Porcupine days...and fox appetites...

We have been continuing plot preparation and survey work. Day before yesterday we marked out Christine's low elevation randomized plots, and yesterday we collected plant cover and height data from the three long-term study sites we had previously set up.

The highlight of the week has been porcupines. The first night we arrived a porcupine woke us up at some god-awful hour by chewing on our cabin. The cabin is made out of such thin, uninsulated stuff that the whole edifice acted like a resonator. It sounded as if someone were using a giant, amplified wood rasp on our cabin. Which, of course, was more or less what is was: the giant, amplified incisors of a porcupine.

I hadn't realized that they are such wood-eaters; they're basically terrestrially-inclined spiny beavers. And they have a penchant for pressed fiberboard and plywood, it seems. Thus, when we went hiking back up to the plug, to play in the snow before it all melts (it's going fast), we found a porcupine eating the 'Narrow Windy Road' sign. You know, the tilted yellow square variety, the ones usually made of metal? Only, for some reason (maybe due to the cost of replacing avalanche damaged signs) this one was made of some kind of hard pressed fiberboard.

We had noticed the sign while hiking up the first time, looking very ragged and chewed, although still hung upright, and Christine had mentioned that it was almost certainly porcupine damage. But I hadn't thought much of it; I certainly hadn't expected to meet a porcupine eating it. But there he was. I heard him before I saw him, and my brain couldn't figure the sound out. "Is that a bird's unusual mating call?" was my first thought. And then I saw the little bugger, chewing away.

First I just took lots of photos, then Christine reminded me, HEY!, your new camera takes video! So, I got some video too. Pretty funny and strange.

* * *

We decided to check out Skyland, the closest bouldering area. As we walked out the door we heard marmots making warning calls. That's when we saw the fox with a marmot. I grabbed my camera and got some video.  It was pretty strange watching it finish the kill.  The marmots live all over RMBL, including under (and sometimes in) many of the cabins.

There is long running research on the marmots and other rodents here, so folks get pretty attached sometimes.  The video will go to the marmot lab, as it will allow them to identify which marmot it took, and because a fox taking an adult marmot is very rare (they usually only eat the pups).