Day 4 Moorea

We started off with Laura finding a giant green eyed spider in the girls bathroom today. She just walked out non-chalantly saying "There is a huge spider in the bathroom." then went out hungry to get breakfast. Heather and Sarah were in the bathroom watching Brittany brave it out with the spider. Then we ate our usual cereal, cheese, and bread breakfast at 7 in the morning. The group split up after breakfast to work on our indvidual projects. The lizard group went out to catch more skinks up to belvedere trail. In the first fifteen minutes we had about four lizards caught. Peter our professor took a video of the group running around like they found a million dollar prize to get the skinks. Everyone in the group today was able to catch a lizard. The skinks were just walking right into Heathers hands. Sarah was screaming and jumping up and down on her first successful catch today. Doni had a great gecko catch with our gecko noose that was created by Peter. The group caught 11 skinks and 3 geckos today. We were very proud! The fish group set out on bikes to White House to catch more blennies. At first it seemed like there were no blennies out today, but as time passed, we became better and better at finding them in their hiding spots. All together the group caught 3 blennies; the blennies were getting good at getting away from us! Poop dog and Moorea (the other dog) followed us out to swim today again. Moorea decided that she wanted an afternoon snack and she was chasing chickens for a while. Surprisingly, she caught a chicken! She stashed it in a secret hiding spot and retrieved it later. Because of a chafing issue, the fish group walked their bikes back to the research center. On the way back, we passed a big party, and were tempted to go join in...after all, today was election day and the entire island were off work partying. After lunch the two groups united and went for a hike up the mountain to see the waterfall. Since it is the dry season, it was more like a trickle of water, but the hike was fun! We came home and cleaned up for dinner and after eating something tragic happened: the little orange kitten (Laura calls it hopper) fell off the bench and broke his leg. Luckily, Shawna was there to save the day. She is a vet tech, and with the help of Brittany and Laura (who were sooo nervous) was able to set the bone and put it in a sling. Laura and Brittany's hearts were racing during the entire procedure, but Shawna just acted like it was nothing. The kitten is on its way to the vet tomorrow morning. We all just hung out and worked on out projects at night after the kitten scare. In a previous blog, we were asked what are projects were, so here is a brief description. The lizard group is collecting different kinds of lizards: two different kinds of skinks and some geckos. With these lizards, they will be examining the effect that temperature, body size, sex, and other aspects of the lizards has on the ability of the lizard to cling to a substrate. The fish group is working on a species of fish called a blennie. The blennie is a rockskipper, that jumps from rocks to rocks and hides in small cracks in the rock wall of the ocean. The blennie changes color according to its substrate (an observation made by the group while here). The group is testing the effect of temperature on the color change ability of the fish. To find out what crazy things we are up to tomorrow, keep reading!