Monday, November 28, 2011

The Catches Continue!

With the addition of some snares set across the river, we have now branched out a bit on species and added to the 'fur shed'!

The first new animal collected was an otter, caught in a snare set on a beaver feed pile. It was a great opportunistic catch, made possible by the assistance of a trapping club student and parent, and the snares we built early on. The kids seemed excited about the catch, and we had a fun day in science class dissecting and analyzing the beast. We found some partially digested blackfish in the stomach contents, which was a great success - seeing as none of our other stomach content analyses were productive thus far.

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We had a good view of the four chambered heart as well - and we were able to observe the frozen, coagulated blood left in the chambers:
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Also, we ended up catching another Red in the snare bait pile which had been robbed of its bait. Just goes to show the benefit of using naturally occurring trails, even when incorporating them into a bait pile. That particular bait had been stolen roughly a week prior to this catch. This is one of the students in the trapping club, with Bridger and Ada investigating the frozen bounty:




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