the field station until 6:30 p.m. I was thinking they would come back dragging their feet at that point, but I could not have been more wrong. They all seemed to be in great spirits.  They spent dinner laughing about different funny things that happened that day. At the same time, they were very intent on making sure they did a good job.  One of the guys had taken pictures of a trap that they finished today in his cell phone and was proudly showing it to the rest of us. It was right in there with the pictures of his two little kids.  I can see him going down the mountain and showing it to his friends in town. It’s great to have that level of interest in the work and excitement to contribute to our team’s research. Their progress is actually nothing short of remarkable to me. I definitely could not build a full trap in one day like that, but they did. From the pictures, it looks perfect and I can’t wait to go check it out myself. 

Tonight there was some Chinese mahjong fun to be had.  I played a few games, which really means I was on Lao Wang’s team and he told me which pieces to play each time it was our turn and I just tried to keep up. Lao Wang likes to teach me the game. I think I’m making progress but he kept telling me to stop showing everyone else my pieces. 

Tomorrow is more trap building.  Stay tuned.