Field Trip!

As you may or may not know, I am enrolled in Intro to Ecology at the college this semester. It really is quite interesting! I still don’t know how I did on our first test (taken last week) since the instructor doesn’t have them all graded yet. Inquiring minds want to know! To be truthful, I’ll be happy if I get a C. I think a lot of students in my class are hoping to do that well! Anyway...

Our instructor likes us to pretend that we’re ecological scientists. As one of our lab assignments, we took a trek out to the re-created prairie on the college campus. When the college was built (many, many moons ago), several acres of land was planted with prairie grasses and plants indigenous to this area. Our assignment was to plot off 1x1 yard sections of prairie and identify the percentage of each plant in the section. We had to document six plots. Keep in mind prairie is at least 6 foot tall!

I did make an observation to the younger members of my group. I asked them to imagine having to drive through those tall prairie grasses in a covered wagon. Tough going, indeed!

There we were in our groups of 3 – pushing our way through dry, crunchy, potentially tick infested grassland. Kicking grass and taking notes. Being a country girl it really didn’t bother me all that much. I would’ve liked advance notice since I was wearing my work clothes while trompsing through the wilderness. I also have allergies, too, so I would’ve taken something to avoid sniffling through the rest of the evening. I must say that I did find it amusing listening to comments from other women who were not used to the “great outdoors”. Couldn’t see them through the thicket, but could hear them. LOL We even had one guy yelling out “Marco!” Then there’d be a chorus of “Polo!” My group managed to finish first… we didn’t mess around… we got right in there, did our thing, and got out. Yay for us because that meant we got to leave class early too! Woo Hoo.