The Royal Treatment

Six flights in the last two weeks. It's been a whirlwind week of chatting about my Fulbright project with other bat researchers, meeting fellow Fulbright Scholars and people like the Australian Prime Minister and the US Ambassador in Australia, and filing ethics permits and risk assessments for my project. Last week I was in Canberra for several days for the Fulbright Enrichment Seminar. I started off "well" by being late to the first session due to a slightly late plane and falling out of the taxi van when I got to the hotel. Despite these slight mishaps at the beginning, I had an amazing time meeting other US Fulbright Scholars studying in Australia. The variety of projects was absolutely amazing, ranging from cancer research to pig castration to Shakespeare. I'm really excited to have a network of people in cities throughout Australia who are in the same boat as me. I was also amazed at the feeling of support I got from the Fulbright Commission and others involved with the scholarship. As Fulbright Scholars we definitely have many resources made available to us, and I know if I ever need help all I have to do is ask. Sometimes I feel as if we are being treated like royalty!

After the Enrichment Seminar I headed to Mt. Gambier (population ~20,000), where I'm staying until tomorrow. I arrived at the TINY Mt. Gambier airport and was excited to be out of the city and into a place much more similar to the area where I'll be living. When I arrived in town I met Cath Dickson of the South Australian Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR). I'll be working in conjunction with the DENR during my project, and because of this I got "inducted" to the department, which included learning all about government protocols and paperwork. I jumped right in on Day 1 by beginning to write an ethics permit and risk assessment for my bat project. I always knew government work included a lot of paperwork, but I never realized just how much until I had to think through all the possible hazards of my project (tripping on uneven ground, dehydration, driving, etc.) and explain ways to avoid them. What a long list! Cath and I worked through more details of my project and had a good discussion of our aims for the year. I'm really excited as I will be spearheading the work on the Southern Bent-wing Bats at Naracoorte Caves. The two main goals of my project are to test a new laser beam counting system to take censuses of the bats in Bat Cave and to improve the public interpretation program at the cave while minimizing the impact on the bats. There are a lot of other offshoots that we are planning to incorporate into the project, including censusing over-wintering roosting sites and compiling a reference call library for the bats in the area. I can't believe I'm in the position to be able to spearhead a project of such magnitude. I feel very honored to have the opportunity and also a tad nervous. It will definitely be a year full of learning and information exchange with people who share my passion for bats.

Tomorrow I will head to Naracoorte (about an hour away) to move in. I will definitely miss the friends I made in Canberra and the energy and activity of the city, and I must admit I'm a little apprehensive about living alone and making new friends in a new town as small as Naracoorte (population ~5000). However, I'm ready to finally see where I'll be living for the next year and to settle into my new home. I feel like I've been on vacation for a week and have not been able to fully process everything that has happened. I think some home decorating will be in order soon!

Bats, bats, and more bats: A perfect beginning

I have arrived! I have spent the last four days in Melbourne, and it has been such a wonderful time so far. I arrived in Sydney early Saturday morning, and despite all my worries about my baggage things went very smoothly. I did have to collect my checked bags and go through customs, but it was quite easy and painless. I stood in line with my bags in front of my while a cute Beagle-Basset hound mix came down the line sniffing all the bags. He paused for a moment at mine but then moved on and I was through. Virgin Australia did re-check my bags and they did weigh them but they apparently didn't care much about the weight as long as each bag wasn't over 100kg. So all my worrying was for nothing, like I thought it would be. I arrived at the Melbourne airport at 11:00am and met up with Lindy Lumsden from the Department of Sustainability and Environment who has been one of my contacts in Australia throughout the Fulbright process. She met me when I came off the plane and was holding a sign with my name on it. I've always wanted to be met like that! She drove me to her place in the country outside Melbourne and I immediately fell in love with the area. It looks a lot like central Texas where I've done my bat research and it felt like home. When we got to her place I settled in and we took a walk through a nearby park (it was a tad chilly, probably mid-50s Farenheit, as it is late winter here), where I saw my first kangaroos! It was so amazing to be surrounded by so many new sights and sounds. The birds sounded so exotic to me, even though I know they are common and familiar to everyone here. In the evening I got to help with a chore at Lindy's house: feeding the four bats she has in her care! I couldn't have been more thrilled! When she handed me the first one (a Yellow-bellied sheathtail bat (Saccolaimus flaviventris)) I was amazed at how large she was (about 4 inches long) and how docile she was. In all my previous experiences handling bats, they have been squirmy and biting and screeching. This one just sat in my hand and looked up at me with her jet-black eyes! I didn't even need to keep her from flying away. Apparently these guys are normally pretty docile, even in the wild. Lindy rescued and rehabilitated these bats and now takes them on public talks, so they are used to being handled and being in the spotlight. I fed her mealworms, which she gently ate right out of my fingers. I then fed another sheathtail and then an Eastern free-tail bat (Mormopterus sp.) named Grumpy, which was over 21 years old! It's hard to believe that that little bat is as old as I am. Feeding the bats was definitely the highlight of my day (besides arriving in Australia, of course!).
 

I woke up Sunday morning at 9:30am after about 13 hours of dead sleep, feeling ready to start my first full day in Australia. I had managed to stay up until 8:30pm the night before, despite being physically exhausted by that time. When I woke up I felt pretty refreshed and didn't feel too many effects from jet lag. Lindy, her partner Paul, and I headed out to the nearby town of Bendigo to see their colony of Grey-headed flying foxes (Pteropus poliocephalus). There are a few thousand in the colony now, although there used to be nearly 30,000. They were hanging in the trees within a patch of public garden. They were congregated within this area and not in the surrounding public park because although the park had the same types of trees, it did not have the understory vegetation that the garden had. Apparently the bats like not only these tyypes of trees but also the humidity that the understory in the garden creates. Some of the bats were up and about, grooming, squablling, and flying about, while others slept with their wings wrapped around themselves. Some interesting facts about these guys:

1. Because Melbourne is on the edge of their temperature tolerance range (it's almost too cold for them here), they sometimes defoliate the trees so they can more easily bask in the sun.

2. The more dominant individuals roost higher up in the canopy, and when they defecate the guano falls on the ones below! Flying foxes do hang by their thumbs, right-side up, to go to the bathroom.

3. Flying foxes skim over the water in ponds, streams, etc. to drink, but they don't actually drink the water straight from the pond. They get their chest fur wet and then lap the water from the fur.

Seeing flying foxes in the wild was such an amazing experience. It's one thing to see a few behind glass at a zoo, but it's a whole other thing to see them in their natural habitat (well, not exactly "natural," as this colony is in the middle of a town). So far my time in Australia has been full of batty adventures and I know I'm in store for a lot more over the next year!

"I don't know, I'm not trained for this."

What else could go “wrong”? I dare not tempt fate, but this day has been a collection of travel woes and interesting incidents. I can only wonder what else will happen in the next day and a half.

I’m at the LA airport for a five hour layover, then it’s off to Sydney and finally Melbourne, where I will be for a few days before the Fulbright Enrichment Seminar in Canberra. But let me start at the beginning: midnight last night. I had finished packing (except for last-minute items I still needed) and had planned to go to bed at a reasonable hour to have a chance of semi-normal sleep. I got online to check in for my flights and print off my tickets, and I noticed my last ticket, the one for my flight between Sydney and Melbourne, said (in small print at the bottom, of course), “Please proceed directly to the gate or ticket counter of your connecting airline to check in for your flight and receive boarding documents.” Okay, got it. Now the curveball: “If you are required to clear customs at your transfer point, all checked bags must be claimed and re-checked with your connecting airline—they will not be automatically transferred.”  I understand that I have to go through customs, although I had thought I’d go through it in Melbourne, not Sydney, but I had NO idea that I had to claim and re-check my bags with my connecting airline. My travel agent told me I did have to transfer from the international to domestic terminal in Sydney, but she said my checked bags WOULD be checked ALL THE WAY THROUGH to my final destination. Guess not. Now I’m left wondering if, when I re-check my bags, they are subject to Delta’s weight limits (50 lbs each) or Virgin Australia’s limits (70 lbs total). Both my bags fit within the Delta rules but are over the VA rules. I called Delta and asked whose rules I would be under, and he said VA’s (since they operate the connecting flight, even though it’s under Delta’s name). That’s not what I had been told by another Delta agent several weeks ago when I called about this issue. That agent had said since my bags would be checked all the way through they wouldn’t be re-checked under VA’s rules. In a panic, I called VA and the first guy I talked to let me explain my whole situation before saying, “Sorry, I’m not trained for this. Let me transfer you.” So he transferred me to another agent, who proceeded to read a script that I’d already read online and not answer my question. After getting the royal run-around, I simply asked, “Will I have to pay an excess baggage fee when I re-check my bags?” She didn’t give me a simple yes/no answer, but she DID say that because my flight was booked through Delta I am subject to Delta’s baggage rules. I heard her say it, loud and clear. So when I re-check my bags in Sydney I’m telling them what she said and I’m NOT paying a fee (well, that’s what I say now...). I just hope I’m blowing this out of proportion and that it will be an easy transfer.

Now for the rest of the day. My mom took me to the Cincinnati airport to see me off, and I managed not to get too emotional. That will come later when I have time to decompress and actually think. I went through security pretty flawlessly, except for having to go through the body scanner for the first time ever. I stood there with my hands held high like a criminal who’s just been caught and then stood on the little footprints on the floor. Apparently I looked suspicious because the elderly lady attendant proceeded to frisk me and run her hands along the inside of my waistband. She was very polite about it and it wasn’t a big deal (apparently the scanner often shows funny stuff around women’s waistbands and they have to be frisked), but I had mixed feelings of very mild offense and accomplishment. It wouldn’t be a true adventure if I wasn’t frisked at the airport. After that everything went pretty smoothly until I was waiting at my gate and I heard, “Passenger Kristen Lear please come to the front check-in desk.” Uh-oh, what did I do now? Did they find something wrong with my bags? Did I forget to do some vital check-in procedure? I went up, quite nervous as I heard other passengers chattering, “They called Kristen Lear,” only to find out they just needed to enter some information into the computer from my passport. Phew! Another travel first. :) We finally boarded the plane at 4:00pm and left on time. My next incident happened when I went to the bathroom on the plane. I was almost done when the door suddenly opened and someone tried to come in! I guess that lock had come loose. Luckily the door didn’t open too much and the person realized their mistake, so a more embarrassing crisis was averted.  I returned to my seat and started to fall asleep, and just as I reached the head-jerk/daydreaming phase a baby started crying, and all hope of a nap was gone.

So overall, the first part of my travels has been pretty smooth with some bumps along the way. I have a 15 hour flight, customs/immigration, a shuttle transfer between terminals, and a connecting flight with unknown baggage limits yet to go. I can only imagine the disasters that could happen along the way. However, I am encouraged by the fact that upon boarding my plane to LA I saw a man reading “The Gold Coast,” a novel by Nelson DeMille (sadly not about Australia). It must be a good omen for the rest of the trip! :)

It's the Final Countdown!

One week. One week until I jet off across the world to the Land Down Under for a glorious year studying bats and living the good life. I've been thinking, worrying, dreaming about this for over a year, and it's finally here. My room's a mess with all the potential stuff I'm taking (I'm restricting myself to two suitcases and a backpack, which limits things a bit) and my recent dreams have been filled with bats, bats, and more bats. I've been running around town getting last-minute things together, including several passport sized photographs from AAA in which I look like an angry criminal (hopefully they will never see the light of day), power converters so I don't blow anything up, and comfy field pants from Goodwill to replace the dearly beloved field pants I've been wearing the past three summers and that have been held together with duct tape for the past year.

I've also been spending as much time as possible with my family and friends and enjoying being home for the summer. It's the first summer I've been home since high school and not off somewhere doing research, and I really have loved it. I've loved coming home to the familiar smells of cats and home cooking, having family dinners with all my relatives, and spending the evenings with my parents watching Bones and Storage Wars. It's hard to believe I won't be coming back or seeing my family for over a year! I still can't believe how unbelievably lucky I am to have this opportunity to travel to (and live in!) a country I've always dreamed of visiting and to spend a year studying the animals I have become so passionate about: bats. I'm excited and nervous at the same time, but I KNOW that it will be a wonderful year full of great adventures!