According to Ryan, our main professor for the first 3 weeks of this trip, we have all been assigned spirit animals after much deep thought. Mine is the quetzal:

From Wikimedia Commons, photo by Dick Bos.

I’m down with this. There are worse ways to be described than “resplendent” though my Science Pants might not be the best support for this animal’s representation of my innermost soul. Anyways… now I have to go learn how to do a quetzal call, so that I might commune with my fellow little birdies.