The hills are alive

...with the sound of music! Or the wind, which was more the case. However, when I was working throughout the day in the field, I barely felt the wind blowing sometimes (it was hot, but Lizzie says that it wasn't as hot as it could be...I'll take her word for it).  Lizzie picked me up from the vicinity of my residence at around 7:00am, and from there, we drove about 30 minutes to the experimental site where we started our work. For about 6 hours, most of our work consisted of these steps:

Find the exclosure and/or sham. Sadly, I am almost completely covered by the surrounding shrubbery.

First, the cable ties have to be removed before the netting on the exclosure can be taken off.

This is followed by multiple strikes to the rebars to loosen them from the ground.

If that doesn't work the first time around, intermittently hammer while moving the bars from left to right before pulling.

After the rebars are removed, roll up the salvageable chicken wire to be ready for transport.

It was pretty grueling work, but I enjoyed it for the most part, despite the fact that we had to cart everything to the car at least 3 times. I believe that was about 15 minutes downhill with equipment and 10 minutes back uphill to get to the rest of items left behind; it was like an edition of Extreme Makeover: Gardening Edition/Field Work. After all this work, Lizzie and I had a Jamba Juice smoothie, which tasted like heaven after a hard day's work. Then we drove back to campus, and dumped the rebars in a dumpster and moved the rolls of chicken wire into the lab. *whew* I didn't realize until the next morning exactly how sunburned I was, haha. I just thought it was hot, considering the weather that I'm usually used to, which is nice and breezy La Jolla. Despite the now chafed and red arms and shoulders I have, I enjoyed my time outside, and the physical labor required to do this type of work. I have to say, this is a great way to end the quarter, and a better way to end a memorable internship experience. :)