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.
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