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| So... BCI (Bat Conservation International) contacted COG to preform a WNS (White Nose Syndrome) test on Jester Cave. | We haven't done one of those in quite a while so John VanDyke organized it and got a crew together. He even pulled Duane out of cave retirement for this. :) | We started at Train just in case there were Long Ears inside. A LOT of debris has gathered here from the flooding over the years. |
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| But is is good for a step up to get your shoestrings secure before going in!! | It has been a very warm fall and just the past week it has gotten cold. | You can see where the name Train Tunnel comes from! |
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| It was disappointing... no long ears... no pip...oops...I mean tricolored... only 1 lone myotis and a small mat in the area where we usually see some.... sigh.. | This was it... it was not a large enough group to even take a sample from so we headed out and made our way to resurgence entrance where we knew there would be bats! | It is hunting season and hunters were on property. So we're all wearing nice BRIGHT orange vests so they could get a better shot at us! |
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| This year we did something new. We took samples of the substrate. Fancy word for the rock the bat is holding on to. So we got about a dozen substrate before starting on the bats. | Our equipment: Sterile cotton swabs, DNA Sample vials where final swab goes after sampling, distilled water (not shown), Gloves to avoid contamination. | Andrew taking a sample: roll the swab across the nose and wings multiple times to pick up any spores that might be present |
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| Then break the swab off in the tube and seal it and call out the temp (in Celicus) where the bat was, vial number and species of bat. (almost all were Myotis velifer) | John was in charge of keeping the data straight and in order. | See... I was present... I just was the one taking pictures of everything else!<grin> |
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| Finally, 80 samples later.... almost 3 1/2 hours... we are done!!! John packs everything really good as we are about to wade though almost hip high water and climb out of the cave. | Then the L O N G walk back to the cars. But we had great weather and good company on the way back! | And then our reward for a days work... Lugi's Pizza in Blair, OK. Best Calazones in the world! Great job gang! |
