Sunday, March 23, 2003

Two weeks have passed way too fast since I last wrote. Shark Bay is an amazing place and being back to Perth makes me very sad. The first week I spent volunteering in Monkey Mia, working with the dolphins there. I also went with researchers on a small boat following one of the beach dolpins and I witnessed a big dolpin soup, I have never seen as many dolpins together before, and so close to our boat. I also took a tour on a Catamaran and saw lots of dugongs, sea snakes and turtles. The second week I was helping Kathy trapping small animals in the Peron national park. We put up nets and small traps and checked them every day. Among the animals we trapped were: hopping mice, sandy inland mice, dragons, geckos, banded snakes, sand swimmers, skinks, etc. The higlight of my trip was when we spotted an ECHIDNA !!!!!!! YEEESSSS, fiiiinally I saw one. I have been looking for it since I came to Australia 5 months ago. It was so cute, just walking over the dirt road and as soon as we touched it, it curled up and refused to talk to us. Poor thing ;) I couldnt stop smiling for the rest of the day. One of my jobs in Shark Bay was to look after little Bobbie, which is an injured Bobtailed lizard (a girl), feed her and walk her. Absolutely adorable!!! When she was found she was skinny as paper and had an injured leg, now she is fat and her leg is better ;) She is the same species as old Bob which lives near the caravan and was my favourite when I was last time in Shark Bay. But there was no sign of Old Bob for a week and a half and I was getting seriously worried that he had slipped over to BobHeaven. Thankfully he showed up at last and ate loads of tomatos ;) I am already missing my Bobs awfully much.