Vomit sounds, pika poop: just another day in Glacier

This summer I've volunteered for a couple of projects in the Park. One is the citizen science loon survey and the other is the pika, goat, and Clark's nutcracker surveys. The idea is to get baseline data on all the species and then, later on, see how the critters are doing 5, 10, 15 years down the line.

I volunteered not so much because I have a driving interest for science, but because I have one goal in life and now it is fulfilled: I've found and collected pika poop in the wild.

That's right, pika poop.

For those of you unfamiliar with Glacier National Park's small, fuzzy, charismatic, creatures the pika is a high country critter related to the rabbit. It lives primarily in big piles of rocks in the mountains and it makes a sound that sounds like this: Eeeeep!

The pika doesn't tolerate heat very well and there's some concern that global warming could harm this little creature.

And so as volunteers, we've been asked to not only find and count pikas, but to gather their poop for scientific analysis. Pika poop looks like a b.b., though it doesn't taste anything like one (That's a joke. I kid you, honest. I have only tasted rabbit poop, and that's a story for another day).

So on Saturday I took the long hot hike up to Triple Divide Pass to look for pikas and goats and Clark's nutcrackers and if a loon happened to fly over, well, I'd make a note of that, too.

(I spent the night in the Cut Bank campground to save a little time and I'm not so sure that was a good idea. I mean, I expected a good night's sleep, but there was this guy in camp who, for whatever reason, was making noises like he was throwing up — loud throwup noises that rang through the campground. It was awful. I happened to get up to go to the bathroom and I walked by the guy's site and he had this huge campfire going and he started making these throwup sounds and then he saw me and said "I thought you were a grizzle bear."

"No," I said. "I am not a grizzle bear."

And so the guy stopped making the noises and I managed to fall back asleep at least for a few hours. But sheesh, a grizzle bear? Only I would have such bad luck.)

But I digress.

When I got almost to the pass I heard and saw a pika living in a place I wouldn't expect a pika to live in. For one, most pikas live in what's known as talus slopes — big piles of rock deposited on the sides of mountains as the mountain falls apart. But this pika was living in more what I would consider cliffs than piles of rock.

At any rate, it gave out a few Eeeeps! then disappeared and that's when I saw it, tucked in a crevice in the rock.

Pika poop!

I quickly picked up a little, put it in my little brown envelope, which is especially made for pika poop, and was on my merry way.

This science stuff, it's fun. But grown men trying to scare off grizzle bears, well, them I can do without.

Chris Peterson is the photographer for the Hungry Horse News.