Fieldnotes of an Arachnophobe

I've been trying to improve my CV for a while now, which means getting experience in a range of areas. Part of this meant fieldwork experience. One of my friends, for example, spent a year in South America helping a group of scientists - I forget doing what exactly. My point is, as I was, I had no chance of competing against people with this sort of experience. The difficulty here is that there's no way I could ever afford to do that, even to travel to another part of the country for a bit. If I wanted experience, I had to stay local. Doing what any broke student would do, I sent a somewhat desperate email to my academic advisor basically begging for some work I could do. That's how I ended up helping with a project studying ground beetle behaviour.

I usually wake up around eight or nine, pretty good for a student I think, but I had to be on campus at nine. This meant leaving at half eight so getting up at half six. I was absolutely terrified that first morning, being the least experienced member of the team and unsure of what to expect. I like to be prepared for everything, and so I packed everything but the kitchen sink. The bag was quite heavy but oh well, at least I'd be prepared. It was, typically, the middle of a heatwave, but I was too scared of being bitten to wear shorts. Okay, not to worry, cargo trousers it was. I was covered in enough suncream to sink a battleship, I had my flask of tea, I had my notebook - good to go.

Now, here's where I must admit something. I started writing this in July, and promptly forgot about it. It is now the end of November, and to be quite frank I've forgotten exactly where I was going with this. I'm going to try to recover it, because at the end of the day it's my blog and I can do what I like.

When we arrived at our first site, the first thing that struck me was that maybe I shouldn't have packed quite so much stuff. While my bag was manageable, I'd forgotten that we had equipment too that needed to be carried. We had most of it shoved in a couple of buckets, which was alright for the others on the team, but rather challenging for little 5-foot-tall me. My arms were bent at weird angles to stop my bucket from dragging on the floor behind me. The terrain was not built for hobbits. The terrain did not care. So, wrestling with my overly full backpack and this stupid bucket, I was attempting to clamber over fences and fallen trees, push my way through bushes, and try not to trip over my own feet. I very quickly came to the conclusion that my nice, light cargo trousers were a mistake - I felt every single thorn scratch up my legs. Miraculously, the trousers themselves were not ripped (though would later do so on a car drive to Ireland. Apparently thorns are fine but sitting in a car is too much). Our project leader was tramping on through in shorts, seemingly immune to everything that was fighting me. First day in the field, newbie on the team, I had to keep it together. Little did I know the thorns and the bucket would be the least of my problems.

When we reached our first site, I was thoroughly regretting signing up. Already I was tired, battered, and my anxiety was practically choking me. It only got worse when we began testing and I quickly learnt that, of course, there were spiders basically everywhere. Why I thought there wouldn't be I don't know, like come on girl, you're poking around the forest floor, if there's one thing you're guaranteed to see it's spiders. I told the team I'd be fine as long as there weren't any big ones. I was exaggerating here, I would not be fine with little ones either. They discovered this almost immediately. Still, the show must go on. We'd collected our beetles, and I sat down with the leader to run through the experiments.

Part of this was sexing the beetles. This can be done pretty easily by looking at their front legs. Males have a really thick bit designed for holding onto females when mating, whereas in females the front legs look the same as all the rest. Simple, right?

"So what's this one then?" asked our lead, handing me a beetle in a little plastic tub.

I looked at it. The damn thing wasn't considerate enough to sit still and show me its legs, but I managed to get a good enough look. "Female." I said confidently.

"Nope, that's a male." the look on his face transported me back to preschool, the same look the teachers give you when you fail to spell your own name. He gave me another beetle.

"That one's a male." I said.

"It's a female."

So it was clearly going well.

All wasn't lost though, and I soon got the hang of it. At least, I got the hang of sexing them. The experiments themselves were another matter. One thing we had to do was put the beetles in a tray with a grid drawn on it, and make a note of which squares of the grid it runs through over 90 seconds. Let's break that down - all at once, I had to: keep track of the beetle, keep track of the time on the stopwatch, and write down the squares the beetle is running through. If you're not aware, beetles are fast. Every time I glanced away from the beetle, it had somehow teleported to the other side of the tray. At first, I was trying to write without looking at my notebook, but my notes were illegible and I still had to look away to check the stopwatch. It was ridiculous, it took me almost the entire day to develop a system.

After that, we had to flip the beetles over onto their backs. These things bite (and look a bit spider-y) so I was not in a hurry to pick them up. Luckily, we had tweezers. Unluckily, the beetles didn't like being picked up. I ended up chasing them around the tray with my tweezers snapping at their legs in a futile attempt to grab them. Even when I did get hold of one, it was a nightmare trying to get them on their backs. Then it was more timing, more noting, but thankfully we weren't trying to keep track of where they were going here. We were just watching for thanatosis (essentially playing dead), which is a pretty unmistakable behaviour.

By the end of the first day, I was absolutely shattered and thankful that I had a few days off before I had to get back out there. I was stiff as anything the next day, but I managed to struggle out of bed and onto my laptop to order a pair of better trousers.

So, the next field day arrived, and oh boy was it worse. I got to do some more jobs which was nice, I loved the trust our lead was showing in me. Part of this was emptying and resetting the traps. These were basically little plastic cups we buried in the ground, with a bit of tissue and vinegar in the bottom. For some reason, ground beetles seem to really like vinegar. Little did I know it at the start of the day, but that vinegar squirty bottle would soon become my last line of defence. 

At one site, I chose a nice spot under a tree to do my tests. Beetles like the shade, so under the tree seemed perfect. I wasn't the only one with this idea; the local spiders thought it was a good spot too. After hitting the fifth one off of my leg, I picked up my kit and moved away from the tree. A bit of peace, finally I could relax and chat to my beetles in peace as I watched them run laps. On to the next site, and lesson learned, I didn't choose to sit under a tree. Our lead went off to measure leaf litter, and I settled down to get started. I froze. I hadn't even put my bucket down, but right where I was about to settle was a true monstrosity. It had the longest legs I've ever seen, and an eerie habit of tapping before placing them. Tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap... I couldn't take my eyes off it. I couldn't move, I could barely even breathe. Tap-tap, tap-tap. I had to get started on my tests, I couldn't be seen like this. I tried to force myself to walk away, but my legs had grown roots and I was stuck. Tap-tap, tap-tap. The harvestman disappeared into the grass. I stared after it. It could be anywhere now, nowhere was safe. But what could I do? I could hardly stand around the whole time. It took every bit of strength I had to move away and set up my little base at a safe distance. The paranoia had set in though, and I couldn't bring myself to sit down. I needed to be able to escape should it come tap-tapping towards me. Okay, ever the problem solver I adjusted my technique and started testing from a standing position. Every time I crouched down to pick up a beetle, I made sure to brush my pencil down my legs to brush off anything that might be attempting to climb up (I have OCD, and my brain became convinced that unless I did this every time, all the spiders in the forest would swarm to me and cover me like a horrible, writhing, leggy coat). 

Next site, away from the beast - safe, right? I wish. I was doing the traps like the good little ecologist I am. I liked this site, for some unknown reason there were hardly ever any beetles there. It was a nice quick stop to reset the traps, test the one of two we found, and move on. So I'm there, minding my own business, bent down to pull this little cup out of the ground, when I noticed something moving out of the corner of my eye. Immediately, I stood up, my heart hammering against my ribs. The tap-tapping of those gangly green legs was coming towards me, towards the trap. God help me, if it went in there I'd have to chuck it out, I'd have to basically touch the damn thing. I had to scare it off, but again I couldn't move. Maybe I could throw something at it? But then I'd lose some equipment, and if I missed the monster might claim it. All I had was the vinegar bottle. I couldn't bring myself to get close enough to try and squish the brute with it. There was only one option. It was a gamble, I didn't know if it would enjoy vinegar like the beetles, but desperation spurred me into action. Summoning all my might, I held my arm out towards it and sprayed. The beast seemed to roar at me, stumbling backwards onto its hind legs.

"No man can defeat me!" it cried, its tap-tapping becoming more frantic.

"I am no man." I sprayed it again, a dead hit, sending it running back into the bushes. I sprayed again for luck. Then again. I coated the surrounding area for good measure.  The adrenaline was still pounding through me, the battle of the century complete. I was victorious. "That'll teach you, you little-" I muttered. Michael, if you're reading this, I'm very sorry I wasted your vinegar and potentially attracted more beetles to that particular trap, but it had to be done.

That was my last day in the field. I would have gone back for more, the spider rumour mill having them all quaking in fear in the presence of the Vinegar Knight, but it was rather difficult to get there from another country. I'd gone to Ireland on a trip to visit family, so I instead took on the role of measuring the beetles from our photos. Much safer, and much easier to do from across an ocean. My family were very interested in what I was doing, and every beetle we saw I had to crouch down and try to identify. Thankfully, there were no more harvestmen - clearly news of my victory had spread far and wide. 

So there you have it. Arachnophobic ecologists exist, and yes we do want every last spider dead. I honestly don't care about the repercussions as long as I never have to see one ever again. I know it won't be long before my epic battle fades into myth, and a new challenger will arise. I can only hope I have a much more potent vinegar on me when it arrives...