Flora And Fauna That I Saw On The Virgin Islands

Might as well start with flora, though I am personally more into fauna. No idea what these flowering plants are. Statistically, they are most likely to be non-natives.


This last one is bougainvillea, that much I do know.

And now for some wild donkeys:



And some other domestics running loose:

There were chickens and roosters everywhere-- on the streets in Cruz Bay, picking at crumbs under our table at the cafe in Mongoose Junction. And as I expected, there were stray cats. But not that many and they seemed well cared for, spayed and neutered and fed by the restaurants. I'm sure they are not kind to the wildlife, but I was pleased to find so few of them and that they were in good condition.
My personal favorite series of shots was of a pelican on the beach at Cinnamon bay:



And then I also had this fun shot of a pelican about to plunge into the ocean at Leinmeister bay:

There were plenty of insects and spiders:


And a large number of photos of fascinating creatures that I took in poor light; deer:

Iguana climbing a tree (I was amazed how quickly they can ascend):

Land crab that wouldn't stay still:

Bat (fruit bat?) that came out looking mostly like a dark leaf though I think I can see wings and a head if I squint just right:


And my best nighttime photo, at close range with flash, not sure if this is a young iguana or not:

But the hardest to capture of all were the creatures I saw underwater. Here are some fish in very shallow water. There are so many that they make the water look dark!




And most special is the sea turtle that I got to snorkel with though I have no photo:

For completeness's sake there is also the hermit crab and brown booby featured on my previous blog posts. And not photographed, the mongoose I saw and frigate birds. The mongoose have decimated the iguanas. Interestingly, the only mammals native to these islands are the bats!

Introduction to Neuroanatomy; The Word Of The Day Is Hypermetria

I started neuroanatomy today. There is a lot of material and most of what we are looking at is very small so that makes it difficult.

Vet school can be rather surreal sometimes. The instructions for our gross lab were as follows: "Collect a half sheep brain and a whole brain. The whole brain is a loaner brain; do not damage it. Keep the brains wet during the two hour lab session." Right, I'll try not to damage my 'loaner brain.'

I'm now one week into distributions. I agonized over what courses to take and finally decided on a very light course load. I'm hoping to find time to exercise (something that has gone by the wayside this year) and to not be so stressed. We'll see. I hope it turns out to be the right decision.

Hypermetria, if you are wondering, is exaggerated movements/ propulsive type of movement. It is indicative of lesions in the cerebellum, as are ataxia and intention tremors.

Meanwhile I'm putting up some pictures of my trip back to Ithaca. This doesn't mean I'm done with photos from my trip to the Virigin islands, I just wanted to mix things up a little bit.

I met SuperLesbian and SuperLesbianCat in Northampton and we made the four and a half hour trip by car back to Ithaca. It was grey, but still scenic.







Above: Sometimes it is so grey in upstate New York that it seems like there is smog in the air but it isn't actually smoggy. So grey you should be able to reach out and touch it.

Reef Bay Hike: What I Was Doing Last Thursday

Last Thursday morning I wasn't dissecting cows, I was going on a beautiful hike on St. Johns.
Above: Plant tree frogs live in but you can only see them when they come out onto the leaf at night.
Below: Termite mound in a tree and ruins of an early Dutch/Danish settlement.



Above: Tiny lizard.
Below: Lichen growing on the trees' bark made them look camouflaged.



Above: Beautiful springs.
Below: Ancient petroglyphs at the springs. The most blown up one supposedly stands for frog!




As we got closer to the beach (our final destination), we started to see hermit crabs.
Above: Incorrect way to hold a hermit crab.
Below: The correct way to hold a hermit crab is to give it a piece of stick to grab onto so that it doesn't pinch you!


From Reef Bay Sugar Mill it was just a short, hot hike to the completely deserted Genti Beach.
Below: I've never been so excited to see a boat before-- this one was here to pick us up and take us back to Cruz bay so we didn't have to hike back up the three miles of steep hill to the road.

Below: Me on the beach, fully dressed. I then quickly stripped down to a jogbra, zipped off the lower part of my hiking pants and got in the water. Heavenly (see my even bigger smile). Then I swam out to the boat with several other hikers, though some took a dingy out.




Above: Me onboard the boat, very pleased with myself for making the swim.
Below: The view back to the hills we hiked down as we pulled away from the shore.

Below: My first brown booby (a type of gannet)!



Coming into Cruz Bay we went right past Gallows Point where they used to hang people (pirates).
Above: Ominous black ship at Gallows Point.
Below: Gallows point.

Below: Pulling into the Cruz Bay harbor.