And Cows

I have a love-hate relationship with cows. I love that they provide me with milk for my cereal, but on the other hand, I don’t trust them. This is problematic because they are everywhere on the farm I am working and give us girls a hard time when we want to lay down in the sun as we must first shoo them away. This is intimidating because these cows have big horns. I am fairly certain our moo-cows back home don’t have horns. Anyways, the other day I walked toward them and they backed off. I then unraveled our blanket in the air to put it on the ground and they all moved. “Oh crap” I immediately thought to myself, Matador Cassie might as well beg them to charge, but I dodged the bullet that time. Of course, then once we are lying there, I am never fully relaxed. I always have this sneaking suspicion they are plotting something. “They’re surrounding us!” I told My and to my surprise she was not alarmed. I look around and stare at the closest one in the eyes and tell My “death by cow is not a way I want to go.” As I continue to tell her how I would hope my parents would have enough sense to lie and not put ‘death by cow” on my obituary if I succumb to a stampede, I continue staring at it. I tell the cow in my head, “I know you’re up to something” and it continues to stare at me, then lifts its tail and plops a big one right close to our blanket which is soon swarming with flies. Touche moo-cow, touché.

My Thoughts on Birds

While I still have no idea what the mate preferences of female sparrows are, I have learned equally as valuable insight into myself. First, I have learned I strongly dislike going to the bathroom in the wilderness and second, I should never personally pursue a career in bird research.
I joined this research group because the biology interested me, not the birds themselves. In fact, as my mom will tell you since she had pet birds when I was growing up, I have never been particularly fond of birds. This makes me the odd man out in the research team because everyone else is an avid birdwatcher and really passionate about birds (which is great). But, I do feel a bit guilty when they all rush to get their binoculars to their face in time to check out some special bird while mine are aimed at a patch of grass I am considering for my next tanning locale. The best is when we are sleeping in the car and are abruptly woken up by a sudden stop. I bolt up, bleary eyed, and frantically look around thinking, fire?! No, just a bird. I’ve found it convenient to forget my binoculars some days.
But I try. I try and grapple with this love they have for birds, though I find it so hard to understand. Sure, they are nice here and there up in the sky but when it comes to holding them, they bite and they poo. My god, do they poo. My favorite move they do is poo and then flap their wings so that it sprays all over me. I have half a mind to leave them in the nets a few extra minutes when they do that, but I fear it might be a tad unethical. Apparently they have no qualms about going to the bathroom in unusual places.
Anyways, I am not saying this because I regret my research group, because on the contrary, I think they are great, I’m really lucky, and very excited about my thesis. I bring this up just to point out that I have never and will never be a bird person.

Ps. I miss Marc.

Maria's House of Horrors

I suspect the title caught your attention. Oh, I hope I can do this justice. Quick intro: The purpose of me being in Spain is so I can help Maria with her mate choice experiments for master’s thesis research. For these experiments, we have set up arenas so that a female can see (hopefully, the carpenter used a low grade plexi-glass) three different individuals in separate chambers and (again hopefully) exhibit a preference for one. We began our first run today and let’s just say it was a rocky start.
So, once Maria removed the sheet enabling the female to see her choices, we promptly sat in our secret hideout position. Maria had a binder on her lap, timer and pen in hand and was wearing her glasses. One thing you should know about Maria is that without her glasses, her vision is fuzzy at best, but she hardly wears them because she doesn’t think they look good on her. Never and I repeat never, choose to be her teammate in a ping-pong game. Anyways, I mention this to illustrate how seriously she was taking the experiment. Peeking through the holes in our hideout, she sits up straight and with deep concentration turns on the timer and prepares to carefully watch. As soon as the timer starts, the female without warning quickly flips over on its back, feet in the air and just remains like that.
Maria and I then look at each other and I say, “Ahhhh I think it died.” We spend the next three minutes discussing what to do as I am stifling laughter at the thought of her having to do her thesis on suicidal sparrows. Turns out the bird wasn’t dead, which she discovered only when she walked up and it freaked out and then spent rest of the experiment spent hiding behind its water dish. At this point Maria was terrified for the sake of her thesis and yelling at me for laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation and my brilliant ideas for alternate projects (while she was struggling not to laugh herself). She then looked at me and said, “You can’t blog about this.” HA
The icing on the cake was when our supervisor agreed we should swap the females out. See, the arenas were designed with sliding doors, but the only visibility you have for the chambers is from the top. So, as I take the coffee filter net…yes coffee filter net to catch the bird we discover that with our head looking down from the top and our arm on the side reaching in the cage, our arm/net was not long enough. This meant that I had to crouch down, open the sliding door not just enough for my arm, but for my eyes to see in as well. The problem (one of many) with this is all you can see as the bird is hopping around like crazy is when it lands on the ground and then by the time you move the net there is has already jumped somewhere else. So I sat there for a few minutes swatting at the bird as it frantically hopped around hitting bird seed in eyes until it finally flew out the hole, at my face, and is now flying around the rafters in the barn somewhere. It was like a scene from the Three Stooges.
Immediately after this, we check the other six birds and found, well..another one bit the dust. With four out of our six initial birds remaining, we thought…maybe we’ll just call it a day. Maria was less than amused when I suggested that her experiment was more like gladiator arenas where only the strong survive. She told me, “Cassie, in Norway I started drinking to stay warm and I told you I thought I was going to become an alcoholic. Your response to me was ‘Well atleast you will have a master’s degree.’ Now I will become and alcoholic AND I won’t have a degree.” Had to chuckle. She’s now thinking over other projects in her head such as how sparrows play dead like mammals, while I on the other hand do believe this makes My and me (haha) the Survivor finalists. Sorry Maria, the tribe has spoken. Anyways, all I can say is I am glad my research will take place in a lab.

Survivor Spain: Battle of the Scientists

As many of you know, I am now spending my days tromping around Spain, catching birds and doing research. You may think this sounds awfully cushy and to tell you the truth, I expected it would be…but it has actually turned out more similar to a scientist’s version of Survivor. I have always wanted to be on the show, so who knows, maybe this will be the training needed for my imminent domination once they finally get their wits about them and cast me. Anyways, I’ll give you the breakdown of my first week in Spain; where I intend to outwit, outplay and outlast...or something like that.
The first night, we arrived in the airport in Lisbon and had to drive two hours to Badajoz, Spain (shelter) while we were all starving. Take note of this, because starving is a central theme in our trip thus far. Anyways, we had to split up into two cars and Maria and I had a sneaking suspicion that we should be in a particular car…so we looked at each other and broke into a run to keep up with him and slip into his car. Turns out we were right, because 45 min into our car ride we got a call that someone had left their suitcase at the airport and lo and behold it was a member of the other car. So, they had to drive all the way back and begin their trip again, missing any hopes of dinner, while we continued on. We genuinely felt bad, but it was slightly amusing to us (as we were taking bets on whose suitcase it was). OUTWITTED
Like any game of Survivor, the leaders of our tribe have tried to get into our heads, but the women ultimately banded together forming a fierce alliance. When we arrived at the apartment, we quickly found out two things that disturbed us: The gas line was broken so we could only take ice cold showers for a while, and there wasn’t and never would be internet in the apartment (gasp). The latter caused quite an uproar in camp but was quickly stifled when its futility became evident. We were quieted, but held strong. The most daunting mind game has been the constant scavenging for food. Us women eat well and frequently, while it seems our leaders may have a Snus- suppressed appetite leaving them impervious to the stomach churning hunger we feel daily. This strategy has worked against them though, because (men take heed) a hungry woman is a cranky woman; and the only thing worse than a cranky woman is multiple cranky women. This was a battle we chose to fight. Where we once suffered in silence or gave gentle hints, we now yell out “hungry!” or “I am in a really bad mood!” and more often than not we get our way. Strength in numbers…and bitching. Furthermore, just to show that we are unphased by the persistent challenges being thrown at us, we have taken to dancing in the streets and enjoying Carnival in Spain at night. Only for appearances of course…OUTPLAYED
Though initially, with the lack of internet and long work hours ahead of us, we secretly hoped for an illness bad enough to get us sent back to Norway; Maria, My and I are in it for the long haul. As usual, the women’s alliance shall prove most enduring as we will be the only people in Spain for the entire time, thus making us the true survivors. Unfortunately, there is no million dollar prize waiting for us in the end, but I suppose a master’s degree will do…OUTLASTING

Lean, Mean, Sleeping Machine

Yeah, yeah, yeah, after many people hounding me (you know who you are) to actually write a blog rather than haphazardly slapping some pictures together, I ever so kindly caved and decided to please the masses.   My excuse has been that I haven’t been doing anything interesting since I had been spending my days in the lab, but recently a friend informed me that the beauty of my blog is that I take relatively insignificant things and make them entertaining, the example being how Norwegians walk in the snow.  Point taken, and now that I am sitting in a café in Lisbon I have officially scraped the bottom of my bucket full of excuses.  It’s ok though, because the better I am about writing on this, the more wrong Jiro was about how long I would last….and that makes me happy. 

So, I left early this morning for Portugal with my research partners Maria and My while the rest of our group took later planes.  I sat by My on the first flight to Frankfurt and warned her before we took off that I am really bad company on airplanes because something about the sound or feeling of the engine is like a lullaby to me and puts me straight to sleep.  I’m pretty sure at this point she was worried about having to spend 5 weeks with this crazy American, but I told her a story about a friend who when she was a baby her mom would vacuum to put her to sleep so she would know I am not alone in this sort of thing.  I’m not sure it helped my cause, but I felt validated.  I also told her she might be in the clear because I was stuck in the center and let’s face it, anyone who can sleep well in the middle seat (aka bitch) deserves a ribbon.  Well, it turns out I am a ribbon contender because as the plane was rolling onto the runway I went out like a light.   The only thing that woke me was the flight attendant to give me a sandwich and a drink.  It is usually a dangerous thing waking me up but if you come bearing food you are typically in the clear.  I thought to myself about how there on Lufthansa for a 1 and a half hour flight they give you sandwiches and a drink but if it were on an American airline they would wake me up and say “Would you like a drink?” I would say “yes” and they would reply, “That’ll be $3” and then my bleary eyed self would glare and say “Nevermind.”

For the second flight, I yet again got stuck in the center (I suspect sabotage) between My and Maria.  I told Maria the drill, which she was already well aware of, “When they come with food, take the food for me and put it on my tray but DO NOT wake me up.  I woke up an hour later to Maria crying out, “Nooo!” as My had reached out to shake me because the food was coming.  I had to laugh at the desperation in Maria’s cry.  Turns out it was for the best because Lufthansa for a 2 hour flight gives you actually decent pasta, a mini-Toblerone bar, and mini-water bottle and bread.  I reflected back to the U.S. and thought…what would they feed me for a 2 hour flight?  NOTHING.  Even on a 6 hour flight in the U.S. you are lucky if no one is allergic and you get peanuts, otherwise everyone loses and you get unsalted almonds.  If I ruled the world that wouldn’t be allowed, and I think to mix things up a bit, the people stuck in the center seats should get better food as compensation.  Then people would actually have to think a little when considering if they want aisle, window OR center seats.  Genius.   Also, there would be a law that if the width of your rear is wider than the width of the aisle you are not allowed to be a flight attendant.  It is not discrimination if it just works out better for everyone.  Oh yes, and  on a side note, if I ran the world there would be no Norwegian “chicken tacos” or caviar in a tube.  Thus, sitting here in the café, I can come to two conclusions about the day.  1) I deserve a ribbon for supreme sleeping skills and 2) I should rule the world.