What is the weirdest or best artifact/thing you’ve found while doing fieldwork?
Ask a Biologist Monday 8/2/22
Answers from Biologists:
Illegal pot grow in the wilderness.
A dive torch (while diving) absolutely covered in bio fouling. It still worked.
A man baking a salmonberry pie in his semi-permanent camp in a National Forest.
A vibrator and a tire in the same stretch of river bank.
The knife my co-worker lost in the field the year before.
An unused tranquilizer dart.
Cocaine and black tar herion.
Old rusty beer can. The brand was the last name of our bio department’s head. It’s still displayed in his office.
A bone chandelier on a mangrove island.
Safes. So many safes in rivers. All busted open. One was next to a pile of deer bones.
A fridge that washed downstream during a flood still fully stocked with beer.
A single can of water from the 50’s, alone in the woods a long way in.
Three long guns that washed downriver in a flood.
A broken safe with purple heart medals in it.
An old trapper cabin with supplies.
A doll head in mud with a bullet hole in it.
A canabis grow operation tucked into the woods.
Went to pee behind a shrub and found a decapitated cow head.
Old hand-blown glass balls that used to be used for fishing net buoys.
A drug drop off spot in a hollow tree by a river.
Entire javelina skull after going a different way because of a rattlesnake.
The propane tanks from a meth lab.
Homemade cork and wooden duck decoys.
Porcelain-iron bathtub miles away from any road or building, literally at the top of a ridge.
An old typewriter.
An abandoned cemetery in the middle of the woods next to an old schoolhouse.
A small bomb from around WWII completely intact.
A cosmetology training head and a stuffed llama nailed to a tree.
A Crown Royal bag full of dildos.
Hermit crab using a doll’s head as a shell.
Pair of black necked stilt (bird) legs standing on a log. No feathers or body in sight.
A rabbit mascot suit head while crashing through mangroves.
A golden dildo in the middle of Joshua Tree National Park.
Baby dolls. They always creep me out when they’re in the woods!
Burned car, 3 miles down an old mining road.
Galapagos uninhabited island. Found a sealed jar on the beach, so excited! Runny poop pours out.
A backpack full of Scentsy products.
Burnt jewelry wrapped in duct tape with ducks on it with someone’s ID inside.
Thigh high pile of cow bones in an area I had to pack into.
Weirdest: dumping ground for large animal carcasses. Best: Fossils
A hydroflask in nice condition. Mine now!
Bowling balls half buried in the sand.
An illegal weed grow site.
An abandoned KKK meeting site., burned cross included.
Cruised a dildo looking for snakes.
An old locked bank vault in the middle of the Mojave desert.
Old cars in the middle of forests/deserts always give me the heebie-jeebies.
Old wooden owl call hanging on a branch near our field site.
Fleshlight in a national forest.
A pile of 10+ mannequin legs. Just the legs.
Doing pebble counts in streams and pulled a completely rusted ax out of the water.
A shot up porcelain doll with a note stating “I’m Abigail and I’m cursed”.
Tight with heels tied onto the feet dangling in trees.
Super old broken pottery from wrecked Spanish ships while working in the Gulf of Mexico.
A children’s car seat washed up on the shore of a Pacific atoll.
A red colored cloth tied to a stick to mark the grave of a russels viper inside of a tiger reserve.
Buoy in the forest.
Coast guard floating weather probe. Looked like a rocket.
Two cow skulls with bullet holes and bullet casings all around the area.
A whole decaying dolphin.
A roost of tent making bats while fishing for guppies in Trinidad.
We find a boat almost everywhere in Michigan, no matter how far inland we are.
25 pairs of discarded undies in various field jobs and travels.
An abandoned homestead with the story of the couple’s luck and loss written in the house.
Dual action sex doll next to a mannequin head.
A small grave for “Carl” in a random cow pasture on a school’s ranch (pretty sure it was for a dog).
A DVD titled “Outdoor Freaks Vol. 2”. We can guess what it was.
A random grave in the middle of the woods.
