Monday 22nd September-
I have 4hours free between lectures every Monday so I decided to continue with my squirrel journal. This involved an hour of me following a squirrel while it tried to stock acorns for the coming Winter. It even got mad at me at one point because I think I was sitting on its stash! We changed our study from cats today to look at some other vertebrates, including: fish, a sting ray, a dogfish shark, a salamander, a frog and a turtle. Me and Shannen decided to try the frog, which we renamed Loscann. Shannen wasn't too happy with dissecting a bullfrog as she had kept frogs as pets when she was a child. I tore into it though (literally). It was much easier to skin than the cat that's for sure! We were amazed by how vascualarised the skin was. Now we understand exactly how frogs can breathe through their skin. We got the skin off in no time and didn't even have to separate out the muscles as they were so clearly defined. once we had gone through all the muscle we would be presenting to everyone else at the end of the lab, I decided to play with Loscann. We noticed that when you put him on his hind legs it kind of looked like he was playing air guitar and so Froggie Mercury was born! When everyone was ready we went around and each pair presented the muscles of their animal so we could compare them to that of the cat. That evening we decided to make a start on our Habitat Conservation assignment, which was to choose an animal and watch it for 6 hours. Myself and Shannen decided to watch White-tailed deer as they live in the mountain right behind L&C. We headed off a spotted many does and fawns grazing in lawns. As we climbed to trail up the mountain we saw less and less deer, they had all already come down into the town for the night. We decided to head out earlier the next day. When we got home we headed to Walmart and Big Dipper with Eoghan for some much needed ice-cream.
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Eastern Fox Squirrel |
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Loscann aka Froggie Mercury playing his air guitar! |
Tuesday 23rd September-
My mammalogy lab was on shrews and bats today, which have quite similar skulls. I decided to do another journal on squirrels today for my mammalogy class. Saw one eating bark chips from the shrubbery which was weird, and another kept running into a sprinkler trying to hide its acorns. Exciting stuff. Since we didn't have a field trip Shannen and I decided to go to Southgate Mall for a bit of retail therapy. We found some great bargains as most of the shops try to get rid of their summer stock. Aeropostle had a deal: Buy one t-shirt get two free! That evening we put on some Frozen Planet documentaries.
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Some Montana bats |
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A squirrel munching on some bark |
Wednesday 24th September-
Same old college day as usual. Starting to get into a routine now. We headed up the mountain again that evening and watched some more deer doing what deer do.When it got too dark to stay watching them we headed home and continued Frozen Planet.
Shannen collected me after work for our lab over in the Field Research Station. This lab was just for us to get familiar with using some of the equipment we will use in our projects. When we got home we felt too lazy to make dinner, so Shannen, Dave and myself decided we would try some American fast food. We went to Wendy's which specialises in chicken and burgers. After that we went to Dairy Queen for the first time for some lovely ice cream.
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Blizzard Ice Cream |
Saturday 27th September-
It's Homecoming Day! Shannen and myself had signed up to go in the parade on the Study Abroad float. The theme of the parade was "Montana is Griz Territory" and the slogan of our float was "The World is Griz Territory". There were lots of other international students there too. We had been asked to wear either traditional clothes or Griz gear, so naturally I wore my Cork jersey. As there weren't any Irish flags (Shocking, I know!) I found the closest one I could, Niger and another cool one with a dragon, Bhutan. The parade started at 10.00am with 77 floats taking part. It was really fun seeing all the people who had come to watch. They really take homecoming seriously here. We had globes and stickers to give out to the children, who waited with goody bags open beside the road. We quickly ran out of stuff and so marched along beside the float waving our flags. When the parade finished we met up with Shannen's Missoula family and had lunch and pre-game drinks at their house along with Dan, Ethan, Aoife and Orla. The game started at 1.30 with the Grizzlies playing Colorado. We only stayed for the first 1/4 because the Grizzlies were destroyed the other team (they won 38-11!). We met more internationals and headed to Stacey's dorm for a while. Eventually we made our way back to Lewis & Clark, got ready to go out and had pre-drinks at Fabian's apartment. We decided that going to town early would be a great idea and so headed off after 8pm. Going out here is like a club crawl, you just don't go to one because they are all free entry. After dancing for what felt like hours we left the club, thinking it must be almost 2am. Nope, just gone 12! So we got hotdogs and headed home.
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Showing our Irish pride! |
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Mountain Line Bus Mascot |
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The Mountain Lion was great craic :P |
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Homecoming Game |
Sunday 28th September-
I have a mid-term exam this Wednesday so spent most of today studying and finishing up assignments. I also started looking into what I'm going to do over the Winter break. A group of internationals are heading to New Orleans when finals exams finish so I decided to go too! Can't wait to see The Big Easy and hopefully some alligators :D .
Sorry this week was quite short, I didn't really get up to too much besides Homecoming Saturday. Hoped you enjoyed reading anyways- Fiona
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