Fieldwork Fails have started to be shared on Twitter, but more and more frequently, someone contact me to share his/her story.
So I invite you to share your own story here, if you have one, in the comments!
Fieldwork Fails you shared:
Put a huge Weddell seal to sleep with anesthetic. He bites my butt, ripping the 5 layers of clothes I wore. #fieldworkfail Leo Soibelzon
Try to count cygnets. Get attacked by swans and go to the doctor’s office for a tetanus shot. #fieldworkfail Nessa Fitzgerald
- Shorter, the story is funnier and has more impact!
- It’s easier to read
- Dozens of fieldworkfails prove you don’t need a page of text to tell a great story!
This page is for those who don’t have Twitter. If you wrote a good fieldworkfail on Twitter, just RT it me to @fieldworkfails!
Such a wonderful project! I’m so glad this is happening. Here’s a fun one:
I’m an ice age ecologist, and while I was helping to excavate a cave in Wind Cave National Park last year, I was busily sifting through the cave sediment and finding tons of tiny mouse poops and rodent bones — little shrew teeth, vole jaws, mouse toe bones, etc. You have to really focus closely to find these little tiny bones with a magnifying glass, and pick them with tiny tweezers into little vials.
Meanwhile, as I was carefully going through a bunch of tiny rodent fossils, real-live rodents were happily chewing up my boots, Chacos, Nalgene bottle, and field backpack. A squirrel even chewed up 30 meters of field measuring tape and into little 10 cm segments and built a nest out of it! It was a fun reminder that these little rodents are still with us today, as ice age survivors.
Love everything about this project 😀
I’m a marine biologist specialising in the ecology of macroalgae. Was sampling in a harbour, scraping algae off buoys. In the water, my movements are gracefully slowed. Slowly, and very gracefully, I accidentally drifted into the buoy’s anchoring rope…which supported a population of bearded fireworms.
Had the sting marks for weeks.
Awesome project, looking forward to it.
Here’s mine.
My first jump from a helicopter to catch a net-gunned caribou. Forgot to remove headphones. Ripped out the electronics, tripped on them, caribou ran away. #fieldworkfail
Pouring hot water down wetsuit to warm up between dives, only to discover the water is boiling – burnt chest #fieldworkfail
Super excited this was funded! I was backer 65 and I’m so excited to see the final book! Here’s a #FieldworkFail I was party do (but didn’t commit)
Driving back from an archaeological site, the driver–a zoo-archaeologist–screeched to a halt by the side of the road to throw some road kill in the back to add to her reference collection (this is a normal thing zoo-archs do). When we arrived back at the project office and she proudly showed off her new specimen, everyone freaked out: the roadkill was a dead swan and we were in the middle of a major bird flu epidemic. The entire van had to be emptied and professionally cleaned and sanitized, all the diggers’ clothes and soft materials (book bags, etc) as well and all the equipment in the back where she’d dumped the swan carcass had to be bleached.
A crow stole my mobile and flew off with it. The phone was on the ground as I had gotten bored watching caterpillars and so had been practicing my handstands nearby.
I used to catch mosquitoes in the swamp, for species identification and virus surveillance purposes.
Once I came back to my mosquito trap, which had been running all night, and found no mosquitoes in the container but one fat and happy frog.
While doing geologic work in the North Cascades I adjusted my belt and my compass slipped off, sledded down a snow bank, and fell into a 1.5 m-deep pool in a very cold stream. No choice but to strip down and go after it. I got black fly bites ALL over.
3 PhD’s from CA were hired by a large oil company to do research on earthquakes to determine risks for putting in the gas pipeline. They flew into Kodiak Island, Alaska to do the research. Kodiak bears are supposedly the largest in the world and are protected on that island. They hiked out into the wilderness about 1 hour from their car when they realized they forgot their guns.
I am so happy your project was funded and can’t wait to see the final book! Here is one of many memorable experiences from my years as a field ecologist:
Check live-trap meant for endangered squirrel. Find black bear holding it like honey pot trying to eat peanut butter bait inside. I’ll come back later. #fieldworkfail