Ways in Which Trapping a Quoll is Different from Trapping a Ground Squirrel

Ways in Which Trapping a Quoll is Different from Trapping a Ground Squirrel

Northern quoll, in a rare stationary moment

Ground squirrel (a baby, technically, awwww)

1.       Starting with the basics, they are marsupials, so identifying the gender is a bit different (females have a pouch, for instance)

2.       They are spotted, which doesn’t make any difference as far as trapping goes, although they are rather pretty

3.       They are not tame or chilled out, like some of my Canadian squirrel buddies (though not all), but wriggle, leap, and snarl while inside the bag

4.       They have quite pointy, carnivorous (or at least, omnivorous) teeth that they know how to use (according to Richard, the field tech, I am not officially “quoll-ified,” since I haven’t been bitten yet, but it’s only a matter of time)

5.       When you poke at them through the bag, they move towards your fingers instead of away (refer back to 4)

6.       They have a long tail that is very good at hiding their feet and getting in the way, such as in the top of the bag when you’re trying to close it

7.       They are very obviously male (if so) but not, ah, that pleased with having said male bits measured (I mean, I don’t blame them)

8.       They will go into a trap without there even being bait inside (a few squirrels did this too) as I learned when I cleaned some traps and left them to dry out overnight, and in the morning one of them was occupied

9.       They get into the kitchen/office and leave little calling cards and footprints everywhere after tearing open milk powder packets and nom-ing Styrofoam cup-of-noodles that someone foolishly left in the open

This was a quoll that was trapped near the kitchen...hmmm, little jerk

That’s about all I can think of to list, but you get the picture. More stories and details to come, when I can be bothered to write much else and have the internet to post it. I’ve been sorting through our camera trap videos now that we’re back in Kununurra, which is cool in that I’ve seen a few possums, quolls, monjons, and dingos in the shots, but also kind of dull because 90% of the videos (and there are 1000s of them) are just shadows or trees waving in the wind, so they’re not that exciting to scroll through and delete and I have to keep myself entertained. Yesterday, for example, I listened to the first disc of “Ender’s Game,” a Human Behavioural Biology lecture (a class I didn’t take but audited long enough to download all the lecture recordings), several chapters of the 6^th Harry Potter, and a few songs on iTunes shuffle. Not a bad day really, but it was a lot of sitting in front of my computer watching grass wave.