Abbott Ecology

  Tortoise Re-articulation My friend rescued a tortoise and gave her a beautiful home. Unfortunately, Tippee had not been cared for properly prior to Dinah's rescue, and she became very sick within a few months of Dinah having her. Dinah had never had a pet die before, and it was really hard on her. She trusted me to bury Tippee and gave me permission to keep the skeleton once it was ready. On Sep 9th (2023), Dinah brought me Tippee's body. I held onto her for a while because Dinah kept checking to make sure she was really dead. After about 12 hours I put her in the freezer, then buried her once I had a chance, with some purple mums because she loved eating flowers.  A few months ago I pulled Tippee's body back out of the dirt. The flowers had been long gone since the winter froze them, and the skeleton was well preserved. I didn't consider that the shell could be several bones articulated together like a skull, or that the skull of the tortoise itself would be made up ...

This story gets its own post because it was an event.  07/26/24 I had the first Friday of that crazy busy (rural med) rotation remote. I needed to make some calls for the clinic, and can’t do that at home with all the chaos. I went to my school for the quiet morning and stayed to go to COMC (The MSK clinic that I used to staff) and get some tasks done on campus like following up on my TMJ project. Anyway, I’m going out to my car at the end of a Friday and I find an egg sac . I pick it up, something inside wiggles. Naturally, I must have it (I hope it’s a mantis egg ootheca! ) I take it home and put it in one of my bug cups and then put the bug cup in the terrarium. Now we wait.  After nearly a month of waiting I gave up. The inner part didn’t wiggle anymore by the time I took it home and I was pretty sure it was dead. I kept the egg sac in the cup but removed it from the terrarium with the intention to cut it open in a few days. Days turned into weeks as I got progressively b...

  08/24/24 Today we do more bug pinning. More label making, and more updating.  The walking stick died, unfortunately. This was kind of a crazy scenario because I had finally found the oak that she would eat and she died anyway after only a couple of weeks. Sometimes they die once they’ve laid eggs but I didn’t see any eggs. I do some youtube research to determine how to best preserve her (should I put her in the freezer so that I can get to pinning her over the weekend?) Turns out that if it’s a female then the eggs in her abdomen are viable. Mind you, this is Tuesday of a very busy rotation and I’m basically just home for hygiene and sleep so I don’t have any time to pin this bug.  Cut to me doing an emergency c-section on this bug once I get home on Wednesday. Got about 30 eggs out of her abdominal cavity and put them onto a moist paper towel, hoping for the best. I’m writing this entry about a month later and there’s no signs of hatching so I think it’s safe to say we...

 Today for Dinosaur Academy Revan and I learned how to identify some important snakes and recorded a  presentation  about them.  Then I cleaned the pond filter, and inadvertently found a male rhino beetle in my raised bed! I grabbed him up to put into my terrarium with the females. It was quite difficult to hold the beetle with my bare hands. I didn't get a picture because I was gross.  I set up a new terrarium for the stick bug. It eats oak. 

We went to Gonzalez TX to camp over the weekend and I couldn't resist bringing this MASSIVE stick bug home!  It stuck its leg into my son's mouth. He was not impressed.

 I need a place to write down my recipe so that I don't forget it, so into the ecology journal it goes! It worked out really nicely and is the perfect consistency.  Ingredients: 2/3 cup coconut oil 1/2 cup zinc oxide powder 1/4 cup shea butter 1/4 cup mango butter 1/4 cup beeswax 3 droppers of carrot seed oil Directions: Melt ingredients in a double boiler Let set Rub on baby's butt