Ok. I am not a fan of ticks. Who is, really? That said, one of the sites I collect at involves a lot of walking through, squatting in and in general rubbing against waist high grasses, in other words, tick heaven. The first two collecting trips I managed to get through this sea of grass without a single tick sighting on me. I was just about convinced I survived this trip unscathed as well, however, on a trip to the lavatory I found a rather sizable, although not quite dog tick size, tick embedded on my waist where my shirt was snuggly tucked into my jeans. Oh great! At least it was big enough to not be the Lyme disease carrying deer tick; they are surprisingly, actually shockingly, tiny. This one was small enough that I was able to very easily dislodge it with a firm grasp and pull. Just a small red mark left as evidence of its presence. They do not hurt, you can't feel them when they embed, nor do you feel the movement of the smaller species as they wander, and they do travel about quite a bit before settling down in a snug place. I get home today, immediately I hop into the shower. My eyes widen in horror as I notice two very tiny ticks lodged into my shoulder and upper arm. Deer ticks. I removed them, thoroughly washed the areas with soap and then alcohol and a dab of anti-biotic cream. Now, I just have to wait and closely monitor my bites. Hopefully neither of the bites will develop the characteristic rash associated with Lyme disease bacterial infection. Today I am quite tired. I maybe had one, possibly two, good solid hours of sleep last night. For the rest of the time I existed in a quasi awake state listening to the bustling 'night life.' I don't know what the people are doing there in the day time because it is so dead, but at night the area is alive with noise and activity. There were multiple trains coming into town all at once sounding their whistles around 3 am, large industrial sounding metallic containers being dropped repeatedly throughout the night, jake braking trucks every fifteen minutes and some seemingly sizable animal rifling through the under story nearby certainly gets the heart racing. Almost definitely the temperature dropped lower than the weather report predicted. Several times in the night I desperately wished I had my warmer sleeping bag or my extra camp blanket as I tried to curl up into a tighter shivering ball fully submerged in my sleeping bag and winter hat. And can someone please tell me where the folks of this town buy food or go out to eat! So far only one small grocery store and one NASCAR themed diner have proven to be the only hot spots for finding something to eat. I was awake before six in the morning, the camp broken, the light traps collected and everything packed away and was off to the other site shortly after 8 a.m. The collecting was quite good. I have an adult female polyphemus moth in a container upstairs with some host plant material with the hopes she will lay some eggs and I'll be able to rear the larvae. A few of the traps previously set were submerged under the rather high water. But the traps that remained were filled to the rim brimming with beetles. So much so that instead of picking through the samples in the field, the entire contents were poured into wirlpaks for me to work through in the lab. One even had two shrews in it. And despite the threatening overcast and ominous looking skies and wind, there were only a few moments of drizzle and it didn