Tuesday, June 30

Kevin Keel and John Fischer from SCWDS (the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study) at UGA lectured to us this morning on wildlife diseases. In the afternoon, Kevin led us in a necropsy of white tailed deer for the annual health survey of the population living on White Oak property. The deer that my group got was about a year old--still had deciduous premolars, and the third molar hadn't errupted yet--and was already full of parasites. I guess that's what you get for being a wild animal.
Our interesting findings included
Lots of keds, but no ticks
An abcess in the abomasum
Live Setaria yehi in the GI, and one in the epicardium
Calcified dead Setaria yehi in the omentum
Gongylonema pulchrum in the esophageal mucosa
Gongylonema verrucosum below the rumen wall
Fascioloides magna, giant liver flukes, embedded in fibrous capsules within the liver

We learned, though, that all of these parasites are found normally in deer, and none are thought to cause clinical disease, or have much significance to the white-tailed deer population generally. They were interesting to find, though, and you certainly don't see them in the lab mice that I'm used to. The liver flukes were particularly cool/gross, because we got to pull them out of their little capsules inside the liver, and could see their suckers.

At the beginning of the course, Val told us that we could make designs for a t-shirt, and that we'd have a little contest to decide which design would be printed. Of course, I spent the last two weeks doodling designs in the margins of my notes, and came up with a couple that I liked. I submitted them, and my design was chosen for the front of the shirt! Helen came up with the design that won for the back of the shirt, but everyone wanted me to re-draw it so that the style matched the front. So after voting I sat down to draw Helen's design, and I think it turned out pretty good.

My design for the front of the tshirt

Helen's idea, my drawing for the back of the shirt - it has everyone's names written around the edge of the turtle's shell

After interesting case-study type lectures by the SCWDS vets, and Dave Hunter from Ted Turner Enterprises, we took the night off from working on our group project and watched youtube videos instead.