Anyone got a spare freezer for some backwoods bits?

[missdiane]

Good grief. I got this request this morning which I just turned down:

Morgan and I have developed a protocol for collecting road killed dead deer for our McStennis project. However, because we have nowhere to store them at Rutgers (need a walk-in freezer) it is very inefficient for us at the moment because we need to drive around to carcasses the day of our scheduled deployment. Walk-in freezers are somewhere between $4000-$10,000. Is this something we could ask for from you? We would need a dedicated one to put in PSARF because I doubt anyone would want us dragging dead deer through their labs.

Seriously? You didn't think of this BEFORE proposing your project. Um, that would be a no. I cited multiple reasons:

• Our funding doesn't allow anything designated as "Facilities and administration" costs and a massive walk-in freezer installed in a designated FACILITIES building is kinda gonna raise red flags with our federal funder
• With installation, it would undoubtedly go over $10K even if Bosslady wanted to ok it and anything of that size needs to be proposed to the feds for their blessing
• This massive non-scientific purchase would only be used for less than two years and then what happens with it?

Hopefully they don't grumble too much but honestly, kind of a ridiculous request.

Comments

[missdiane]

By the study design, the assumption was that they'd find out about the deer, collect it, put it in the forest, stake it down so bigger game can't make off with it, and set up the cameras for observation so no clue why there's a need to take the deer back and store them.

It sounds like the point of the study is to find out how it would improve the ecosystem that instead of the people that clean up the deer and dispose of them, if they instead were putting the carcasses in the forest instead.

[spiffikins]

That is a really weird research project, on so many levels....

"stake it down so bigger game can't make off with it" - yeah good luck with that :D
I mean - I don't know where this is being done? But if bigger game is like mountain lions - they aren't going to be deterred from a good meal by some stakes?

Also, this seems really weird if the idea is that you take a carcass that was found elsewhere - like hit by a car - and transport it to some other location entirely - and just leave it there?

Like, what if that environment doesn't really have deer there? That isn't really "normal" for that ecosystem to suddenly have a deer carcass plopped down in it - what kind of weird ecosystem manipulation is this?

LOL - researchers get grants for the weirdest shit!