Reptiles at Risk

Farewell to Megan

Posted by Jeff Hathaway on August 15, 2006 at 10:08 AM

After Maple Creek, last week we headed up to Swift Current, to do a program for the youth centre in town. After the program, we ran some errands, and then put Megan on a bus for a 44 hour ride back to Ontario!

She has a field research course in Algonquin Park for the next two weeks as part of her wildlife biology studies at the University of Guelph. We hear she got home safely, and hope that her course goes well. Then, Crystal and I drove up to Saskatchewan Landing Provincial Park for the night.

We got there just as a prairie thunderstorm rolled in, so we didn't even set up the trailer- with just two of us we can also easily sleep in the back of the van! We had heard that Saskatchewan Landing has a good population of bullsnakes, and hoped to see one, but we weren't lucky enough that day. A swim in the South Saskatchewan River was a wonderful way to cool off- out here on the prairies we have really been missing the numerous lakes we're used to in Ontario!

The park program that evening went very well, and as we were packing up in the morning we met a teacher from Medicine Hat, Alberta, who was so impressed with the show that she's going to try to arrange for us to come out there this year, rather than waiting for 2008 when we'll hopefully tour Alberta and British Columbia! We'll need a lot more funding to pull that off, though, as our NSERC Promoscience grant is for three years but the amount declines each year, and that will be the most expensive of the three tours. If anyone has any suggestions for funding ideas, we'd love to hear them; of course, we do accept donations!