The week is not even over, and I am already spending endless hours on homework, assignments, projects and various outside stuff. Applying for the internship and filing for the club charter on their own could have kept me busy, but add chem lab homework and typing out lecture notes and writing a speech (which I gave today, was not as bad as I thought it would be) and trying to make a dent in my math handouts I feel like it is finals week all over again. Last night, I left MESA at 9:30pm. It is only the first week of classes, I cannot begin to imagine what finals will be like this year.
In biology today, our professor made a comment about kangaroos and their ability to perform embryonic diapause (the ability to suspend a fertilized egg and prevent it from continuing development until conditions are right). This seemed unbelievably remarkable to me, so I did some research after class. I discovered that kangaroos cannot do obligate diapause, as was stated by my professor, but they can in fact perform facultative diapause. The former is due to unfavorable conditions being present, in which the mother suspends the embryo to halt development until it is the best time possible for greatest chance of offspring survival. While kangaroos are unable to do this, roe deer are, which I find extraordinary. The latter route refers to a similar process, at least in the way that both are to assist the animal in giving her species a greatest chance of survival by reproducing successfully. However, it is not influenced by climate change, but rather, by the lactation of the mother. If she is lactating, meaning a joey in the case of the kangaroo is nursing, she will interrupt the development of the embryo inside her until there is a place for it to go. This is important because, should her current baby die for whatever reason, she can just pop the one she has in the “fridge” down into the “oven” and start all over again. In fact, female kangaroos are pregnant most of their adult lives!
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| Roe Deer |
We are starting a club. I initially intended it to be a pre-vet, animal science club. I picked up the charter paperwork and had flyers posted two weeks before school started, but my biggest problem was getting an advisor on board. Now, after talking to my current and old bio professors, the plan has morphed. They wanted to get a bio club going anyway, next semester, but since I am so motivated they want to take advantage of me and get things going now. We will have all three biology professors on campus as faculty advisors, which is awesome since they all have such varied backgrounds. One of them, a prof I had a year ago, is hyper and awesome and used to teach at UC Davis so he will be a wonderful asset.
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| Cheetahs were my absolute favorite animal as a kiddo. |
My bio professor talked about this last year, but for some reason it intrigued me more today than it did before. It seems that cheetahs, whether completely wild in Africa or generations of zoo bred in the US, are genetically identical. My prof explained that this is due to a “bottle neck” of the population of cheetahs about 10,000 years ago. Since I am a creationist and believe the earth is about 6,000 years old, I do not agree with that theory simply because of the time involved. However, I find the fact that cheetahs can be genetically identical even after 6,000 years to be completely mind boggling, especially after getting into all the genetic and reproductive material we have covered since last semester. Apparently this has occurred with elephant seals as well, but not to such an extent. I know the animals came of the arc in pairs, at least the predators, but why did all the others become genetically diverse and the cheetahs did not? And how did the animals, and people for that matter, get genetically diverse after the flood? I know there was some genetic diversity with Noah’s family, since his sons’ three wives were (we assume) not related to the rest of them. But was that enough to form all the different shapes and sizes and colors of the people who populate the earth today? I am going to have so many questions when I get to heaven. Then again, I will most likely be over earthly stuff when I am there, so it probably will not even matter.
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| Why? |
When it comes to the “to stress or not to stress” question, I like to err on the side of stress. As that seems to be my life right now, I might as well embrace it and use it to my advantage. Lately, the topic on my mind has been the inevitable interview question: “Why do you want to be a veterinarian?” Is there a right answer to that? I love animals, that is a given, but there is more to it than that. I want to help animals, and people, too. I want to make a difference, and help people realize how incredible animals can be if we just give them a little time and respect, and treat them with compassion. I want to be a part of the movement that will result in a day where no animal shelter will have to euthanize a healthy, happy animal for space. Where people do not breed or allow breeding out of greed or ignorance. And I want to do this by starting at the younger generations and working backward. People as young as forty or fifty years old grew up in a different culture than we are living in today. The rules with animals were different back then, overpopulation was not an issue. Folks of those ages might be harder to help to realize that the world of animals has changed, but kids, they can see it happening around them. After they see what it truly going on, they will want to change themselves and help change our country’s views of animal husbandry. I want to help show it to them.
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| Sean and I enjoy walking the pups in the neighborhoods around our apartment. |
Sean and I are starting to change our life style, in a slow but good way. We have been writing down on a daily basis what we ate, and have stopped buying many processed foods. Our meals consist of crock pot bean soups instead of ramen, and we have lots of fresh vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, lettuce, and kale in the fridge. We are not doing it for a weight loss incentive as much as just to get the garbage out of our systems. No more preservatives, additives, chemicals, and ingredients we cannot pronounce. For now, we are stuck buying much of our food from large chain grocery stores, but more and more we have found local farmers and markets that sell locally grown fresh fruits and veggies which we have been jumping on. Yes, they are a bit more expensive but if we are careful with our budget, plan accordingly and make the food last, we end up spending less and supporting small farmers (which is very important to me). Our ultimate goal is to have a ranch someday where we can have a garden large enough to keep us in green stuff, as well as chickens and cattle that we can raise for meat. I will not be doing the butchering myself, however, as much as Sean thinks we could handle it. I will leave that to the professionals.
(I question I get a lot is, if I love animals so much, why am I not a vegetarian? Well, there are a few reasons for that. I am not a big meat-eater, too lazy. I do not care to pick around bones, cut off fat (I despise fat) or chew and chew and chew just to be able to swallow my food. That being said, if someone gives me some food with meat that is easy to consume I am all for it. Meat tastes good to me. I am not, however, a fan of the way animals are raised for slaughter in our country today. Factory farming is atrocious, simply because of the way they slaughter. I am not naïve enough to believe the animal rights videos that are ten or twenty years old; I realize conditions are strictly regulated but I still am sorry to say I support that in any way. We eat eggs, a lot, and make a point to buy free ranch only or to grab some from friends who have their own chickens. I eat animals because God said we can and even supports it, plus, we are all going to die. I just figure, it will be easier to stomach knowing the animal I am eating lived his days contented and happy, clean and dry with his buddies all around him. When the end comes, he will not even realize what hit him. In the meantime, I do not eat much meat.)
Only lost one plant while we were on vacation. Sadly, one of my favorites but we have a new baby to replace it. It’s a sweet pea.
My dream car, the Kia Soul. We test drove one while we were in Oregon. Don’t know if it was because I didn’t drive, or because it’s the new model with the bigger engine (lower gas mileage, most expensive ticket price) but it was not all I dreamed it would be.
Our two cars, Stan and Chad. Chad is a 2002 Saturn and is Sean’s car, Stan is a 1994 Jeep Grand Cherokee and he is my car. Sean bought Chad when he was fifteen, so he has been in our family for six years. Stan, since we’ve had him for not even three years yet, is the newest addition, a God-send when we were honeymooning in Oregon. Picked him up for a deal, because he was a bit defective. I think that is what gives him his charm. The funniest thing about these two cars is we have never seemed to keep them both running at the same time. We brought the Jeep home, and the Saturn died (electrical issues). Then, the week we got the Saturn running, the Jeep blew a head gasket on the way up the Morongo grade (a treacherous uphill, twisting deal that has taken the lives of many an old putterer). It took a year and a half to save up for the repairs on the Jeep, which we finally accomplished recently. I registered Stan, and within a week Chad was no longer drivable. This time, his major malfunction seems to be the engine mounts. The Saturn had been having some rumbling issues – when we accelerated it was like being in a cargo plane. Then, when driving home one night we were cut off on the highway while going 65 mph. It almost resulted in an accident and scared me half to death; thankfully, the Saturn has good breaks. However, the jolt of the car stopping so hard finished off the engine mounts. It is a strange phenomenon, I think it is God’s sense of humor. The greatest part is that He always makes sure we have at least one car going!
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