Au Marais!

Here are a few pictures from my work - some insight as to what goes on in my life, all day, every day (except evenings and weekends).

These first two are pictures taken by some really cool tourists, a couple from Laval, who came to do the tour of the trails with me. They really enjoyed the tour and we saw a few turtles (pretty common) and a bird called the American Bittern. This is pretty rare and exciting because they camouflage themselves very well. At the end of the tour I always head back to the interpretive centre on the ATV. In this case, just as that was happening I turned to wave goodbye and she was randomly taking a picture of me. So anyway, they got my e-mail address afterwards and sent me these pictures, which is pretty cool. Hopefully if you click the top picture and blow it up, you can spot the American Bittern hidden right around the middle of the picture.

This frog was found yesterday, hiding in the very top of the paneling above the windows on the side of the building! He was gone this morning. Also this is the same kind of frog as we have as a "pet" in the interpretive centre.




These are monarch caterpillars and chrysalids. We took them from a lady's garden because she got sick of them eating all of this one plant. Did you know that monarchs only eat one kind of plant, which is poisonous for anyone else, and that makes the monarchs poisonous too? So then, there is another kind of butterfly that is disguised to look almost exactly like the monarch, as a defense against getting eaten. Pretty cool, huh? Also, I can't get over how beautiful the monarch chrysalids are. They look like little Christmas decorations. We had about 10 or 11 of these caterpillars, and we watched them make their chrysalids, and now half of them have turned into butterflies and we let them go. Still waiting on the other half, which are still in their chrysalids.






This is Olivier, our little Red-Spotted Newt (or Eastern Newt). Caroline (the girl in the pictures who is not me; she works with me) and I are really into Olivier and play with him every chance we get. He is probably our favourite friend at work. This is saying a lot, because we also have tree frogs named Trevor and Collette, who are super cool as well.