Day 29

The past few days have been exciting!  On Sunday we managed to successfully get a van, and we drove up to Mossman Gorge for a hike.  I was expecting a real hike--a grueling, five-hours-long trek up a mountain, fighting back plants and venomous animals.  What I found was an elevated platform through the forest, probably best-suited to the elderly and those bound to a wheelchair.  It was very pretty, but when you've got a full bag of hiking gear, complete with a first aid kit and emergency snacks, it's a little unnerving to see old women in flip-flops.

It was a lovely walk, but I wouldn't go back again.  There were some nice trees, and lots of turkeys, but that was about it for wildlife.  (One of the turkeys bit me!  It was my fault, though.  It didn't draw blood or anything, but it sure surprised me!) I also managed to forget my camera's battery in the charger, so no photos of Mossman Gorge, I'm afraid.  Sorry, folks.  It poured on us almost the entire time, so no great loss, I suppose.

Monday and Tuesday were uneventful days of class, but on Wednesday the aquarium folks went out for a little field trip!  We were trying to collect fun animals for a touch-tank for next weekend's Open Day, which is (to my understanding) a sort of 'prospective student' day where they show potential future students all the wonderful and exciting things they can do at James Cook.  We drove up to a little place called Yule Point, which to anyone who doesn't know it already appears to be a random pullover on the highway.  We went at low tide, armed with buckets and nets and dive booties, and went out to catch cool stuff!

Starfish were everywhere!  They kinda freak me out when they move, to be honest.  They just kind of glide.  :-/
Of course, being freaked out didn't stop me from playing with them.

There were hundreds of them!  I also saw an octopus, but I didn't get a photo of him.

It's a bit blurry, but this is a rough file clam.  They're very majestic when they swim!  (I took my crappy old point-and-shoot
for the trip, which took AGES to get the photos off of.  And they were crappy photos anyway!  Bah!)

One of the other girls caught this pretty eel!  She named him Dexter.  He's about a foot long.  We love him!

Just as the tide started to come back in, one of the students in our group stepped on a stingray.  I wasn't aware of this, but stingrays are actually pretty scary.  The tail is barbed, and it went right through his bootie and cut him pretty deeply above the ankle.  I didn't realize how bad the wound was until he removed the bootie and blood poured out it!  We were more than half a mile from shore, and the walk was through water, sand, coral, and uneven rocks--and he had to be carried.  The strong folks got him most of the way but it was very difficult, and they eventually got too tuckered out.  The rest of us took all the gear back to the van.

We called an ambulance, and what we got were two--an hour later!  I couldn't believe how slow they were.  Both ambulances had exactly one woman in each.  Nobody else, just a single woman.  When they got there and saw him out on the beach, they said, "How are we going to carry him?  We're just women."  Then why did they send them?!  So much for these being the days of equality.  We had to call the fire brigade to come carry him, because the EMT-women wouldn't let us use their stretcher.  He was taken to the hospital, where they cleaned up the wound and stitched it up.  He's on heavy antibiotics now, but he'll be fine, thank goodness.

We had to wait so long for the ambulances/fire brigade that a lot of the animals we collected died.  We tried to get this
little guy back into the open water, but he didn't get very far before he went belly-up.  Sorry, little fish.

This clam almost took my finger off!  We brought him back to the aquarium and named him Clarence.  :)
(I took photos of animals while we waited for the ambulance.  I SHOULD have taken photos of the fire brigade!)

Fortunately, the professor overseeing the field trip was Jamie Seymour, a well-known expert on venomous animals.  He's done work with box jellies, stonefish, cone snails, and venomous snakes from all over the world.  He was even on the Nat Geo Wild channel last year!  I'm working on getting my hands on the full episodes, but the promo trailer is definitely worth taking a look at, here.  Jamie was actually on-board with Steve Irwin when he was fatally barbed by a stingray, so we were very fortunate to have him with us!  Everyone handled the situation very calmly, especially (and most commendably) the victim, who stoically informed the group that he was at "an 8" on the 1-10 scale of pain, and that it was "the worst pain he'd ever felt."  I'm fairly sure I would have been a little freaked out if that much blood had been pouring out of my leg!

We had a 'debriefing' today about the incident, just to be sure none of us had any psychological trauma and to let us know what happened to our injured friend.  (He'll be fine, by the way.  He's just got a bit of a gaping wound above his ankle.  No biggie.)  We might be going for another trip, since most of what we caught died while waiting for the ambulance.  Yay!  :)

Tonight I went out with Taylor to look for toads.  We need them for our Venomous Australian Animals class, where we're going to knock them out, crack their ribs, and inject venoms into their hearts!  (Yes, they're going to die.)  We needed at least two toads each, but as every Australian we spoke to told us, it's not toad season!  I received a toad at breakfast from one of the lovely employees of the student lodge, who heard (not sure how, maybe I talk louder than I think?) that I was looking for toads, and when she found one in her dog's water bowl this morning she put it in a bin for me.  But one wasn't enough, so we had to go find more!

He's a pretty good size!  And I didn't even have to look for him!  I named him Charlie.

Taylor and I each needed at least two each.  Toad hunting is basically taking a flashlight around in bushes and looking for toads.  It is time consuming because, as previously mentioned, it's not toad season.  Taylor found the first one, and hers is a big guy.  The rest are a bit small, but we ended up with 6 toads total, or 3 for each of us.  Success!

We caught four smallish ones, I hope they're big enough for our envenoming needs!

The top-right one is Charlie.  Bottom-left is the HUGE one Taylor found.

Awww.  I'm so sorry I have to kill you tomorrow, Charlie.  :(

I'll be going on a field trip to Green Island this weekend, so hopefully I'll have some more cool photos soon!  And I won't forget all my stuff at a bus stop this time!  :)