Miscellaneous

Earlier this week, when I arrived at the office, I observed another geologist who had arrived just before me, as he was walking across the parking lot stop, pick something up, and then carefully carried it over to the garden and put what ever it was down. That got my curiosity up so I walked over, after he had left, to see what it was. And lo and behold there was this humongous rhinoceros beetle!


At the end of the day I checked to see if it was still there and it hadn't moved very far so I picked it up and took it back with me to the house where I could take some photos before releasing it back to the wild. For scale I have included a loonie, which looks awfully small beside this monster! Note the dangerous looking hooks on the ends of its legs. While it looks pretty intimidating it actually was pretty passive.




On a previous trip here one of my friends pointed out to me a very unique plant. It is very innocuous looking having fern like leaves. But if you touch the leaves in a second or two it folds them and then the branch drops down! Absolutely amazing to watch as it does this in relatively slow motion. So this past weekend I came across some on the side of the road and took before and after pictures. In the second one notice the three leaflets at the bottom of the cluster as they have closed right up just like shutting a book. So there you have just two of the many unusual plants and animals here.












Yesterday I went out onto the mine proper with several other geologists to take a close hand look at how they do their grade control sampling here. From what I saw there certainly is room for improvement, both in the type and quantity of sampling never mind more efficient control of the mining equipment with trucks sitting waiting their turn to be loaded. But even so the equipment is pretty impressive. For example this next picture is of a backhoe loading a 90 tonne truck with ore. Yes, that red "mud" is ore, averaging between 1.8 and 2% Nickel!





This next one is the largest backhoe I have ever seen! It is used to strip off overburden to expose the ore beneath. Pretty impressive looking machine!