01x01 - Turtle Mania

[bunniefuu]

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S

[Izzie] ♪ We need you

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S

[Izzie] ♪ Come on!

♪ When I need help, and I've got a question ♪

♪ there's a place I go for inspiration ♪

♪ Gotta get to the web, check the girls' investigation ♪

♪ What girls?

♪ SciGirls!

Whoo!

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S

[Izzie] ♪ I need you!

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S

[Izzie] ♪ Come on!

♪ You've gotta log on, post,

♪ upload, pitch in! Yeah!

♪ Wanna get inside a world that's fascinating? ♪

♪ The time is right 'cause SciGirls are waiting, ♪

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S

[girl] ♪ We need you!

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S

[girl] ♪ SciGirls!!

Hi! Hello!

Is this thing on?

Oh good.

Today is the first day

of my new after-school club,

the Gigabyte Techbots,

and I am recording it for future club members to see!

Yeah, and here comes the problem, Jake.

[crunching]

Jake!

Aw!

We're here, and this

is gonna be off the hook!

Hello Techbots!

Oh, hello?

Hey, where is everyone?

See, no one showed up to my club.

The Gigabyte Techbots?

Yeah, I'm not that surprised.

People like clubs that sound fun.

Oh, well, what clubs do you belong to?

The Cheese Puff Cooking Club and The Frozen Tutus.

They were all must joins. [chuckles]

Oh, understanding why all those were must joins for you, Jake,

could take a lifetime.

Oh, but right now I just have to figure out

how to make my club a must join.

May I suggest starting with a cheese puff appetizer?

Oh-ah! [sighs]

SciGirls, I need you!

♪ ♪

Mmm, nope.

Oh, I need kids to want

to come to my club, but how?

Ah... mmm...

Ho-ho-ho! Trapping them!

[mischievous laugh] I like it!

Eh, well, maybe not.

I'm Annie, this is Maddy,

this is Elena, this is Kate.

We're BLAZE!

♪ ♪

Come, we gotta look for birds.

Keep your eyes peeled for house finches.

BLAZE is the nature club

I started specifically for the school.

We go to Trinity School in Eagan, Minnesota.

Mallard! Good spotting!

What is BLAZE?

Becoming Loyal and Zealous

Explorers!

We learn a lot about each other

from discovering the natural things around us.

I wonder if there is any other turtles here.

We wanted to see more turtles

in our school's habitat,

but we just weren't seeing any.

Two more minutes, guys, make sure you're watching!

Turtles bask in the sun to store up their body heat.

There aren't very many places for

a turtle to bask in our pond.

We wanted to learn what we could do about the population.

We decided to build a basking turtle platform

so the turtles would have

a little bit of variety in where they basked.

We also wanted to know what kinds of turtles

and how many turtles were in the pond.

That is kind of complicated.

Our teacher Miss Adams told us

that that pond was a protected wetland.

Long story short, Eagan would not want us

to put anything man-made in this pond.

[SciGirls] Wetlands are protected because there aren't very many there.

Miss Adams also said

that we would have to present our ideas to the school,

so that they could present them to the city

to see if we can get the basking platform in.

How were we going to do that?

You know, it's like aren't we too young to do that?

It's a lot harder than just going on the Internet

and Googling turtles because that doesn't tell you

why there's no turtles in your pond.

Or why there are no techbots in my club.

[SciGirls] We checked out turtle habitats in Minnesota...

Let's go to the south because that might be easier.

...and we found somebody named Jaime, and we found out

she was a DNR nongame wildlife specialist, which means

she takes care of the animals that we can't hunt.

Dear Miss Edwards...

Capitalize the "d." It's always formal.

We asked her if we could come down and visit,

and she replied, and she said yes.

[Izzie] Yeah, go BLAZE! Go SciGirls!

[SciGirls] We went down to Weaver Dunes,

which is a wildlife preserve in Southern Minnesota.

I can hardly wait to just explore a little bit.

I think that's Miss Jaime Edwards.

Let's go. I think that's Jaime.

We're the SciGirls team.

It's nice to meet you. Welcome to Weaver Dunes.

Thank you. This is so beautiful.

Yeah, it's a beautiful sand prairie

in Southeast Minnesota, and hopefully we'll see

all species of turtles that we have down here.

What's in the buckets?We've got some turtles...

Oh my gosh, they're so cool!

[SciGirls] That was the first time we had actually held a turtle.

[Jamie] This is a Blanding's Turtle.

[SciGirls] When I'm holding a turtle it feels like

I'm holding a dinosaur from like, million years ago.

Claws. [Jamie] Yup, yup, you got him?

[Scigirl] You think you're going to claw?

[Jamie] This is a softshell turtle, so you can see their...

[SciGirl] Looks so weird.

[Jamie] ...if you flip the turtles over, see he doesn't have much shell.

So you see the difference? This guy can totally

hide in his shell if he wants to, and this guy can't.

[SciGirl] He looks like he's more equipped for water.

Yeah, look at the difference-- that guy's naked.

Turtles scare me a bit. [Jamie] That's all right.

[Annie] It's just a little nerve- wracking that you're holding

something that could kick you and bite you and scratch you.

[Jamie] There's what we call the hinge

is where the shells come together.

That is not where you want to grab a snapping turtle.

They could reach around and grab you.

So you want to grab 'em at the back of the shell.

[Izzie] Okay, duly noted.

[SciGirl] Do we have to touch the snapping turtle?

Oh-ho, it snapped!

[Jamie] This guy could really reach around and bite if he wants to.

Whoa! Watch it!

That's why I'm staying back here!

You're just like, oh my gosh, a snapper!

Is it gonna bite our fingers off?

[Annie] A turtle population study is very important.

When you're doing a population study,

you know how many turtles are in the pond,

the variety of species, the variety of ages,

the variety of genders.

If you're just working with one turtle,

you get one evidence of data, and that's not enough.

[SciGirl] We measured the turtles using a caliper.

We want to measure how long the carapace is.

[SciGirl] The carapace is the top of the shell.

..

It's kind of the dome of the shell.

[Jamie] We're going to measure the plastron.

[SciGirl] If you flip the turtle over, the bottom of their shell,

that's the plastron.

Found it.

Ah, ow, he bit me.

He did?Ouw.

Medic!

They do that?!

[SciGirls] Weighing the turtle was really, really hard.

You can't move your hand, and the turtle can't move.

Okay, so Buddy here, ..

[Jamie] Then we can determine growth

if you're following these turtles over time.

You kind of age a turtle just like you age a tree.

Every time they grow they get another ring on them.

I was amazed that many of the turtles

we were studying were older than me.

, , it's at least years old.

Guys, the starting line is here.

Go! And they're off.

[Annie] You always get the impression

that slow and steady wins the race. They're fast!

Pchew!

♪ ♪

Hi, I'm Annie. Here's my garden.

Isn't that cute?

That's all that's left of my carrot.

This is my art.

I'm not very good with my hands, so it's bad.

I have a blue macaw's feather.

And this is my tree house!

Bye.

We're going to bait these traps right here.

[SciGirls] We were setting the traps for the population study.

We're poking holes in these bags

so that we can put bait in 'em

so that the juice and the scent comes out

so that the turtles will come after it.

[Izzie] Yum... dinner!

Eeou!

It smells like rotten fish.

I'm holding my nose.

Just go like this.

Oh, good idea, then the sand will stick to us.

[Jaime] Every good biologist washes her hands with the dirt.

[SciGirls] This is prime turtle spots, guys.

[Jaime] How ya doin'? [SciGirl] This is really difficult.

[Jaime] This is a hard bottom pond.

[SciGirls] This is a hard bottom?

It felt like a huge weight

every time you tried to lift up your leg.

This is awesome, guys.

I mean, come on.

Would you not trade this experience for the world?

[screaming]

[Jaime] You're okay!

[Jaime laughs]

Hey, I'm all right!

I've never been in a pond with waders on.

I only got my sleeve wet.

So we got this trap set.

We got it hooked, got it anchored so it can't float off.

Then we got the opening end submerged

and it's just barely sitting on the bottom.

[Annie] We set the traps overnight

because turtles actually happen to feed during the night,

and that's probably why we don't see giant snappers coming up

and eating all the fish they see during the day.

You need time; science takes time.

We probably won't catch any snappers in here,

not this type of trap.Are there snappers?

Ah, it's possible, but it's probably,

probably not quite in this pond,

and we won't catch snappers in this type of trap anyway.

The opening's not big enough for 'em.

I've gotten past my fear of reaching my hand in the water.

[Jaime] You're doin', you're doin' the crazy wetland dance.

The wetland dance?Yeah.

Ooh, then there's a side singer.

♪ Do the wetland good stuff dance. ♪

♪ Ride up ride up!

Then fall over!

♪ ♪

[SciGirls] All right, here we go.

I've canoed on a river before, but I never thought I would

ever canoe on the Mississippi River because it's just so huge!

So Jaime, tell us about how you got started with reptiles.

[Jaime] In Minnesota, I've been here for years, and in all honesty

when I was in school I was really shy

and wanted to work with animals,

but I didn't think I wanted to be a vet.

And the diversity of the job,

getting to do a lot of fun things so you don't get bored.

[SciGirls] That's awesome! What turtles

do you think we're going to see today?

[Jaime] Most common turtle

we'll probably run into will be the map species.

You see these sticks, they aren't even that big,

but the turtles are sitting up on those logs.

[SciGirls] Sweet! That's an idea for our turtle island.

[Jaime] We got a turtle up here.

You see the turtle? No.

Right there. Where?

Right behind this clump of grass.

Oh wow! Can we pick her up and see what kind?

[Jaime] Well, let's see what she's doing first.

[SciGirls] She looks like a map. She's a map turtle. Good.

[Jaime] I do not feel any eggs in her.

So she was here.

We'll see if we can find a trail here.

Covered over, or is that just anthills?

Oh, right there!

Yeah, that's what I was wondering.

I feel something.

Oh, wait Kate.

[Jaime] All right, you guys! Good job!

[Izzie] Yup, there it is, a turtle nest.

[Kate] Oh, there's a couple!

Oh my gosh! We found a turtle nest.

It wasn't Jaime, it was us, and we are just so excited!

[Jaime] We will uncover this nest, but we need to put them back

in the same spot that we found them.

We can't flip them over

or we'll drown that embryo in its own fluids.

So these are map turtle eggs

and I'm guessing it's from this female that we just found here.

[SciGirls] I held an egg, and it was softer than you would imagine.

I mean, when you look at the fragments from raided nests,

it's really brittle, but it really wasn't.

It was soft, and you could make a little dent in it.

So if they're outside of underground,

is this hurting them?

You wouldn't want to do this with every nest you run into,

but for learning purposes it's, you know, interesting

to see a nest and see the eggs and see how many are in this.

Should we put her near the water?

Sure, if you want to.

You can actually release her in the water if you want.

Yeah, let's do that!

♪ ♪

My name is Elena, I'm years old.

My favorite things to do are playing outside,

camping, and Irish dancing.

These are the hard shoes in Irish dancing

and what makes the amazing noise is the fiberglass.

This is my little sister Doty.

[loud, rhythmic tapping]

Here's some fossils that we found on our nature club.

I love listening to music!

That's all I do day in day out.

Adios. [Izzie] Adios Elena!

We're going to go and check the traps that we set yesterday.

I don't want to pull it up in case there's a snapper.

[Jaime] Oh, I don't think a snapper's gonna get in this trap.

You guys ready? [SciGirls] Okay.

[Jaime] You gonna help me? [SciGirls laughing] No!

Hey, look it! Whoo-hoo!

Oh my gosh! Wow!

Six trapped turtles?

I can't even get that many techbots to come to my club!

Six harmless little turtles, Blanding's and painted.

There go all my fears.

[Jamie] What do you think about this one?

I'm seeing some activity. [SciGirl] So was I.

[Jamie] I think you girls all need to pull this trap up.

[Kate] Don't worry guys; I'm not afraid to stick my hand under.

Oh, I see a turtle head!

I started feeling along the edge of the trap

and I was kind of worried about the turtles trying to bite me,

even if they were painted, because Maddy said it hurts.

So I grab it, and me and Jaime pulled it up.

Whoa! Oh my gosh!

Snapper, snapper, snapper! That's not funny!

Whoo-hoo!

A snapper like this-- he's got a big tail.

You are now professionals!

Oh my gosh.

[Jaime] I'll see ya later.

My day's up, I'm gone!

Now we know what was standing in these things.

[Izzie] Yikes!

I swear I would've never thought

we'd have caught snappers in these things.

[Jaime] Now that we've caught some turtles what you would do

is take 'em back

and measure 'em and take all the data

that we learned how to do, so when you're doing

your research that's what you'll do.

I'm trying to get this snapping turtle out.

If I had an assistant this might go a little faster!

[SciGirl] I can't move my leg, help me.

[Izzie] Whoa, watch the mouth, watch the mouth!

It's in the water, and he's going...Ahhhh!!!

[all laugh]

♪ ♪

I was so scared

when we found those snapping turtles.

Yeah! Well, thanks for coming down to Weaver Dune.

I hope you learned a lot, and I hope you can

take this back with you and apply it back home.

Thank you so much!You're welcome!

Whoo! All right! Yeah!

We caught lots of turtles today.

[Izzie] All right. Hey, let's go visit the Website.

[girls] ♪ Push the button, push, push the button. ♪

♪ Girls, girls, girls.

Hey, let's go to the "SciGirls" Website and work on our BLAZE page.

Yeah, I kind of wanted to download

some of the pictures I took on my camera.

Question number one: What gives you the creeps?

Is it an insect, a scary movie, or C, or is it the dark?

I'd say a scary movie.

[Izzie] Let's check out Maddy's profile.

Hi, my name is Maddy.

Testing, testing , , .

This is my dog Lindy.

This is a picture of Lindy's mom, Lady.

I mostly love drawing horses.

This is a picture of a horseback rider.

This drawing is just about done.

This is another picture I did of horses.

Bye, see ya later!

All right, go!I can't see a thing.

Hup, , , !

I think Jaime chose this place because the pond

that we're using is similar to the pond at school.

She suggested that we could try to trap turtles along with

building a basking platform here and just trying it out,

so that we know how to do these things at our school.

Okay, I'm doing the halibut; you're doing the salmon.

This is so nasty!

Yeah, we definitely know what we're doing after learning with Jaime.

Traps are baited and ready for turtles.

So it was finally time

to try our own hands at catching turtles.

Let's see how deep this water gets.

You got it? Yup. All right.

That one's very close.

That's not very smart.

I'll try and secure it right here on this nice little lip.

[Annie] All right, so there you guys are,

I got a good trap for you, I think, good spot.

It's sort of hanging off, but...

You people in waders get the easy job.

I predict that we'll at least get one painted,

one snapper... maybe , hopefully not .

Now we need to come up with a design for our turtle island.

I've got an idea-- first it starts out with a square.

We need to saw this piece in half.

Measure twice; cut once.

We're gonna use this for the actual platform.

Here she comes!

Whoo!

Just to keep it nice and afloat,

on each side could be a PVC pipe.

Maddy, why don't we start setting up the PVC pipes.

We want it tight enough so no water leaks in.

There is a smallish hole, I would say,

for the turtles to come up. Should it be circular...

It's a triangle. ...or a square?

How about we compromise and do a semicircle?

I'm going to question the necessity of a hole.

They could just jump off the sides.

My idea was that we take a board

and we we do a slant at one end

into the water on hinges or something.

How does hinge work? Make sure we have the hinges in the right place.

Fine, I have the power.

I see why they call them power tools.

It's kind of almost exactly like we planned,

except the ramp is much longer than we thought it would be.

Then we have a branch hanging off one side.

Maybe we shouldn't put the branch.

If we put the branch that might be a little bit too cumbersome.

I mean, we've got to build this today.

I don't think it would be that hard

just to nail on a branch.

Me and Annie argue a lot,

mostly about very, very dumb things. [laughs] Dumb!

I think that would be a really good idea

to have a branch out.

Yeah, I don't think we need another like, add-on to that.

I had the hardest time getting past this sticking a branch on.

I was like, no, we do not need a branch, Kate. Stop it!

[Annie] I think we should put that as another possibility because...

I think we should just do it because we should...

Can I just finish my talk?

Can I just finish this first, and then you can talk?

It kind of dissolved, then it kind of morphed

into whoever can talk the loudest talks first.

We're gonna test all variables, which were logs,

branches, and stones, and see which ones they like best.

It's pretty frustrating listening to my friends arguing

about something so small as a branch or a rock.

The brainstorming session was one of our hardest sessions yet

because we've all got these different ideas

and these different images in our head

of what a basking platform should be.

We weren't seeing it from anybody else's point of view.

We were like, nope!

But then Annie was like peacemaker of the century.

I've got a compromise.

Let's just build with these first

and then when we can see, we can add on stuff.

Eventually they came to a conclusion

and it turned out looking great, our platform.

Yeah! Whoo!

Do this thing. Everybody back up, back up, back up.

What about that one?

It's like, pounds.

Thank you, Maddy!

Are they tightening?

I felt like I could do anything in the world that day.

Are we ready for the ceremony?

Da-da-da! Turtle Island.

[cheers & applause]

I think though, like these ...

Yeah, I think the logs are gonna be the most successful.

I think this will because this is sort of hanging

over the water, which I think they'll like.

Hi, I'm Kate.

This is my kitten, and his name is Little Love.

I wrote a play for my drama club

and it's called "The Golden Apple."

This is my telescope, and it's really, really cool.

I love to play basketball with my neighbors and my brother.

Oh Kate, nice sh*t!

Good-bye.Bye-bye, Kate.

Hey, girls!Hey, Jamie!

Wow!The finished product.

This is awesome!

Thanks. Thanks, we're so excited.

You guys have been busy!

I'll grab the cinder block, you guys grab the platform.

All right guys, ready?

Well, it looks like it's floating to me.

[Jamie] You may want to put the ramp down?

[SciGirls] Sure. Let's hope it floats.

Let's ignore the floating part, let's hope we don't sink!

[gurgling] [laughter]

Hey, not bad! [Jamie] It's perfect.

I have to admit, when you first said you were going to put

logs and rocks and stuff on it,

I'm like, I don't what that'll look like.

But it looks really natural. You guys ready?

Yep. All right, there it goes!

Let's just push this thing out a little bit.

We have one painted turtle.

Yeah, a snow turtle!

Turtles don't like this area. One painted turtle.

One painted turtle. Where is he?

♪ ♪

Oh, a snapping turtle. We got a snapper, guys!

Snappers, I don't like snappers!

[Jamie] Yeah, it's always good to have somebody close by you

when you're handling like a snapping turtle

if you're afraid of 'em, just for safety reasons,

especially if he latches on to you

and you need help getting him off.

[Kate] Here, let me have a turn.

Okay, put your hands right underneath there, okay?

Okay, , ...

You can do it. Perfect.

I'm holding a snapping turtle! Whoo!

I am surprised that I'd ever do this!

I am holding a snapping turtle. Whoo!

[Jaime] Watch you fingers. [Maddy] That's really heavy.

centimeters.

[Annie] The turtles that we caught varied in size, weight.

Oh my goodness, you are fat!

...age, species.

[whispering] Look, there's a turtle right there.

He's on the log.

This is great, they're acclimating rather quickly.

The main factor was that they were all female.

Now we have enough data to present to our school!

How awesome is that?

Let's get started on that project!

We caught a lot of painted turtles and one snapper.

So this is the weight in kilograms, ., ..

This turtle apparently stayed right there too.

I think the turtles really liked this log.

I think they liked that spot the best

because it's the highest out of the water.

We're finally getting enough data out to make a conclusion.

Most of the turtles are preferring the log.

Guys, this is great! This is an awesome presentation for the school.

The turtle habitat at Weaver Dunes,

carapace and the plastron, and the pilot population study

at Dodge Nature Center information.

We also got the construction and the ramp

and the basking platform information on this side.

All right guys, let's take our presentation to Trinity.

[all] Yeah!

I'm nervous!

It's a lot easier to present to kids

because you speak the lingo of kids.

But with adults, you gotta kinda speak the adult lingo.

Hi, welcome to our presentation.

Good to see you. How are you guys doing?

Drumroll please.

♪ Ta-ta da!

Wow, nice!

So Kate, take it away with habitat.

If we don't do this right...

By looking at the eggs...

...we probably won't get to build the basking platform.

We built the basking platform mainly of wood.

Is there a way to keep the logs

and just connect the logs together without the platform?

Since we have gotten all our data from this type of platform,

we don't even know if that kind of platform would work.

There's only one turtle that was on the platform at all.

The rocks fell off, they didn't need the rocks.

I think it'd be much more doable if we just did logs.

We are definitely open

to making modifications for our platform.

The proposal talks about the things

that we'd like to do at the Trinity ponds.

There's the basking platform, the population study,

and looking at the habitat around Trinity School.

So we're hoping that you guys take this to the city,

so that we can get permission to work on the ponds here.

Thank you very much for listening to our presentation.

We hope you have enjoyed it.

Great job, girls. Yeah, good job.TThank you so much.

I want to thank you for all the hard work you've put in.

What we'll do is, take your proposal to the city.

Whoo! High- everybody!

[Maddy] I was so pumped.

I hope we can get this approved as soon as possible.

We were all so happy after all this work.

The project was kind of like my little baby, you know.

We did it!

Whoo-hoo! We learned so much.

It was so much fun.

Oh, we did so much.

[all laugh]

All right guys, for old times sake,

let's do "The Wetland Get Stuck Dance."

♪ Kick out your foot, kick out your other foot, ♪

♪ waddle, waddle, waddle, waddle, waddle, get stuck! ♪

♪ Waddle, waddle, waddle, waddle, waddle, I'm stuck! ♪

Whoo!

So I observed kids

in their natural habitats,

well, without the basking platforms,

to figure out what they like.

They like texting,

and they like food.

So I reopened my club under a new name.

What's that?

The Texters for Tacos Club!

Give the people what they want, and they will come.

Ha-ha!