POOP!!!

Today we had the oh so glamorous job of collecting fecal samples. You would think this would be easy in an area with a lot of stray/wandering dogs. It wasn't. Our goal was two different poop samples each for a total of 16 specimens. We started this task at around 11:00ish which by then it was like 98˚ and the heat index was 118˚. We had to walk around several different parks searching the grass for poop that hadn't yet become hard. At the same time we're carrying around pieces of chicken with a dewormer in it for some of the stray dogs. It was hot and sticky and just gross out. After spending an hour and half wandering around three different parks and the local market we managed to collect 10 samples and feed two dogs chicken with deworming meds. We then made our way over to the local college and after a really good washing, had lunch. Next we prepared our fecal floats which is essentially poop in a jar with some sort solution (we used sugar water) and you mix it really well, cover it with a glass slide cover and let it sit for 10-15 minutes.

It should look something like this

Mine had some sort of soil worms in it. Ewww.







The idea is to have the parasites eggs float up and get stuck on the glass. You then transfer the piece of glass onto a slide and examine it with a microscope. Fortunately for the dog there was no parasites in my fecal float. Out of the 10 samples, 7 had hook worms, 1 had hook worms and tapeworms, 1 was too dry to work, and mine didn't have any parasites.
On the way back to the lodge we tried to find more dogs so we could give them the chicken with dewormer in it. But of course as soon as you look for dogs there were none to be found. When we finally came across a dog, it was my job to roll down the window and throw a piece of the chicken at it. It was pretty funny driving around in a huge white van flinging chicken at random dogs. By the end I was covered in chicken juice and sweat. As much as I wanted to jump in the shower the second we got back I wasn't able to because some of the instructor people wanted our feedback on the course. Afterwards a bunch of us jumped in the pool to cool off, and somehow it got brought up that pizza sounded good so we ended up ordering 7 large pizzas for dinner.


I won't be posting any updates this weekend as I'll be on Ambergris Caye playing in the sun and scuba diving the worlds second largest reef :]

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