Duty Log, Lt. Jen Lee

Stardate 9905.20

I led and away team down to the plains of Tunis. As we were loading up the Tornado, and running our checks, the ship-wide comm system opened, and we could all hear Major Kincaid propose to Lieutenant Trull. As hard as I tried, I couldn't keep the Starfleet demeanor, and I jumped up and gave a holler due to my excitement. After the comm link closed, we boarded the Tornado and left for the planet.

Upon arriving, we found a herd of herbivores, and decided to watch them. We noticed a small one lagging behind the rest, due to a recent attack by another animal. Unfortunately, we did not have time to see Darwin's ancient theories hold up here, since the animal to have done the damage did not attack the young herbivore. I'm sure that if we had stuck around, we would have seen it though.

We did identify the animal who had harmed the little grazer. The right front paw had a broken claw, which matched the pattern on the grazer's hindquarters. We wondered why this animal seemed to hop instead of run, and Ensign Silberman found a particularly interesting vine with nasty thorns on it which seems to be the reason. To go through the tangles of vines would tear most animals apart. But, due to the nature of the growth of the plant, this animal adapted by learning how to jump from one row of the vine to another.

Ensign Silberman collected a sample of this vine, with a small part of the surrounding environment. She is currently studying its growth pattern, soil requirements, and anything else of interest that this vine can tell us. I would like to study the plant for evidence of any parasites living on or in it. The ways that different organisms use eachother is fascinating to me, and I would like to see if we were lucky enough to find evidence of that here.

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