Day 4: Adventure Caterpillar Collecting

On Wednesday, I was assigned to go on a mystery trip with Dr. Wagner. Just to give you some background, Dr. Wagner is the best caterpillar taxonomist alive. He has identified and named 20 new species, and even has 2 species named after him. Of course, he’s written some very visually clarifying field guides. He also gets super excited about caterpillar finds. 

To start our trip, we drove down to a canyon near Patagonia, Arizona. It was much greener and lusher than the canyons around SRER. We were just randomly driving and crossed a bridge, Doc Wagner got really excited as we passed some popular trees by the bridge. He pulled over, “Everybody out, we’re going to go bang on those poplars!” That was the first of 5 random stops we made whenever he saw the proper host plant of the specific caterpillar he was looking for. 

We found some really rare specimens including one that had never been photographed in its last instar (final post malt period of larva stage). It was fun not knowing when we’d suddenly pull over, be out of the car, banging trees and shrubs with our tap rods and catch sheets. I got pretty good at spotting caterpillars without banging branches of trees. I looked for leaves  that were freshly eaten to help guide my vision to a spot on an elderberry bush where I located a little stick-like caterpillar. When I banged him onto my catch sheet, he’d flop around like a fish out of water. I called it his “crazy dance.” I discovered this caterpillar on our second stop. Each time we stopped, Dr. Wagner would say that we were going to lunch after the next stop. This process repeated itself 6 times. Truly, not even food is a priority for this scientists, just caterpillars!

Finally, when he set us free to grab lunch in Patagonia, our group went to a little Mexican food diner and hoped that the monsoon would come in. This time of year it is supposed to rain quite a bit, but it really hasn't happened since I've been here, so we we're really hoping it will: the more rain, the more caterpillars. We got ice-cream before heading back home. We did one last beat on junipers for Lee and then went back to SRER. I walked the quarter mile to make a few phone calls, and then I showered and went to dinner.

We had burritos and they were awesome! We also celebrated Greg’s birthday with a cake. The icing was a homemade fudge icing (made with melted chocolate chips and powdered sugar.) It was very sweet. Rory, Michelle and I stayed after and made the lasagna for Thursday's dinner. We are super planners. I am going to bed early tonight because tomorrow we are leaving at the crack of dawn to go to the Sonora Desert Museum. I know what you’re thinking…boooorrrrriiiinnnnggg. But actually it has a lot of live organisms which means it should be pretty cool. I will tell you more about it soon.

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