Why not some anecdotes?

Sorry for such a long hiatus from posting. I've been bitter about most things to do with "Czech Ticks" lately. Mostly I'm just annoyed that I can't seem to find them, and since a crucial material for my project is ticks to feed, not having them is a bit of a problem. I've been going out whenever I can though, but I think the ticks know when I'm coming.. and hide. The last time I went out I got 1 tick. Everyone else got about 20. No one really needed all the males they collected (because who ever really needs males?) so they promised to each give me a few. Currently I'm running an experiment with the males, which is certainly better than nothing.

Also, we went to Vienna this past weekend and had a blast. We were only there for one night, but we made sure to enjoy as much of Vienna as we could for the short time we were there. We first went to the Prater, or the fair with Vienna's famous giant ferris wheel. We decided we didn't want to pay $12 to take a long slow trip on a ferris wheel that crammed 3o people into each of it's standing room only compartments. As we walked around (with our wine in to-go cups), we noticed a crazy looking swing ride. We turned to eachother and said "Let's do it!" It involved a lot of swinging from tall heights and after awhile quite a bit of flipping. In the middle the ride slows down, before the flipping part... Michelle started shouting at the control person to be let off, but I was just as adamant that she'd be fine. Thoroughly confused, the ride controller just kept the ride going. Warning: Michelle will probably deny this incident. We also saw a lot of neat architecture, history, and art, and ate about 4 falafels each.

Today we celebrated Libor's "Name Day," which is not a birthday, but rather a day dedicated to everyone with a particular name. These Czechs sure like finding excuses to celebrate. The best part was a homemade cake with a big frosting tick. It's nice to see that the pleasure in making obnoxious lab related cakes is shared across continents. We sipped on some pina coladas, rum included, and then went back upstairs to finish our work.

I think that sums up a lot of the important events from the last month.

For now, tak ahoj. Ciao!

P.S. I'd also like to say to everyone from the lab that Michelle and I are both really sad to hear about Jun's situation. A lot of people here complain about the difficulty in getting a US Visa, and this difficulty is now affecting our lab in quite a direct and tragic way.

Mexican Food!

Amy and I took a walk in the rain today to the "Tesco," which is the "big" grocery store here. I was on a mission to find tuna, black beans, and salsa--3 staples that I have had to live without thus far this summer. Luckily I did, and needless to say, I stocked up on some canned Mexican food things. My parents are traveling through Europe and Amy and I are looking forward to meeting up with them in Prague Sunday. They are going to come to Ceske Budejovice on Monday to see where I've been living this summer. I realized today that I actually miss seeing a cactus here and there! It was nice going on my Sunday morning hikes at the end of last semester. I never thought I would miss the desert. However, I do not miss the heat. Amy and I found a really big discotecca last Saturday that was pretty fun. We'll probably go there again this weekend.
- Michelle

One Fat Tick

That was a very nice post Michelle, and I pretty much agree with everything you said about the weekend. By the way, the tick I found on my neck was the second close encounter I had with ticks since I've been here. I found one on my knee last week, and it was actually attached. It was only a nymph so I just pulled it off. So far no signs of Lyme disease.

I thought I would post some pictures from my first feeding experiment because I'm pretty much really excited about them. Out of 24 adults (12/12 wild:lab raised, 3 male/3 female in each feeder) 4 fed. I tried some nymphs too, but no luck. I don't think that's so bad for a first try. I've built some improvements into the feeders for the experiment I just started so hopefully I have some more success.



After only 3 or 4 days of attachment at least one of the ticks was 4 times the normal tick size.



Feces!! More proof that some ticks actually fed!!




Is this mean?

Post from Michelle

I decided to finally post something in the tick blog. We just got back at 3am this morning from a pretty fun weekend in Berlin. Well, Berlin-slash-Prague. We accidentally took a bad train from Ceske Budejovice to Prague... It was raining and the train was late from the get-go, then it stopped and we had to take a bus from one city to a connection in the next. There were what seemed like hundreds of school children on this bus, and at one point the driver pulled over so that one child could use the restroom in the forest, despite the fact that we were already running an hour late by that time. So, when faced with the choice of taking a 12-hour night train to Berlin or catching a 5-hour train to Berlin in the morning, we opted to make the most out of the situation and do a pub crawl in Prague Friday. It was fun but exhausting, and we met a fun crew from Australia. I really enjoyed touring around Berlin (we rented bikes from our hostel lobby and were able to see quite a bit). It has a really different feel from Prague. Prague has an older, more aesthetic feel, whereas Berlin is a very modern city, yet has a ton of history. It felt pretty weird walking through the Holocaust memorial; it was really quiet, and it was probably the only place in the entire city that didn't have any graffiti. I always feel pretty shocked after I read anything about the Holocaust. One thing I didn't know was that there were actually hundreds (maybe thousands?) of concentration camps all over Europe--not only in Germany. There was a map which showed the locations of 500 camps around Europe; there must have been at least one in almost every European country, and a few in north Africa as well. A number of religious and ethnic groups were persecuted to a lesser degree, including Catholics. Checkpoint Charlie was my second-favourite place we sight-saw in Berlin. There are signs all around it which have a bunch of pictures of some protest in which half a million people participated. There was a coffee shop in the background of the picture, and when I looked across the street, the same coffee shop, along with the U.S. Army checkpoint, were right in front of me.

News from the Czech Republic: Amy and I walked about a mile today to go tick hunting today. Amy hunted one off of her neck, although it escaped after a brief tussle.

Ox Essence

As an attraction stimulant in my artificial feeding system, I first tried to use a guinea pig hair lipid extract (because it was readily available). The smell it gave off though was hardly noticeably, and I think the ticks agreed. My first thought was to try something a bit more potent, like cow sweat. It's worked before in other labs anyway. We called the agriculture school, and they said to come on by and they would hook me up with some hair. There are less hoops to jump through here when using live animals. Now the cow just recently shed it's winter hair so it wasn't going to be of much use. But the ox was good and hairy. Without access to a battery powered razor, our contact at the ag. school just brushed the ox while I collected the hair tufts in a plastic baggie. The ox didn't seem to mind that much, but it did keep hitting me with its tail while I stood there. You might notice the small nob on it's side. There was a bigger one on the other side. They're doing experiments in cow digestion by adding digestive enzymes directly to the cow's/ox's stomach.



I'm hoping that I got a good lipid extract from the ox hair, and that the samples weren't oxidized too much during the longish time it took to evaporate the solvents. Michelle promised to update the blog soon so keep an eye out for that.

Taking hostages

Today we went tick hunting out in the forest. Some things that we did wrong... first off, we need to use smaller flags. Like a sqare foot and half, ahem.. about a square half meter. Secondly, we should have looked in a habitat hospitable to ticks. This is the proper way to look for ticks.


Or in tall bushes...









Ok, ok, I lied. Low lying grasses are best. We at least had that right on our expeditions.

Michelle and I caught about 20 ticks each. Although I think Michelle lied and actually collected less. Here's a tick on the flag. You have to look sort of closely.

Kabat concert

Rock on!! Nearly half the town of 100,000 people showed up to see Kabat (in Czech similar to "vest"), a famous Czech rock/hair band. We celebrate.

Oh, and we didn't go tick hunting yesterday. We have to wait until next week.

Learning from one's mistakes

Before leaving for the Czech Republic a friend of Michelle's told her that we should refrain from using American hair dryers in Europe. Michelle mentioned this when she asked if she could use my American hair dryer, and I pointed out that I had a wattage/voltage converter thing, and there shouldn't be a problem. She came back a few minutes later describing a weird noise and explaining that she now had no power. So until Monday morning Michelle mooched off of my lights and my refrigerator.

Now I was pretty perturbed that I would not be able to use my efficient American hair dryer and thought that the matter could be solved by turning off all the electronics in the room and using a different converter. I also noticed a circuit breaker box and figured I could always just turn my electricity back on. After a weird noise and a fruitless effort to return my electricity, I am now left to ponder why it's important to learn from one's mistakes.

-Literally, Powerless.