Vanessa's Journal

Jan. 22

Today I went out into the field to check traps.  It was good to get out again.  There was a lot of snow out there, which made for some good sledding.  At Jianpengzi, it is so cold that both Lao Yang and I had icicles in our hair.  I turned and looked at him when we got up to that cold, high elevation and I couldn’t help but start laughing.  And he just told me that my hair looked the same way.  When we got to Yaopengzi, I was amazed at how close the giant panda feces were to the trap.  I couldn’t believe that we hadn’t trapped the panda, but at the same I am hopeful that it will come back. 

I got an idea from a colleague last summer that if we sense that a panda near the trap may be afraid of the trap’s scent, that we should soak the nearby feces in hot water and spread it on the trap.  This way, the trap might start to smell ‘like panda’ rather than ‘like rust’.  So that’s what we did today.  I think Lao Yang was mortified that I soaked panda poop in our team thermos.  He said “I hope you wash that really well when we get back”.  It was perhaps not the best of choices of containers on my part.  We also put some fresh meat out at Yaopenzi and moved some meat to the outside of the trap in hopes that the panda will come back. 

I feel like I should do a better job at explaining why we think pandas will be attracted to free meat in the winter.  When it snows a lot (i.e. about 1 foot or more), the bamboo kind of gets swallowed up by the snow and falls over on its side.  It is not exactly easy foraging.  Even walking through the bamboo when it is 2 parts snow and 1 part bamboo is difficult.  So the pandas are supposedly hungry during this time because foraging takes up more energy.  Pandas therefore like to spend time on the slopes that are facing the sun (warmer microclimates) and will be excited to find food that is ‘free’ like that in our traps.  Right now, we have maybe a half of a foot of snow, so we are not to the ‘point of desperation’ yet. 

This explains why our trapping season has been sort of rough going so far.  For instance, last year, there was a foot of snow on the ground in December.  The pandas were abundant and presumably game for free meat.  This year, here we are in late January and we don’t have that much snow yet (but are getting there).  In that sense, I feel like this year we unfortunately only have about half of a true trapping season.  But we just have to do the best we can with it. 

I’m going out again tomorrow and we’ll see what we find.  More tomorrow…