Trapping

Two days in the past two weeks I've been out trapping animals for one of my subjects at a farm owned by the university. We go out on the Thursday evening to open up a heap of pitfall traps (basically buckets inserted into holes in the ground - animals fall into them and can't get out) as well as setting up Elliot traps (small, standard traps where an animal enters for the bait and steps on the trigger which shuts the door) and larger cage traps for possums and bandicoots. On the Friday mornings we had to be out at the place we were trapping by 6am to collect what we'd caught, and take measurements on them.

The first week we caught two possums, two bandicoots, a couple of toads and lots of little mice and frogs :) I used to have strong dislike to toads and wasn't overly thrilled by the thought of having to pick them up (with gloves lol) out of the pitfall traps and take measurements of them but amazingly enough I quite enjoyed it lol. I don't know how much the toad enjoyed it but I was enjoying studying it up close. I discovered that they actually have really cool eyes.



Learning how to handle mice was interesting. You place a small calico bag tightly over the trap end before opening it and coaxing the mouse into the bag. Always keep the bag mouth closed unless you have hold of the mouse or all you'll see of it is a small ball of fur disappearing into the grass! Once the mouse is in the bag, encourage it to near the opening and grab the base of the tail where it joins to the body firmly before opening the mouth of the bag. To 'scruff' the mouse, grab the loose skin at the back of the neck firmly to prevent it from twisting around. At all times keep all fingers away from the mouth as it WILL bite if it gets the chance lol. Once the mouse is scruffed, it can be measured, usually by another person as that's easiest.

Week two it had been raining. Although this made things much cooler, it also meant that the wet grass soaked the bottom of my jeans and that we caught only one possum and one bandicoot along with the usual frogs, toads and mice (albeit rather wet, bedraggled mice). Still, it was pretty fun and it's kinda disappointing that we've finished all of our trapping now.