Bats, Rats, & Cat's Future

As I've said, or maybe haven't, I'm a senior at the University of Arizona, going for my Ecology and Evolutionary Biology degree (now all those blasted animal pictures make sense!) I plan on going to grad school, after taking a year to prepare for GREs and applications, etc. My goal is broad within this realm - ideally I'd study cetaceans on the east coast for a living. Unfortunately, that is a coveted life, so I'm flexible. I'd like to stick in marine mammals, or even more broadly, intelligent animals like octopuses or primates if the ocean just can't work out.

Back up plan: Become a sailor. In the CIA. Who can put out a fire and tune a piano? Sure.

So trying to focus my degree toward marine while living in the desert is a whole different story. I actually get laughed at when I tell people where I want to go. No matter, I'll get there, but I have to take everything I can that is remotely related. Thus I've got a finger dipped in all sorts of fields. In fact, I should start making posts called "What I'm Doing: Apples" and how it offers me flexibility, because I honestly do too much. But it's all worth it.

Currently my schedule includes:

Biology of the Oceans
Mammalogy
Evolution of Animal Form and Function
OChem D:

In the past I've taken a lot of other cool classes and I'm starting to feel a little like I know what I'm talking about in this field. That's always good, I think.

I've learned in mammalogy that part of learning about mammals (in the desert) is having to trap them and look closely and some people make "specimens" out of them - which I don't agree with. But we recently returned from a trip to the Chiracahuan mountains, where we spotted at least 20 species of mammals - many on the road!

Cute rehab bat who can't fly - Insectivorous.


Nectar-feeding (see the nose leaf?) bat of species I. cantremember


Kangaroo Rat! These guys can jump 9 feet!

¡Dame la Caméra!

I wanted to put in all the L.A. posts before anything new, but the trip was a month ago now, and with so many pictures taken, the task is daunting. And meanwhile, life goes on... life I want to post about! I'll come back to the L.A. posts, and I believe I can post-date them so the chronology will be correct.

A fun pastime of mine (like I need more of those) is working on improving my photography. Slowly but surely, I'm seeing results, and I'm really excited about it. Allen, introduced previously, is a computer programmer who on the side is persuing his dream of breaking into professional photography. He has mentored me, teaching me ways to use exposure, aperture, shutter speed, light, and the correlating options on my camera (which he actually likes!). I'm certainly no master yet, but I thought I'd put a few of the better photos up as a mark of progress.

I, unoriginally, love the romanticism of black & white and sepia photos (they always look so good), so I'll be unabashedly hiding behind that mask for awhile until I'm better. The day I showoff a color photo is when you can call my progress notable.
Above are just textiles, the first time I discovered the "macro" setting. I was blown away that camera could see those pillowcase fibers even better than I could. On the bottom is my camera case cord.

The kitchen and some roses that I dried :)