Good and bad news

Hello again,
As the title says I have lots of good news and a little bad news. The bad
news first- my computer hard drive may have just crashed in what I assume
is an irreparable manner. It has been reduced to a flashing folder icon
with a question mark in it. It kind of has a hint of mocking to it, like
shouldn't there be a folder or something here? You tell me computer, you
messed yourself up, you died, you tell me whats wrong. As I have said many
times when my internet (particularly in Humboldt) would die or other piece
of technology die- We can put a remote control car on Mars or put a man on
the moon (50 years ago) but we can't get a damn steady internet connection
(or now, a computer that works for more than a few years). Seriously
silicon valley, instead of making tinier and tinier chips so my computer
can weigh less than the paper its replacing, how about you make a computer
that lasts as long as my car at least (and yes I realize it is not
profitable to make things that actually last and you therefore design
technology to fail over time).

Rant over, the downside is this makes it more difficult for me to write
long, well-thought posts. I had been taking to writing them from the
privacy of my bunk at night when I could take the time to try to make them
seem witty or intelligent without actually saying anything, you know, the
fox news approach. However, now I will have to resort to just sitting at
the communal computer and writing whatever pops into my head (the fox news
field reporter approach).

So on to the good news:
We had our first fur seal pup of the season born a few days ago! She is
super cute and super tiny. I had been told they were small but had not
realized just how small that is. It looks like a small cat with flippers
and a weirdly shaped head. The poor little thing is currently sitting on a
beach, hopefully tucked VERY close to mom because it is about 26F outside
with winds reaching 35 mph. Somehow these little things survive this frigid
cold, only more often than not to succumb to the cold bite of Jack Leopard
Seal (instead of Jack Frost...). Either way, she is here and hopefully it
means we will be getting lots more pups soon. This pup actually arrived
very early considering we only have one other female on the beaches and she
isnt even pregnant, but still. Of course, once the others do arrive, my day
will get a whole lot busier.

We usually work on pups when they are only 1-3 days old. We like to mark
some individuals and measure how big they are before their mom takes her
first trip back to sea to feed, leaving the little one alone on the beach.
It takes a little teachwork and coordination to distract both mom and
whichever bull holds the territory she is in to swoop up the pup quickly,
but I guess we will get very good at it and the people I am working with
have years of experience. We do work fast with minimal disturbance to the
animals and mom and pup are reunited quickly with no lasting effects (mom
doesnt reject her baby if it smells funny or anything weird like that).
Many of the animals on our study beaches are so used to our presence anyway
that they barely even lift their head when we walk by and I am told that
even many of the territorial males have learned that if we catch one of
their ladies, we always bring them back.

We also had our first chinstrap penguin egg laid today. I haven't seen it
myself but I am told there will be many more soon. I will get to work with
the penguins a lot in January when the chicks are hatching. Until then, I
am holding on to my child-like innocence that penguins, unlike every other
bird ever, are gentle and loving and will come hang out with me if given
enough time to get used to my affections. If Youtube has taught me
anything, its that this is exactly the case ALWAYS. Unfortunately, the
naysayer "penguin biologists" seem to think that penguins are kind of
jerks. Evolution has given them extremely strong wings. While you might
think its to allow them to, I dunno, swim or fish or balance or survive in
some way, you would be wrong. Their wings are strong so they can slap the
hell out of each other all day long, as well as any human who might try to
get too close. Again, I have not witnessed this myself so I still regard it
as hearsay, but APPARENTLY its not uncommon for penguins to slap
their rivals, slap their mates, slap chick (particularly OTHER birds'
chicks), slap people, slap the ground, slap themselves... basically just
slap anything they can. We have one penguin here who is known by the
penguineros (penguin biologists) because he is particularly easy to spot.
In most penguin colonies, the birds are spaced maybe a foot or two apart.
They get into tussles, slap, bite, and sometimes it even leaves one or both
birds bloody from the battle, but they move on. This one bird has a halo
around him of several feet. No birds hangout inside that halo because he
will attack them. He is a man alone on an island (that he created)
surrounded by peers. He rarely has a mate, probably serves him right.

In other news, we had a crab-eater seal briefly stop by today (sunday) and
hang out for a little while outside our camp. He didn't mind me crawling
right up to him on my belly to snap some close up photos (its these photos
I was sorting when my computer died, luckily I had not deleted some of my
photos from here off the camera. Many are gone though...). We have also
continued to see weddell and elephant seals around the island. Not much by
way of leopard seals since that one young male, but they will show up in
bunches as more baby fur seals pop out.

Thats it for now. I made a well received homemade mac n cheese (courtesy of
my mom) for dinner the other night. Sidenote for anyone cooking for 6
hungry field biologists- cute the number of servings a recipe says it
produces in half at least. We polished off 1 lb of pasta with nearly 2 lbs
of cheese, brocolli, panchetta, and a side salad with ease. Luckily I had
also made some of my mom's famous chocolate chip cookies (with dough to
pick at over the next couple days) to solidify everyone for the night.


If anyone wants to get in touch with me, please leave a comment and I will
try to make sure my information gets passed your way (email here is very
restricted so I do not want to just broadcast it out just yet).

Thanks for reading, hope everyone stays warm and dry and appreciates the
beauty and power (for better or for worse) of the computer you are reading
this on...