A quick archaeology humor update to hold y’all while I’m away without internet on a familial vacation. You’ll notice that I’ve tightened comment security for a while. For if I did not, yea, my inbox would suffer beneath a prodigious weight of spam, ere I return. But fear not! You can always register or comment at the Facebook.
Now we’re part of a larger company, I get notices at work for job openings all over the West. There was one the other day for a Desert Tortoise Monitor, and I joked about it to a coworker who had moved to the Phoenix office and returned the other week briefly to help finish the report on a project she’d been heavily involved with.
Apparently Desert Tortoises are srs business, unbeknowst to me! You have to be careful about disturbing them, and when you’re digging archaeological units, you have to make sure to put in tortoise ramps at night, so they don’t fall in and become trapped. Isn’t that adorable? (Before you get too excited, though, tortoise ramps aren’t specially made. They consist of either mounded dirt or a plywood board, sadly). Apparently, in Iowa where another coworker used to work, they’d have that problem with mice. If they didn’t put in ramps, they’d come in in the morning and have to scoop them up with a bucket and toss them back out, which sounds kind of skittery and unenjoyable.
If you were wondering, we don’t have any critter problems of this kind in the Northwest that I’ve ever heard of. I guess we miss out all the fun.
Leave a Reply