About
me
Other
than my work, I have a pleasant life in rural 
is
a biologist herself and is finishing her PhD at The
Ohio State University studying phylogenetic
signal in the decline of amphibians world wide, yes
she is herpetologist too. We met at a
snake conference when she was studying the composition of venoms of rattle
snakes, venomics, but shortly after she moved to her Ph.D on amphibian decline.
We have done quite a bit of field work together both for her research as
well as for mine. We make quite a good
team since she has a lot of skills and experience in lab work with genetics all
of which is not really my forte (not for a long shot!!). However, since we started working together I
am getting better at it.
Other than our interest in reptiles we share many
other view on other issues that we feel strongly about such as human rights,
egalitarianism, simple living, 
conservation,
animal rights, and of course politics.
We both see a smooth continuum between our work as biologist doing basic
research, applying it for the better of the environment and participating
actively in the political debate and activities. We plan in seeking joined positions when she
graduates to continue teaching and doing research wherever our interest leads
us.
In our spare time we love doing repairs 
around
the house. I am a bit handy with tools
and she is good at finishing up my messes (she is into arts too). However, what consumes most of our spare time
is taking care of our beloved pooches. We have Chuka
(Stumpy tail), who I adopted her back in 1996 while I was doing 
field
work (in the picture playing with her
pet hairball). She was a feral dog at the time but young enough that I could
manage to tame her and get to be my companion.
When I finish my field work of my dissertation I brought her back to the
In
2002, I came across Termita (for her habit to eat 
wood)
who goes by Mita for her friends. Mita was a couple
months old when a friend of mine found her attacking a garbage bag in a poor
neighborhood outside 
tutelage
and now is a beautiful, strong and loving pooch. She is social and friendly with people and
although she gets along well with other dogs she makes sure that they are not
going to bother Chuka, so she acts very protective
when she is around.
Last but not least we have Ají
(hot chili pepper). Aji
was an unplanned consequence of my making of my doggumentary
(Frankie). I set out to 
film
“bad dogs” and went to the pound in 
“vicious
dogs”, we saw this most adorable beast, yelping and whining to the sight
of a person asking for love and caring.
We asked about him since did not look dangerous at all. I was told that he was found in the street
near a place where somebody had been bitten by a dog. Although there was no
connection between the bite and the dog (labeled under the name of Ashley at
the sheltter) he was the culprit by default since he
was the only dog around. He was so
adorable that I had to take him home.
After some regulation mandated waiting period and safety test where they
prove the obvious: that Aji is pure love, they
allowed me to take him home. While Sarah
and I were struggling to come up with a name for him we left him in the house
alone. We learned that he was into gardening
and had decided to trim all the chili peppers that I was growing next to a
window. Unfortunately he has a bit of a
black thumb!! That settled his name as Ají.