Wednesday August 6th

Eating cold cereal in the morning is better than eating bugs, which was what we were searching for after breakfast. We were given a net and a jar with poison in it to catch insects with. Our hike took us down into the woodland and into a large meadow at the bottom of the hill. We were pretty successful with the bugs, however only Doug and Bryant caught butterflies. Some bad luck happened, though. While we were resting in the shade, Bryant realized that he had lost his field notebook somewhere in the meadow. He offered to catch a butterfly and give the finder of the book one of Patrick's honey buns. It hasn't turned up yet. When we got back to the classroom, most of the bugs weren't dead, yet, so we went and ate sandwiches and chips for lunch (again). After lunch we broke up into 2 teams and split up to look for plants to use for dye. The first group walked down the hill and hunted for Missouri goldenrod. They were pretty successful. The second group drove down the hill and picked chokecherries. After a little while, we flip flopped and the first group went down to pick chokecherries and the second group walked up to pick Missouri goldenrod. Lucky for the first group, they got to ride back up the hill in the truck while the second group hiked back up. After chopping and boiling and preparing the dye, we picked a pattern for our bandanas and left them to sit in the dye. Next, we went off and set a turtle trap baited with chicken livers (eww!). Then, we set traps in the forest and the prairie for small mammals. The forest group had to be careful, though, because of all the stinging nettle and other plants in the forest. Supper was pizza night (along with breadsticks and cinnamon sticks). It was so much better than the tuna casserole that Brenden had said we were having (ha ha). We also deprived Bryant of his juice boxes (Reason: if he has too many, he gets very, very x3000 hyper. Just like Patrick). Then we came back up here to finish identifying our plants, pinning and identifying our insects. Also, we needed to update our webpages. When we get back to the bunk house, we'll probably stay up late playing games like we have for the past couple nights and wake up tired, but ready for another day learning about nature.