Journal Entry #4 First Day in the Swamp

Look close and you might see an alligator

This is the snowsuit caterpillar.

Today was our first day in Slidell , LA. As some of my students have already found out it is about 40 miles outside of New Orleans. It took us an hour to get here last night. We all got to bed really late only to have to wake up at 6 am. We are staying inside a ranger station/bunkhouse. Imagine living together in one big room with one bathroom with ten people or so.

This is the giant orb spider!

Today we spent the morning getting ready for the caterpillars we would be collecting. I got the chance to test out my connection and suprised 7B by calling them to say hi. I missed them already and wanted a little bit of Girard with me today. I was hoping to get to pop in a on a few of my other classes today but we were just too busy. We spent about five hours outside in the forest/swamp looking for caterpillars.

Why are we collecting caterpillars? We are part of a research team that is collecting caterpillars and studying the parasites on the caterpillars. ( Watch out seventh grade, this will be something to think about for the next few challenges). It is believed that with the climate change that the numbers of parasites are decreasing which keep the caterpillar population in check, and then the butterfly population in check.

Some of the interesting things I saw today:

1. We found this caterpillar first, it is from the arctiicadae family. I like to think that this little guy is wearing a snowsuit.

2. The most beautiful thing that I saw was a gigantic orb spider. Look at this picture.

3. We saw an alligator today but I really wish I would have been closer. It is camouflaged so well that you would really have to be careful and watch where you step. Good thing this one was far away.

I spent a lot of time this afternoon in the woods and it was cold. I was counting the trees... literally. I was estimating the numbers of leaves on trees and how much the leaves had been eaten by the caterpillars.

I will talk to you more tomorrow!

P.S. The pictures seem to be having a hard time uploading we are low on bandwidth tonight so you may have to wait a little later for the pictures.