We ran the traps today and found 9 mongoose (mongooses? mongeese?). We brought them back to Cottages by the Sea to "process" them. Buzz would put a bag over the end of the trap, open the trap, and gently chase the mongoose into the bag (by blowing on it). We weighed the mongooses -- they were between 200 and 600 grams. We checked to see if any of them had been caught before -- each mongoose we catch gets a microchip, so we can recognize them in the future. Three had been caught before: two from last year, but one from several years before. We sexed them, checked their teeth to estimate age, and, if they didn't have a chip, we surgically implanted on. To do that, we sedated them using ketamine and made a small incision in the thigh to place the chip, and then closed the incision with krazy glue. The mongooses are snarling little brutes until you sedate them -- then they get rather dreamy and lick their lips a lot. Everyone wanted to pose with a mongoose -- while they were sedated.
Even me!
Today I went snorkeling for the first time. It actually works! Unfortunately, you can't really wear glasses while snorkeling, so I can only see stuff close up, but for lots of stuff that works fine. I just cruised around some of the rocks looking at angel fish, sergeant fish, and yellow tangs (and lots more I don't recognize). Even just watching waves washing sand grains wash back and forth across ripples in the sand was fascinating. Tomorrow we're planning to go to Cramer Park to go snorkeling on a reef.