see-saw for animals project

Been working this week on my intern project, which is to build some sort of enrichment toys for the zoo animals. The idea I came up with was a see-saw made of logs for the bears, porcupines and maybe foxes with holes throughout it to place treats. The idea is that the animals will have fun foraging around the holes for food treats and climb around on the see-saw, and enjoy lots of teetery-tottery hijinks and shennanigans. Last Monday we went into the woods and gathered some logs from trees that had already been cut for trail maintenance. An interesting story there, we found a few logs of various sizes, but none seemed to really be quite the right size to me, we went in with some chainsaws to cut some up and load them up on the gator and had one that was too small, and one that was too large, but didn't find much else. But while we were out a really powerful breeze blew through the forest, making lots of golden leaves tumble down from the lofty treetops, hinting of autumn's arrival. When we drove on our way back with the logs we had we found that right before the end of the trail was a tree that had literally just fallen across the trail, blocking our path, while we were in the woods for that few minutes. And it was the perfect size. We cut it up, both to pass through and to collect this log for the see-saw. And it is the one I used.

I know I'm being a bit obsessive about this, posting five freaking pictures of two logs from every angle, but hey, this is my project, it's good to get some documentation of it. How often does one get to build toys for bears? I hope this project idea can be used and implemented for bears elsewhere, but maybe I speak too soon. We havn't even let Callisto play with it yet! We'll have to wait and see in the next few days...

What I basically did was take two heavy logs, one eight feet five inches in length, one six feet, cut a "saddle" notch into the center of each one on one side, fit these two together, drilled a hole through the middle of both of them and hammered a 1" steel rod to hold the logs together. Actually this hasn't been done yet, as the logs will have to be brought into the bear's enclosure first, then they will be hammered together, otherwise we couldn't get this behemoth through the door. Holes were drilled in various places around the outsides of both logs. These are where treats go. Don't make them too deep! If you do, the animal won't be able to get them out and you probably won't either, the food will rot inside them and it will be worse than the insides of those mcdonald's playground tubes when you were a kid and some other rotten kid squirted a ketchup packet inside there and it went bad and smelled like a garbage dump dutch oven.

...I hope Callisto and the porcupines have fun with these!

I am currently in the planning stages of a project to build some enrichment toys for the zoo animals. More on this later.

Even when things are going very well, and every day is interesting and rewarding, I begin to fall into a rut of monotony, and begin to lose track of each day, even working at a zoo I begin to lose track of what i should talk or blog about... I've been here since Aug. 1, more than a month now, I've had an immense amount of experience here and learned alot about zoo maintenance. Yet I've failed to document this progress on a regular basis, so I will try to change that. I will sum up basically what each day is like for me here.

Each day I get up about ten minutes before 8:00 (when work starts) scarf down a bowl of cereal, throw my clothes on and go over to the office, where we sit and talk about work, tasks for the day, drink coffee and yes, shoot the breeze a little bit, and then get to work, usually around 9:00ish, sooner if we're low on staff and have alot to do between us, daily chores at the zoo of course include cleaning out each exhibit of excrements, leftover food, and other debris such as fur or feathers, if frequent digging takes place such as with the badgers or coyotes, we fill in the holes. Cleaning the automatic waterer or bowl is also important. Then food is given out. Grain and hay are for the horses and cows, feed for the chickens and turkeys. Gophers and mice go to the eagles, hawks and owls. Raw sections of meat, such as expired donated beef and chicken from grocery stores, or chops from roadkilled deer, which we give to the wolves, coyotes, cougar, foxes, fishers, and bobcat. The bear gets 5 gallon buckets of frozen fruit, usually a mix of apples, cantaloupes, honeydews, watermelons, mangoes, pears, along with a few vegetables here and there like squashes, lettuce and eggplants (which the bear never eats, she's a picky eater, won't eat strawberries or bananas, either) Each day I try to mix in enrichments here and there, be they a spritz of perfume or some other smell in a few spots in the exhibit, (only a small amount so it doesn't stink up the whole place and overwhelm the animals' sensitive olfactory nerves) I like to change up their toys from day to day, be it just another boomer ball or spool, (types of heavy duty toys designed specifically for zoo animals) and I try to make it more interesting, say, but rubbing a smell on it or adding food to it somewhere, making it into a sort of puzzle, like an old tank that you can put marshmallows in so the bear rolls it around to try to get them out. Each exhibit is differently treated, some you don't have to worry about, domestics are of course safe for visitors to pet and to walk around in their enclosures, we can go into the enclosures with the foxes, fishers, bobcat, otters, coyotes and birds, though some you're required to carry a shovel at all times just in case they do approach you, possibly to bite you. This is advised by the staff for the otters and coyotes. the other animals usually don't approach too close or carry much risk. The large carnivores, bear, cougar, and wolves, we of course never go into the same enclosure as the one they're in.

The same is true for bobcat, we do not go into her exhibit with her. Though only a little larger than a housecat, she is no pussy you'd want to pet. She looks innocent enough watching her in her enclosure, she even looks playful sometimes, but get too close and she can quickly turn one hundred eighty degrees. One volunteer has already had this happen just by standing too close to the bars of her off-exhibit pen. She was badly scratched with deep cuts on her legs. Since then safety acrylic has been put over that side of the pen, which is close to where the door going into her exhibit is.

Philosophy Phriday!

A time each week to sit down and drain my personal ontological hubris into the keyboard

We humans have little to go on in trying to figure out our universe, all we have is ourselves and our own minds and other humans to figure out all the vast questions our own minds ask for which the universe provides no simple, straightforward answer.
What is our place in the universe? What are other lifeforms, where do they fit in? Being alone, our grotesquely swollen craniums brim with questions, which only ring out hollow into what appears to be an empty, indifferent universe. This is because our society and state of living today has caused us to forget the great peace of mind and contentment that can be found in simple meditation in the quiescent solitude of unspoiled nature. But nonetheless, we still look for answers, and feel so uncomfortable and isolated. It is easy for us to feel alone. Unlike in many stories we ourselves have written, which only project our own ideas onto others, we cannot consult the trees, the mountains, or the animals for answers. At least not straighforward, verbal abstract answers. It is a good thing it's not that way. Can you imagine what would have happened if mountains could talk, and had just shrugged their shoulders and said "Iddl'no" or if the animals had just said "eat! sleep! run run!" Our craniums would have just buzzed away in frustration, seeking something more profound or satisfying. And what if the trees did tell us something poetic, like "to give love and take nothing but memories with you." Perhaps we would have been touched for awhile, or formed some sort of tree-based religion, but we would have inevitably launched countless wars and genocides against each other and with the trees over some trivial disagreement about what one particular tree meant and how it was meant to be practiced, as with any formalized religion and overtinterpreted dogma. A universe that doesn't act or think like we might simply want it to is the best kind. That's the universe that leaves us to search, to guess, to wonder, to dream. The one where the answers we come up with our our very own and reflect what kind of existence we are leading. We must remember that our minds are not the universe, nor do they reflect its ways. This is tao te ching first page stuff. Maybe the reductionist nihilist atheist scientism advocates are correct, and it is all just a big accident with no purpose, the bad guys win, the idealists kid themselves and we all die and rot just the same. But despite all that bleak possibility, there is still good, and it is real, and perhaps if a mind seeking satisfaction in building some comprehensible structure of abstract meaning in a non-abstract universe does not ever find comfort, then the mind can create its own good, even as frail or evolutionarily disadvantageous that may be against the greater power of selfishness and arrogance.

And no, I'm not schizophrenic, I just type garbled thoughts down really fast and don't bother to edit them. I have to vent sometimes and I'm too lazy to go back and refine it, okay?

The Zoo's wolves

I love wolves. Who doesn't, excluding Sarah Palin and the governor of Idaho? They look great on your mom's xxx large t-shirts, all over truck stop souvenirs, and of course, on Sarah Palin's wall. (bitch) These graceful, jewel-eyed, silvery charismatic megafauna are only a few alleles away from being our own cute cuddly dogs anyway. It's so easy to love them. The two wolves at oxbow are no different. How cool it is to work at a zoo with them! This morning, I got to clean out their pen, hide meat around in clever places for them to find, and give them one of their "enrichment" toys for the day. It's too bad we're not allowed to directly interact with them in any way. I don't mean to say I wish we could just roll and tumble around with them like they're golden retrievers, no, that's a good way to get some free facial reconstruction surgery, but maybe a little more interaction than just a few brief "who's a good boy! who's a good boy!" through a fence before leaving them all alone in their pen at the mercy of screaming children for the rest of the day. I'm sure there's a fine, yet reasonable line between the two. I dunno. I'm not trying to criticize the way things are done at the zoo, I'm just expressing my own wishes mostly. Maybe I do just want to be part of the pack. Can you blame me? Who wouldn't want to howl with these guys?

...So, there's two wolves, brother and sister, who both spend all their time basically running about playing and fighting, the male spends about all of his time asserting his dominance over her, growling, biting her face, standing over her, you know... just like all siblings do. I've been trying to think of names for them and have drawn a blank. I keep feeling like it should be some sort of fancy mystical native american sounding name, like Nodari and Istoka, or Quinlai and Shinoon, and other gibberish I made up off the top of my head. I'll say it means "walks like the wind" or "has low self-esteem about his tail" or something. Since none of those random words sound good enough, namely because they're just words I made up, I think I'll just name them after two characters in a book I'm reading right now, characters with names some other author pulled out of his/her ass, which just happens to be a book about a boy and a girl wolf, named Faolan and Edme. they'll have to do. I haven't managed to get very high quality individual photographs to show you which one is Shitooknook and which one's Quicokblok, so you'll just have to guess that for yourself.

You may have already caught this if you're on facebook, but if you choose not to get your soul sucked into that evil global superpower, then I don't blame you. So basically I'm going to talk about the zoo's animals and I'm going to try and find names for them all. The zoo has an official policy of not naming its animals, but that doesn't mean individuals can't personally give them names. I choose to name these animals not because I'm trying to "make them into pets" or "anthropomorphize them", I'm just doing it so I can tell them apart, and also begin to appreciate their individual characteristics and personalities. It's just not easy to do when you just call them "bear" or "the fishers", or even worse, not acknowledge that there's animals existing at all, and just refer to it as "the back wall" or "the circle" as the staff lingo goes when dealing with the daily chores of zoo maintenance.

So first off, let's just get this over with, you know what I'm doing first,

This is Callisto. It's the name I gave the oxbow zoo's bear. She looks like a Callisto to me. She's waiting for her bear chow at closing time. She's quite a character, and very smart and spunky. She loves to jump up in the air and clap her paws together to try and grab at low-hanging vines at the top of her enclosure. She also goes nuts for enrichment toys, throwing them around, somersaulting and and splashing in her pond. Can't get very good pictures of her, but they'll have to do.

This is Helena, the zoo's badger. Doesn't she look like a Helena to you? Anyway, working on coming up with names for the animals, it's a work in progress... but Helena spends most of her time sitting in a hole she's dug and hissing, snarling and bluff charging me with her needlesharp fangs and 2-inch claws when I climb into her pit to feed her and change her water.

...This is the snowy owl, Albedo. This is the look I get every time I go into his cage to throw him mice or pick up his crap. From the looks of it, he ******* hates me.

That wednesday, on the third, I am already forgetting what I did exactly. Thursday I took off, needing a break, and went with Emily to Thursdays on 2nd in Rochester, an event held every thursday where 2nd street is closed down and used for arts and crafts sellers, with live music and food. Fun event, we walked around Rochester for a few hours, I bought a book, (the Wolves of the Beyond: Watch Wolf by Katheryn Lasky) and then we went and saw The Zookeeper that evening. How appropriate it seems that while I'm starting out doing zookeeper work there's a goofy romantic comedy currently in theaters about it, just to mock me and my equally awkward social skills in relationships. Only for me, the animals don't talk and try and pull the strings to help me, out, they just hiss at me and make me clean up their poop with impunity. Oh well.

PICK UP MY POO! PICK IT UP! PICK IT AAALLL UP!



On Friday I continued to work, I can no longer remember the details of who's poop I cleaned up or why, but anyway work as usual. I think I ate with Emily at Dairy Queen that night. Then we went back to my place and watched the Mind's Eye. She was wierded out by it. Saturday, that morning at opening led a bear talk, basically went over the whole factual mantra about bears I already had used in North Carolina at my last internship, while Pat fed Callisto, putting out fruit and hiding it for her to find. For some reason some woman randomly vomited in the middle of my talk. Jeez, I didn't think I was that bad.

Well I've finally made it. I've come such a long way this summer, It's been an incredible ride and it's only just now really getting revved up. I'm in Minnesota, interning at a wonderful little zoo, And I think I can finally get back to my blog again, and seriously add to it. I have internet access again and a comfortable place to write, and little else to do to distract me or divert me away from focusing on constructive activities. I am overwhelmed by my experiences these first two days on the job. It's a busy day, maintaining a zoo full of wild animals, and it's been incredible. Yesterday I fed the deer, elk and bison and clean and water the raptor pens, the rest of the day was getting better acquainted with the area, and got some eployment paperwork done, today was very busy, cleaning, feeding, watering, medicating and maintaining the farm animal area, cleaning and changing out the mulch in the porcupine and groundhog pens, getting more acquainted with the area, feeding the otters and treating their water, feeding all the raptors, giving the bear her chow, feeding/watering the badger and prairie dogs, and closing up. It's all so much I can hardly even remember it all, and I know this doesn't make for very good reading, but I'm just keeping record. I wasn't able to do this at Alligator River with no internet or even damn place to sit and write. At the end of this internship I hope to have good record of all this. I have found paradise.

Monday, June 27

This is a bit out of order, I know, but I'll try and rectify it later. Last Monday and Tuesday were some interesting days. Monday, we awoke at 4:00 am, drove over to Oregon Inlet fishing boat launch station, and set off with the coast guard in a small skiff over to a small sandbank island off the outer banks unoccupied by humans (they're not allowed, it's part of a refuge) but instead by thousands upon thousands of terns, gulls, and pelicans. The island was a major nesting spot for several species of birds, including royal terns and sandwich terns, at this time their fledgling chicks are just under their ability to fly, they nest in the sandy banks in the middle of the island and the "teenage" fledglings congregate in the tens of thousands waiting around for their parents to deliver fish and for themselves to grow into their own comically awkward, floppy wings.

We arrived on the skiff a few feet from the shore and waded over to the shoreline carrying large rolls of chicken wire and other supplies, and climbed up a steep bank (with some of it almost collapsing on us) over to the island. The first thing we noticed was that there is nothing on this island but a cusston of birds, coming in thousands took to the sky to greet us with a deafening cacophany of squawking and honking and beeping and shrieking, and that was the background ambience we heard for the rest of the day. John the biologist leading us came prepared with earplugs, that might have come in handy had we any idea. They were loud and constant. Trudging our way up to the main nesting areas, we watched our step for eggs and noticed the outlay, and looked for a place to set up our capture pen. John picked up and let us hold our first baby terns of the day, and that was a very novel, moving experience and photo opportunity at first. Little did we know we were about to pick up and hold thousands of terns in the next few hours. We set up the stakes and chicken wire and made a nice large round pen in an open flat sandy area, with an opening at one end with walls that tapered into the enclosure. Now it was time to herd the birds. We flanked them from the right and left and like tiny soldiers they all very cooperatively marched in one mass straight where we led them over to the opening of the pen, and they all went inside it. We closed in the pen and there they waited. A seperate smaller walled in section was made at one end of the inside of the pen and we coralled parts of the "herd" into it, then were given bands and special pliers designed for bird banding, and went to work. We picked up tern after tern after tern after tern and banded them, tolerating their pinching beaks and squawking and scratching, (none of it was bad enough to break the skin) and let them go. But sadly, at first after just letting them go, they wandered around alone and seagulls waited right on the outskirts of our operation and began to attack them. One was killed. I was very saddened by this. We stopped doing that and instead put them together in a temporary holding pen after banding them and released them together in larger groups once were done with them, and these groups stuck together pretty well and didn't get attacked. The terns were very cute as far as baby birds go, their leg color varied from bright orange to dark grey and some were mottled, as did their beaks, and they didn't yet have the trademark black feathers atop the white head as the adults, but were more a sandy greyish white with dark grey streaks here and there. We were also taught how to distinguish the royal terns from the sandwich terns, the two species were mixed together as fledgelings and their differences were very subtle. Sandwich terns were just slightly smaller and lighter colored in the beaks and feathers than the royal, their legs slimmer and daintier. We separated them to be banded with smaller fitting bands by another intern sitting in an adjacent pen. It was a very enriching and captivating experience getting to know terns on such a personal and interactive level, but I did sort of dislike the stress it appeared to cause them. I hate to think that perhaps all banded birds have some traumatic memory from their fledgeling days of being trapped and manhandled by humans, with a shackle around their leg to forever remind them of us. After finishing banding them and watching their groups all join back together, back to their mothers, who had been waiting around nearby squawking angrily at us for the past five hours, I reflected on the fact that we do so many wierd things in our quest to both save, understand and control every aspect of life on earth, and how wierd it is that we mark and tag a large percentage of earth's wild avian organisms after birth, almost as if they're just more farm animals. The first experience of holding a tern was magical, by the 300th tern I had banded, I started to feel like I was working on a poultry farm. But by the end of the day the terns were all (save for one) allright, resettling back in their vast herd in the sands where we first found them, now all of them bearing free complimentary bling on their right ankles, and we picked up our stuff and skittered back to shore in our storage bin-sized skiff, having had an amazing and unique experience. And we smelled like shit, because we were covered in it.

Friday, July 1, 2011

Yesterday the canoe tour went well, I am learning more and more that the people going on the tours aren't giving a structured judgemental critique of how good a personal guided tour you give, and how well you remember the script and how many species of birds and plants you remember to point out to them. Most people just want to paddle their canoe and don't really care what you say or how well you say it, so I am feeling more relaxed and confident and I think in doing so am now becoming a better tourguide. This time, me and the tourists had a spectacular treat, in being the first tour group so far to have seen an alligator. Out on Mill Creek we saw him swimming towards the pond grass, upon seeing us he dove under it with a splash, but soon after, as we had turned around, he came back and swam the other way. We watched him for a good minute or two until he finally dissappeared under the dark tannin waters. How amazing! At 1:00 we (us interns, me, Mike, Amy and Megan) were given a personal behind-the-scenes tour of the North Carolina aquarium. I love seeing and learning about the whole operation of things like that, and I especially love zoos and aquariums, even better, we were shown (rather randomly) a blue tongued skink and a hedgehog which we got to pet and hold. There were no turtles currently in their turtle rehab clinic, which is good! We were there several weeks ago and watched them release all of their sea turtles on the beach of Cape Hatteras right next to the famous light house, they released all five of the ones they had at the time. I got it all on video. I should show it to you sometime. Unfortunately we couldn't see behind the scenes of their otter exhibit, because, well, with something like a mammal exhibit they're kind of strict on rules and regulations about who they can take back there. We did get to see the big 250,000 gallon tank with the sand tiger sharks in it, and met the interns who dive in the tank every friday to do tank maintenance and even answer people's questions through a dive mask microphone in a special presentation they give. Once the tour was over at around 3:00 or so the other interns just went home, but I stayed several more hours by myself and relaxed and enjoyed the place to all its worth. The snack bar outside the aquarium is incredible, every snack, candy and vintage soda you can imagine is sold there. Someone could seriously spend too much of their money in there if they're not careful... .....hey, don't look at me! okay go ahead and look at me, that's exactly what happened....

That evening I went on to Pea Island to meet up with Mike and Amy, who were spending the night at the house there to get up early the next morning for turtle patrol. We went and ate at the Froggy Dog restaurant in Avon (kind of a long way) and got some pretty good salad and seafood pasta there, and afterwards went over to the bar and sang karaoke, I was the only one brave enough to go up and sing, of course, couldn't get Amy or Mike to do it, and yes, I suck at singing, I'm not going to deny it and get my feelings hurt, but damn if I still didn't sing a mean "I'm your Captain yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah" by Grand Funk Railroad.

Late that night after getting back I walked through utter pitch darkness on pea Island down to the beach. I could not see my hand in front of my face, but the entire milky way hung above me as bright as dawn, the stars flashed like sequins and the milky, whispy "backbone of the night" domed above the world. I could even clearly see the vast dust clouds of the inner western spiral arm that blot out most of the great stellar mass at the center of the galactic spiral. The waves crashed in front of me with a deafening roar amidst the quiet night, and I could only make out the great white forms of breakers appearing and disappearing in the darkness close ahead. I looked down and to my astonishment, in the sand too tiny lights blinked and glowed, luminescent plankton washed ashore flashed to every footstep I took. Unfortunately, this little trip to my own personal Pandora was a bit ruined by the biting flies, which soon chased me back indoors. I will be back another night, with off on. You don't need James Cameron and blue cat people to experience magic in our world.

turtle day

Yesterday, we found two turtle nests on pea island. That was also the day that it thunderstormed all day. We moved the nests further up the beach to a 'safe zone'. It was an incredible and awe-inspiring experience carefully handling, transporting and relocating hundreds of sea turtle eggs. It was a bad day for photography, with the constant storms overhead, the only pictures I managed to take were with my cell phone, but some of the other interns took pictures just this morning of a turtle laying a nest, and I hope I can put some of those up. And when I can convert the video files into something useful I want to put up a wonderful video of a bear up-close I took a few days ago out on a backroad on the refuge.

Still no luck towards getting my computer fixed. This pretty much seems bad to the point where I have to call the blog off, I'll probbaly just keep a journal about it and eventually, when either I can get it fixed somewhere I know of and/or get a new computer, put up the writings and pictures and video online. But it's not going to be easy to do any of that over here right now. I'll see about it. But here are some highlights from last week:

Last wednesday, led the bear necessities talk, a program where we talk about the bears at alligator river refuge. Talk went well, and at the end of the talk, just as I was wrapping it up, a bear walked across the road only a few hundred away from where we all were standing. Perfect ending. The driving tour afterwards also yielded good results, with us seeing a few bears here and there in the distance.

Later that night, the wolf howl finally ended well, with the wolves howling back, and, as a bonus, we heard barred owls hooting all around us, and one even landed up in a dead tree right above our whole group! It was a perfect night for wildlife.

Serious Downtime

...Well, as I may or may not have revealed already, we don't have internet access at our cabin as I had previously hoped. No biggie, I figured, I'll just take my laptop to wifi hotspots over in town to upload my blog. But alas, things couldn't be that simple. My computer has now screwed up badly, probably some malware or virus, and now I can't use it until I get it fixed. I am writing this from a pc over at the Pea Islan Intern's cabin. Havn't been able to keep up very well, I think I left off at the saturday before last, but basically to wrap things up we had a wolf howl that night, no wolves howled back. Through last week we did various programs for kids and adults alike and had another wolf howl on wednesday, no wolves howled back that time either. Kind of disappointing. Maybe someday I can get some good pictures up but things are not easy here. My own camera is crap and its files won't even work once uploaded on a computer, I'll have to hit up my roommates for pics, they both are very good photographers. Saw an otter today eating a crab. It was cool. Signing off for now...

a tour of our rich and varied plant life

Saturday is normally a weekend, but this Saturday we were busy the whole day. From early hours to the late afternoon we travelled all around with a plant expert named Bill to learn all about the area’s diverse plant life. I’m not sure how I can make this part sound more interesting, because we learned about plants. I like plants myself, but I’m no botanist. By the end of the tour I felt more stupid than I did at the beginning, just because all the various facts and information about plant life which we went over reminds me of how much there is I don’t remember from college biology courses. You can go through your head wether leaves have opposite or alternate attachement, wether leaf veination is pinnate or palmate, or wether they are simple or complex, smooth or notched, but when it all comes down to it everything you're looking at still looks like a big green plant. Everyone of us feels a bit daunted by these green, slow-moving beasts that eat sunlight and drop their crap all over the place until it covers the whole ground. Ask us what sort of frog or bird and we'll give you its name and number, but plants are plants. But I guess as long as we can point at something green and say a few latin words we’ll at least look like great biologists. That late afternoon we did the wolf howl. More on that later.

Friday Friday gotta find crawls on Friday everybody's lookin forward to the turtles turtles

On Friday we had sea turtle training. We didn’t meet any real sea turtles, we just went over the procedures of turtle patrols, finding “crawls”, (spots in the sand where tracks are left by a sea turtle crawling onto shore) and properly marking the spots, counting and/or collecting eggs to move the nests to safer areas if need be, and once the eggs hatch, “escorting” the baby turtles into the water, accompanying them on their journey across the beach and protecting the tiny endangered babies from predators like ghost crabs and raccoons. Two other very nice folks were with us (the interns) as well, Tim and Tommy, two retired people volunteering for the sea turtles. They live right there on the refuge in RVs and work there on the sea turtle conservation project full-time as part of a special volunteer arrangement with the refuge. That is definitely the sort of thing I'd love to be doing once I retire someday, assuming that by the time I retire there are still sea turtles, and I'm not some road warrior riding his bike gang across the wasteland. All I know is that if I were Mel Gibson, I'd totally be doing better than beaver puppets at this point in my career. Or would I? Speaking of beavers, there were beavers the size of bears during the early pleistocene era. Isn't that crazy? About as crazy as Mel Gibson. Not as racist, though.

This week has been a busy and diverse one, one that has had me going to some slow moments of orientational overviews, instructions and introductions, but has also had its share of excitement, from canoe tourguiding on Wednesday to sea turtle training on Friday. The whole week has been orientation activity, a lot of diverse training for various jobs we’ll be doing over the summer. Monday was just introductions, paperwork, tours and videos, Tuesday was some more touring and assignment of uniforms, but Wednesday was the day we (helped) lead a canoe tour. A park employee led the expedition and made most of the talking points, just to show us how to go about it. Later on me and Mike will lead it ourselves. I anticipate some interesting topics I might bring up on the tour, but I’m mainly sticking to the “script” they gave us. I’ll be sure and talk about frogs some, though. I know my frogs, and you’ll hear a lot of them on alligator river. It doesn’t matter if it’s a green treefrog, a grey treefrog or a squirrel treefrog, I’ll point it out for you. Other frogs though, you’re on your own. But that’s really about all you hear around here, so we’re covered. I remembered to apply sunblock for my arms, face and neck, but forgot it on the next most important area when you’re in a canoe… the inside of the legs and the top of the feet. End of the tour I looked like I had just won an Indian leg wrestling match with the entire Lakota-Sioux nation. Which was perfect, because Thursday was all-day ATV training. I’ll admit I really don’t care too much for those four-fendered mud-raping crotch rockets, but we will be using them a lot this summer on sea turtle patrols, so we had to get trained and certified. Well, after what felt like twelve hours of cutting muddy circles in a grass field, squashing orange cones willy-nilly and trying not to laugh at the frantic gesticular commands given out by our instructor, who was trying to tell us over the roar of our engines when to stop and turn some way or another, we earned an official ATV safety commission riding certification. Yay! It should arrive in the mail by the time our asses stop vibrating.

Smoke over Roanoke

One of the first things I noticed driving into Alligator River NWR was the smoke. Apparently there's a huge wildfire here. Wildfires are not uncommon in the Alligator River area, during the summer when the thick peat layers dry out, a very long-burning fuel is created. "Fires" can rage on and spread thousands of acres and burn for over a year, without any visible flames. The one we are having right now is probably like this, it might not be out for a long time, and the first reports I heard of it yesterday it was at 22,000 acres and there were no visible flames. Yesterday smoke filled the sky while driving over the causeway onto Roanoke. Today it's blowing right into Roanoke, covering the island in a thick campfire-smelling haze. I'll bet they don't like that. Its acreage reached 30,000 acres today and the firefighting crews' containment of it has gone down from 85% yesterday to 65% today. One firecrew member we talked with today reports flames reaching 100 feet above the treeline. Still, nothing to worry about for us, it's to the southeast of the refuge, not close to our cabin. Staff and volunteer crews are very busy working on it. Today for second day of orientation we met at that center and saw much of the center of the efforts; volunteer staff waiting at tents to be called on, gigantic double-rotored helicoptors carrying "bambi buckets" flying overhead.
Still, we are not really worried, even if the fire were to actually spread too close to our cabin and were asked to evacuate, we might just have to move from our Alligator River Cabin over to the pea island one for a little while. But as I said that's not likely to happen, it is well away from our area. So don't worry about us! Everything's fine... Just want to make that clear... Very interesting though... It's possible we might get some opportunity this summer to work ourselves a little bit in the firefighting efforts... I don't know much detail yet about that but we'll see... More on that later...

As I said, these are just things I'm hearing straight from the best source, those involved directly in the firefighting efforts. There is some smoke in the air here and there, but as I have to keep stressing, don't get the wrong ideas! We're not walking around in an ashen-filled post-apocalyptic wasteland right now... everything is quite fine around here and things are everyday and fairly normal. There is no chaos, fear or worry about fiery doom raining down on us at any moment. I just want to stress this so no one gets too worried.

Saw no bears today or yesterday, but havn't made direct effort to, will have to make the wildlife drive again this evening.

I should really talk more about what else is going on, well, we checked out pea island, and the lovely isle has an enourmously diverse population of various shorebirds! I'm no birder myself, but my fellow interns are majorly into it, memorizing and pointing out bookos different bird species they spy here and there and checking them off in a bird list. Although I do feel it may be useful to know alot about birds I just can't get interested in birds that much. I don't know why. I'm all over mammals, but those lightweight feathery dinosaurs for some reason fail to pique any extended interest in me, even if I try to make myself interested in them. They flap about, make alot of noises, and there's 20,000,000,000 different kinds of them, all with goofy names, and they are everywhere. You often have to look awhile to find a mammal in the wild, but no matter where you are you can probably see a bird. And personally I can live without knowing wether that quacking boat-shaped animal over there is a American Widgeon or a Eurasian Widgeon. I'll bet you totally thought they were just ducks, didn't you? Well apparently you'd be wrong too.

Although, I have to admit the truly unique ones with defining traits that really obviously set them apart can be pretty interesting. Black skimmers are cool. What kind of a way to catch fish is that? An awesome way, that's what.

Internship has started

Monday

5/23/2011

My internship at Alligator River and Pea Island NWR has just begun. I arrived on Saturday afternoon at the refuge housing and met my fellow interns. After getting settled in we went on a "safari" at around 7:30, Marson, one of the other interns staying at our cabin who arrived last Wednesday, had told us he had gone down this unpaved road that loops around through open fields, which farmers working in agreement with the refuge had set aside a portion of for wildlife to feed on. Marson said he drove through there the previous day and had seen more bears than he could count. According to him he counted 9, saw several more and lost count. That was on the Friday before I and the other intern, Mike, had arrived. That Saturday afternoon we drove through those same fields and saw not a one. Marson, surprised and taken aback, attributed the sudden ursine absence to it being a Saturday, which likely had more road traffic, scaring the bears away. We headed back to the cabin, rather disappointed, and to our amazement we finally saw a bear, walking right down the side of the road, not but a few hundred meters away from the driveway of our cabin. The bear didn't even run off or move, he just kept walking past as our car stopped and scrambled to try and get our cameras ready. He just looked at us just as casually and carelessly as any hominid out on an evening stroll would have and walked by, not even stopping himself to gawk back. I managed a short, uninteresting video of a dark bear-shaped silouhette going past the window, and that was the best any of us got, despite me having only a low-budget crappy camcorder from radio shack and my two roomies having top-dollar professional high-scope cameras. I want to upload the video but the stupid file format does not even allow for me to view them myself once uploaded to my computer, and attempts at file conversion have not yielded any good results. Will have to work on that problem.

That was saturday evening, just getting settled in, on Sunday I used the day to its fullest to explore Roanoake island's numerous touristy attractions, and try to learn as much as I could about the area's inredible history, for Roanoake, not Jamestown, is truly the first English colonial settlement. As many may recall from elementary school history, this first colony, comissioned by Sir Walter Raleigh and settled by Francis Drake in 1585 and a few settlers, mysteriously disappeared. Drake, wanting to return to bring supplies and check in on the progress of the colonists, was delayed for 3 years by England's war with Spain, and when he returned, the colonists, even the buildings, were gone. The words 'Croatan' were found carved on a fortification post and 'Cro' on an oak tree, indicating the colonists may have possibly fled to that nearby island, but the ship's captain refused to go there to check. This first colony was unsuccessful, its fate and disappearance shrouded in mystery, and scant little archaeological evidence remains of its existence, but the history is there, not much in terms of real museum artifacts on the history, but there are many touristy things nonetheless. A visit to Roanoke Island Festival Park is highly recommended. I went on the wildlife drive one more time on Sunday evening and saw three bears, two off in the distance, one right in the middle of the road, not moving until my car was close by.

Today, Monday, orientation began. You know how job orientation is, and it will be like this most of the week, so there won't be much to report on in terms of work for a little while, but I will keep posted when it does. We will likely be doing research work on black bears, red wolves and sea turtles, as well as on terns and various other bird species. We will be involved as well in various educational programs-- howl-ins and wildlife olympics with schools. We'll also do lots of maintenance, mowing, office work here and there, etc. It's going to be a busy, exciting summer.


One big setback-- I thought our cabin would have internet-- but we don't. I have to drive to Mcdonald's and use their wifi. But that's okay-- I will still keep this blog going and keep posting.