Farewell Finale

5/7/12
Today was sadly my last day at my internship with Dr. Kirchman and I had a fun time realizing how my skills have developed over this past year. First, Dr. Kirchman I quickly set up a PCR and poured a gel to run another test on the mysterious rail DNA. I made a master mix for the PCR and then put the DNA in the machine so it would begin to make copies of the DNA. Since a PCR takes about 2 hours before it is completed Dr. Kirchman and I headed over to the prep lab. I got to work labeling bones and rather than labeling tiny skeletons, I had to label the gigantic bird we had cleaned last week. After spending a good amount of time on the large bird, I realize I preferred putting minuscule numbers on tiny bones rather than the never-ending task of labeling every single toe bone on a larger skeleton.
After finishing the big bird, my time was almost up, but Dr. Kirchman had a surprise. Dr. Kirchman had written another article for the Auk and this one was about Carolina parakeets. These parakeets used to be found all over most of the east coast of the United States but went extinct in the early 1900s. Dr. Kirchman had me try to guess why they had gone extinct and I actually got part of it right! I asked Dr. Kirchman what their diet was and it turns out that they used to eat fruit. Farmers had been shooting the birds because they could strip a tree of its fruit and eat the farmers' crops. Today a reporter from a local newspaper was coming to ask Dr. Kirchman about the birds and his paper. I got to sit in on part of the interview and eat some cinnamon rolls Dr. Kirchman's wife had made for us. Sadly, my time ran out before the interview was finished, but I had a great last day in the lab and an overall amazing time this year at my internship.