This past week I made a quick trip home to Yellowknife to give a bat presentation to a grade ten science camp and to show Brandon (my lab mate) the true land of the midnight sun. It was a few fun-packed days of visiting friends and family, giving talks and attending coffee meetings.
One of the highlights (besides muskox steak, beers in the sun, and wandering through old town as Brandon said, 'they're actually houses!' when looking out at the house boats on back bay) was meeting a local habitat ecologist and her family who have recently moved to Yellowknife. She was fresh in her job after finishing up her masters on climatic affects in song birds and her husband was just finishing up his PhD on snow geese in the arctic, while raising their two fantastic kids. It's not hard for us science nerds to immediately hit it off, so while sharing science camp presentations at a local campground, email addresses were swapped and the following night had Brandon and I sitting at their dining room table with the most delicious spread of bbq, great conversation, and instant entertainment from their young son Alex who had thoroughly enjoyed watching how we caught bats the night before.
This morning I received the following email...
Apparently Alex was listening closely when Brandon made the joke about Alex "coming over to the dark side" and doing bat research when he is older. Yesterday he asked me "Dad, can you join the black side and catch bats?" ... and then he drew the attached picture to show me what to do!
(bat flying into a mist net under the moon)Whether it be a formal presentation in a community hall, a highschool talk around a campfire or an impromtu conversation over a game of lego soccer on a living room floor, it's always so exciting when people walk away as stoked on bats as we are!
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