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The year has officially begun

Details: Published: 15 March 2012

Now it is official - 2012 has started! :-)
Yesterday I joined Boris and Igor at doing fieldwork on Vipera berus (Common Adder / Kreuzotter). Goal was to catch as much snakes as possible, measure and weight them and also collect data about where they've been found, certain temperatures and information about the (micro-)habitat. With that it's possible to gain information about how big the population is, how much the single snakes move, how fast they grow, temperature preferences and so on.
At the beginning, the catch rate looked pretty much like a typical austrian national team vs. anyone football match: Cro - A 4:0. I was quite proud of myself, being such a good representative of our football culture even in herpetolgy. But in the end i also found a black male, even though i tried my best to avoid finding a snake ;-)
So the searching is the fun part, after that the snakes have to be measured, what is a bit tricky, because snakes usually don't like being handled and the fact that V. berus is poisonous doesn't make things easier. So this is quite a task and gets even harder when a new snake is found, because then you have to make a complete inventory of the animal, which includes counting lots of scales.

Today we are going to cook some snakes!

At first you have to find those bastards. This for example is a good place to harvest some.

This is a Snake. Beware of confusion with worms and centipedes! Their taste is not that good.

Don't forget to organise a cooking book, in this case we used
"V. berus in 20 minutes. The best cooking recipes for dummies. New! + 15 first aid tips".

Before choosing the recipe, check if you have enough V. berus for everyone!

The best parts are in the lower half of the body, they taste the best and inklude the most nutrients.

Also beware of this part, because it may cause bellyache if you consume too much ;-)

If you get bitten every now and then, it may be the best to just put it in the Microwave at 900W for 3 minutes, because otherwise, after 20min of proper preparation you may experience some problems in holding fork and knife. Enjoy the meal! If there are some snakes left in your bags, release them back into nature, so that you have enough to eat the next year ;-)

Weird accumulation of bugs - either they were pretty dead or in a really deep hibernation mode..

Todays prey - 5 berus-males.

Counting the different type of scales.

Pictures from each side of the head for later recognition.

It's pretty important to have a trustworthy person with you. Maybe check before if your mate had a bad day ;-)

Boris' REALLY photographing a flower.. He must have been very bored

The scales and pattern on the upper part of the head are used for individual identification.

In short - a really nice and interesting start for this year! :-)

Život u Zagrebu

Details: Published: 08 March 2012

Se very life in Zagreb..
What shall I say, time passes by reaally fast, I enrolled now for a f*[kin]-too-expensive 5-days-a-week-the-whole-semester croatian course, because I had no other opportunity than that. But hopefully I'll get some of the money back via another scholarship, we'll see, aaaaand, not to mention - i will speak fluently croatian afterwards, yeeeha! ;-) And to be honest - i'd (actually witout 'd!) really skip one or another frog for that.
Besides that, some more pics, i really did (you won't believe it... wait for it... ;-) ) an sightseeing tour (! me ! - sightseeing tour - !! i don't want to know the next thing/change which is going to happen ;-) ) , met some really nice croatian herping-fellows (thx for the warm welcome!!! :-) ) and o'course already did some excursion. Yeah and the next thing i'm gong to do is to go berserking on high/low heels.. i really really really, and can't emphasize more on it - REALLY hate them. Actually i'm going to start a petetition "against bloody high heels from 11 to 11". Why? My room is next to the stairs, and every ..§$&/( time one of these nice fellows goes down or up the stairs, it's like they'd do it right over my head, and i get awake approx 3-5 times a night because of that. So I'm a bit like a zombie atm (@ Smasn ....), and and drop dead in my bed every time i come back to my room in the afternoon. Besides all that whining, everything's leiwand, meet every week a bunch of new ppl and am really looking foward for the warmer period of the year, because of less clothes and prrreeeetttyy...naaah, just jerking, still me, snakes and stuff of course! ;-) Uh and for everyone who didn't drink it in Cro until now, i can really recommend a drink called "medica", it's something like a light Honey-Schnaps and really awesome :-)

Cheerios0rznsn!

Uhm ja, and as far as i really got to do some stuff for uni and language course, this project here will be handled a bit like [censored 2022-10-16]

PS: Most likely the next time something about the public transport will follow, which is quite busy here..
PPS: Added a comment function now - just click on the title of the article on the main page, and then it's possible to comment at the end of the article (scroll down). i'm really eager to see how long it takes until the spambots find this here ^^

Sava

Details: Published: 26 February 2012

Hier noch gach zwei dirty pix vom gestrigen Ausflug zur Sava.

..und jetzt noch mit ein paar Kitsch-Bildern weil's so schön war ;-)