The Easter bunny!!!

We celebrated Easter today with a special meal! I bet you could never guess what it is. I'll give you a clue. It is a dish that may be more related to Easter than any other dish, but no one ever eats it. Any idea???? We had the Easter Bunny for our Easter meal!!! John, our roommate, went rabbit hunting when he was home for Christmas and brought two rabbits back with him. I don't know why more people don't have rabbit for their Easter meal....it seems so appropriate! :)

Happy Spring Everyone!!

Well its finally spring in southern Illinois! No more crazy ice storms....they have been replaced with torrential rain storms. Earlier this week we got about 10 inches of rain in just a little over 24 hours. I'm not complaining about that because life is already back to normal for me and it was nice and warm today. All the local streams and rivers are flooding, which is kind of neat to check out if you are a Hydorolgist or a Wetland Biologist. The first pic is the bridge over the Big Muddy River in Murphysboro (water is usually ~30+ feet below the bridge). The 2nd pic is Riverside Park in Muphysboro.

I think it was mid-week last week when I realized that spring was here. I was out doing field work and found the first tick of the season on my leg. The really funny thing is that about 10 minutes later Amanda text messaged me that she had "found first tick of season!" I just started laughing out loud. I texted her back that I found one too!

Yesterday was actually the first "official" day of spring and we marked it with the first meeting of the new year for our "Thursday Night Climbing Club." I founded this club last fall. We meet on thurday nights to go rock climbing and hang out. It was a pretty good first night.

Turkey Trappin'

This morning I (Ryan) got up at the crack of dawn to go out turkey trappin! Our roommate, John is conducting a study on wild turkeys for SIU.



We were sooooo lucky to catch turkeys today! It is the first morning John has actually went out to trap. He considers himself the "luckiest turkey trapper ever." We caught 6 turkeys with a rocket net. You can kind of see the net on the ground in the picture above. It is probably a 50ft by 50ft net.

For the past week or so, John has been baiting the turkeys with corn. You can see the corn on the ground in the background (upper left). Basically, the rocket net is a big huge net that you hide on the ground in the leaves. After your bait pile has been out long enough that you think the turkeys have found it, you sneak out to a blind about 50 yds away from it in the very early morning and wait to see if the turkeys come to your bait pile. When they show up, you fire off the net and it shoots over the turkeys and traps them.

The flock of turkeys that came into the site today was originally about 10-12 birds. John fired the net, and some of them escaped before we could get from the blind to the net, so only 6 were actually trapped when we got there. The biggest challenge is getting the turkeys untangled from the net without hurting them or letting them go. To help, we had black bags to put over their heads and Velcro straps to wrap up their feet. Once the bag is on their head, they are pretty calm and let you handle them.

We took several measurements on each bird, including: weight, age, and sex. Then each bird was fitted with a radio transmitter to allow John to track their movement. This study is mostly concerned with nesting habitat, so we only put transmitters on the hens. The picture below shows the "backpack" transmitters we put on the turkeys.

It was really neat to be able to handle these birds and see them up close. I was really nervous the whole time! It was quite a rush! I've never seen a turkey this close before, let alone handled one! Only got pecked a couple of times.

In this picture, they are trying to determine the age of the turkey. From feathers on the wings and tail, you can estimate the age of the bird. John has just checked the wing and is now using the tail to confirm his age estimate. The tail is fanned out and John's left hand in on the bird's wing.

Pretty cool for a Monday morning! Hope the rest of the week is this good!!!!

Tofu

We tried tofu for the first time this weekend. I thought it was great!!! It has little taste on its own, but readily absorbs the flavors of whatever you cook it with. It kind of has the consistency of cheese. We marinated the tofu and vegetables with a herb and garlic marinade and then grilled them.

I would suggest trying it. It is low in calories, contains beneficial amounts of iron, and has no cholesterol.

We started a Blog!!

Hello all,

Due to the growing infrequency of our visits home, and the ridiculous winter weather that has limited outdoor activities......We started a blog to let y'all keep up on us.

For Amanda and I, this spring is going to be a thesis writing marathon. Not a 26 mile run, but a really long, overwritten report on the research we have done over the last 3+ years. Most of our weekends will probably be filled with the task of writing, analyzing data, and other boring scientific stuff, so we will not be making our usual number of trips home. Whether you guys want to read this or not, we hope to at least fill some of the void in our lives by keeping this blog.

Besides all the thesis mumbo-jumbo, I think the biggest thing on my mind right now is the stupid winter we are still having in March. Snow is predicted for tonight and tomorrow. Over the last 4 weeks we have had 4 separate ice storms. They have actually been really pretty, but really limit the outdoor activities. Its pretty hard to run when everything is ice coated.

Amanda has been doing well at keeping up on the running workouts since she joined a local gym. I have not since I have insisted on running outside. It has gotten to the point for me that I cannot get motivated to run if the weather is at all bad. I just can't wait for spring!!

Despite all the crappy weather, we have gotten out a few times with the doggies to play. These pics are from two weekends ago. We had an ice storm on wed/thurs and then several inches of snow on top of that. Pretty darn good sledding weather!

Amanda flying down the hill with Bo while Dash watches from the hill top. Dash didn't really know what to think about the sledding at first.



Dash finally caught on...its fun to chase sleds. Looks like Amanda is heading for trouble. Can she put on the brakes fast enough!?!?

Here's me and Bo heading down hill fast. I wonder who will get to the bottom first? It looks neck and neck.


This is the small lake at the bottom of the sledding hill. A few minutes after this picture was taken, dash fell thru the ice and had to squirm back to shore. We decided to call it a day at that point. Poor little dash had a rough day. She got hurt by slipping and sliding into a wood post right when we got out of the car, got hit by a sled not too long after that, and then finally fell thru the ice and got all wet. It's tough being a puppy in southern Illinois.

Thanks for checkin' in on us! Hopefully the next blog will be about spring weather!!!