A Much-delayed Pick-me-up

You're welcome.

Mermaids and Manatees

I recently visited my dad in Florida, and among other things, went to Homosassa Springs State Park. Besides being the "land where the wild peppers grow", it also plays permanent home to 4 female manatees and temporary home in the winter to hundreds more. The manatees graze on lettuce several times during the day, and they're pretty huge.

A fun fact I learned was that manatees, despite being so large, actually have a very small percentage of body fat. The reason their run-ins with speed boats are so deadly is that their lungs are just under the surface of their thick skin on their backs, so when propellers hit them, they literally cut into the manatees' lungs.

 

Homosassa Springs has a nice assortment of local, native animals, in addition to a retired movie star hippo who residents petitioned to let remain in the park.

  Out of the 11 alligators on site, I took notice of this guy in particular who I nicknamed Ol' Stubby.

A Brief Outing to Elder Covered Bridge

It's a bridge, it's covered. What more do you want? (Also potentially a great swimming hole near it.)

Research Culture Shock

In May I visited Auburn for a walk on the wild side, or rather, on the "soul" side... the one where you pronounce the word soil as soul.

I was a visiting speaker for an erosion control workshop, where I talked about my rain garden monitoring and modeling research project. In return, I got to bear witness to an interesting niche research area I didn't really realize existed and learn about erosion control practices used in construction projects, which is incredibly relevant to my research area.

Not surprisingly, they are all pretty easy to install in ways that cause them to not work at all.

The highlight of the Auburn campus was Samford Hall, which I'm sure goes onto all their admissions material and postcards, and the highlight of my talk was when I ended it with "Go Dawgs" and didn't get booed off stage. (Little did I know that the tragic story of War Eagle took place during an Auburn-Georgia game... oops!)

Oysters, Oaks, and Tides

.. or, a perfect trip to the Georgia coast!

I went on a field trip to Savannah to check out some potential ecological restoration sites during this past Spring semester, and since I'm running -way- behind with my timeline, here's a brief summary.

We visited the Wormsloe Historic site, looking at pine beetle damage in their loblolly pines and admiring the lovely buildings from the Old South, including their weird, creepy statues..

.. and the Burton 4-H Center on Tybee Island, where they have some massive erosion issues due to tides. We also stopped by the beach, where they have these large hurricane tide-measuring sticks.

But the most striking image of all was the mossy-covered oaks. (This particular scene is from Skidaway Institute's Jay Wolf Trail.)