Week 8 at GCHD

 Week 8 at GCHD


Things are starting to wind down as my last few weeks are upon me. I mostly completed field work, trying to take advantage of the pleasant weather and completing tick drags throughout the county. Tick populations are still dwindling, though I have noticed an upward trend in the amount of Ixodes larvae at many of the locations I’ve been to. I also managed to find one Dermacentor adult female (who was looking a little worse for wear), which was unexpected considering how late in the year it was for adults.


In the office, I continued compiling our budget report and found some things for us to order for future events. I came across some customizable keychains that had both a flashlight and a magnifying glass on them, and Melinda and I thought it would be a good idea to include those with our tweezers and infographics. I also ended up creating a poster about our research efforts and results that summarizes the data we’ve collected so far. 


We unfortunately hit a snag in our pathogen testing. We hadn’t heard from our contact at the State Health Department in a bit, and so I ended up reaching out to get an idea of how far along she was in the testing process (her original estimate was about a 2 week turn around). She got back to us and said that she was having a bit of trouble with her testing equipment and needed them serviced, so the testing results wouldn’t be ready for a week or two. Melinda and I were really curious to see what we got back from these ticks, so we were a bit disappointed by the news.

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