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.