I was part of the mammalian group at BioBlitz, which was much more of a “painstakingly observant to so little purpose” sort of affair than the more hands-on approach I noticed other groups taking, from collecting insect, moss and plant specimens to wading into the waters to observe fish—this, however, suited me pretty well, as I’m more of an observer than an active participator anyway, to the point of avoiding going off-trail for much of the time because I loath poison ivy (bad experience, hospital). And I really did enjoy observing the botanical garden; the entire area was beautiful, from forestry to waterfall, and I kept reciting pastoral lines to myself while walking around. Alas, my group didn’t get to see all too many mammals—as Allegra mentioned in her post, searching for mammals is frustrating (dare I say discouraging?) because they don’t much like people of any kind—but we did directly observe chipmunks (in fact, while the rest of the group was off-trail, I saw a few chipmunks playing and chasing on another, which was about as adorable as you’d imagine), a squirrel, and the evidence of a raccoon (vie scat and tracks). We also spent a large amount of time in search of the (evidently) extremely illusive muskrat—a mystical sort of being spoken of only in fairytales and environmental science classrooms—which still goes unfound.

A huge part of what the mammal group set out to do, however, was set traps for other mammals. We set two kinds of traps: IR Cameras and metal tunnel traps; the former I have absolutely no problem with; the latter, however, I worry about. I worry that those traps are traumatizing for the mice and chipmunks we were attempting to catch with them (a volunteer with our group shared this thought with me, which I appreciated because it gives me hope that I’m not just being ridiculous). Part of the beauty of nature, I think, is its inability to be truly captured (save for terrariums, but that’s another thing altogether, I suppose); attempting to do so for the sake of counting and examining animals makes us seem at least somewhat disingenuous about the cause of biodiversity, in my eyes. During the event, I observed more than my fair share of beautiful natural occurrences: a dragonfly sitting very docile on a leaf stem as our group took pictures and marveled at its size; a falcon sitting to roost atop a lamppost; a heron observing us observing it from across a lake and taking flight through the treetops with this enormous wingspan that I still can’t exactly place in a frame of reference with anything else. With all of these observations, I’m just not sure the metal cage traps were necessary—and possibly sending the wrong sort of message about biodiversity in New York.