Of course I had all of the appropriate transport paperwork allowing me to do that... I was marveling on the Red Line to Kendall yesterday how strange it's going to be to live in a city where it's not completely normal for other random passengers to be discussing their IRBs.

I guess by "little vegetation", I meant little green vegetation is out yet which I'm using as one of the indicators of seasonal timing. But these guys can survive quite well just on last year's seeds and dried plants that haven't woken up yet. So I've asked them to move around to places that are more true desert with bare sand. The topology around here changes rapidly from farmland to flat scrub brush to more bare dunes, so the animals out in the bare dunes are likely to be the ones who aren't getting quite as much food. Maybe. Good suggestion about looking at the stomach contents. By "well fed", I mean how full is the whole digestive tract. Since I'm opening them up to get the embryos, that's what I've been comparing between the locations. Also the thickness of the tail is an indicator of health. But in terms of *what* they're eating, there is a lab here working on intestinal flora, so they're getting the internal organs after I take the embryos. Hopefully they'll be able to answer that question for me.