Chiggers and Commuting

First, I realize that my mention of chigger bites last post may have been misleading – I did not get the bites while tanning in the backyard. In fact, tanning in the backyard is probably one of the safest things I could be doing. The chigger bites are from working out in the field. Chiggers are practically microscopic and they like to hang out under tight-fitting clothing, such as your socks, underwear, and bra. However, since I am apparently so delicious, I have chigger bites going all the way up my legs. Fortunately I only have a couple above my waist, but I don’t expect that to last very long. The really annoying thing is that chigger bites itch 10 times more than mosquito bites (something to do with their saliva). So here I am with more chigger bites than I’ve ever had mosquito bites… and they itch a whole lot worse. I feel like I’m in some deep circle of hell when I’m lying in bed and the itching starts to spread. Don’t know if I’ve ever had to use so much self-control in my life (to be fair, I feel like I’m not actually using that much control, which is evident by the dozens of bites that I’ve scratched open by now). I was told that putting sulfur on my clothing (socks, in particular) would keep the chiggers away. I don’t know how effective that is because I have SO many bites at this point that I can’t tell if I have new ones or not. Plus, the smell of sulfur does not come out of clothing, even after washing it… several times. So I’m conflicted about whether to keep using the sulfur or not. I guess I’ll try it a few more times and see if I notice a difference. It’s not like I could smell any worse… :-P

 

Now, something I’ve been meaning to write about for a while but didn’t get the proper motivation until this past weekend – I absolutely love the long drive into town. Okay, I don’t love the fact that town is so far away, but when I do go to town I always love the drive. From our gate there are exactly 4 turns to get to Starbucks, but it’s a 30 minute drive. The first 25 minutes are basically on the same road (the first one dead ends and you have to turn, but basically you don’t need to think about where you are going for those first 25 minutes) – no traffic lights. That means that I can just relax, listen to music, and do some thinking. It’s such a nice and beautiful little stretch that I don’t even speed like a maniac (aka my usual self). In fact, most of the time I find that I’m going under the speed limit! Plus, people are so friendly on those little country roads! Some people give a little wave when you pass them in the opposite direction. How awesome is that?? I’ve got it down to the Texas wave – just lifting a couple fingers off the steering wheel. I totally fit in here.

 

This past weekend I appreciated that drive even more because I happened to be at the grocery store when they announced that there was fresh French bread (I swear these are connected). Naturally I ran across the store to grab a loaf. Now back at home in California the grocery store is less than 5 minutes from my house – that is perfect because the bread is still piping hot when I get home. But here, that 30-minute drive will have allowed my bread to reach an unacceptably cool temperature. Fortunately that wonderful drive that I take is pretty empty of traffic, so I started tearing into my hot-out-of-the-oven French bread just after leaving the main street. “Why not eat it in the parking lot,” you might ask. I couldn’t eat it in the parking lot because I was too busy scarfing down a piece of German chocolate cake. Yeah… that happened. But anyways, I hadn’t eaten in over six hours (besides the cake), so hot bread was like a little piece of heaven. I started tearing chunks off and stuffing my face, amazed at how delicious fresh, warm bread could be. When I got that loaf down to a reasonable size, I just started ripping hunks off with my teeth, like some kind of savage. These hunks were bigger than my mouth, so I’m sitting there with bread hanging out of my mouth, not unlike the cows that I sometimes run into with grass hanging out of their mouths. If I were on a road with two lanes in each direction, or even the same road but with a lot more traffic, I probably would not have scarfed that bread down in such a caveman-like way. The reason that drive is so perfect for wild bread-scarfing is because I’m able to do it in a way that provides momentary entertainment for the other drivers without completely being like an animal in a zoo. By that second part I mean that there are no people driving right next to/in front of me watching as I enjoy my deliciously warm bread. Instead, I’d like to think that I put a smile on the faces of those few drivers who passed me in the opposite direction. They, like me, were probably just enjoying the scenic drive into town, getting ready to wave at the approaching driver, when they get a few seconds to realize that she’s scarfing down an entire loaf of bread like a jaguar eating its prey. “Honey, was she just waving with a loaf of French bread?” Or better yet, “hey, she’s got the right idea!” I can only hope that’s what they were saying.

 

Thank you, Texas, for the wonderful commute you have given me!

Not in Kansas... but there are still tornadoes!

Last Saturday was a lot of fun – Chelsea and I went into town to use the internet for a little bit and pick up supplies for the afternoon: champagne, orange juice, and a kiddie pool! We did a bit of cleaning and data entry beforehand, and then spent the afternoon enjoying mimosas in the backyard and trying to get more reasonable tans (other than just face, neck, and hands, which are all that’s exposed when we’re in our field gear). That night I slept horribly because of all the chigger bites on my legs. Mosquito bites suck. A LOT of mosquito bites suck even more. Chigger bites REALLY suck. A lot of chigger bites? Unbearable. I can’t even describe how itchy I am. I got them worst out of anyone here, and I got more mosquito bites in the jungle than anyone else… I think I must be delicious.

Chigger bites are SO itchy... way worse than mosquitoes.

Monday afternoon I went on another “camping” trip to Possum Kingdom for point counts. This was supposed to be the last one for the summer, but based on how it went we might have to pop back up there at some point. We packed up the Patriot with all of our camping and field gear and headed out once Brianna and Frank (two field techs from the Kerr a few hours south of us) got to our house. We were ¾ of the way there (a 4-hr drive) when we got a call from Marisa who informed us that there were tornado warnings for Possum Kingdom that night and that we should call Heather, the woman who is kind of like the project coordinator for all of the sites. (Turns out a tornado also hit a town we had passed through not 30 minutes prior.) She said that we should either go back home, or at the very least stay in a hotel instead of camping in the park. We went to a Best Western about a half hour from the park (only smoking rooms left…blech) and watched the news. Unfortunately for me (the one person in the group who had no experience with tornadoes), all that was on the news was coverage of the recent tornadoes that flattened areas of Oklahoma, so I was kind of freaking out a little. But we made a plan for the morning assuming good weather and said we’d adjust it if the weather changed. Guess what – the weather changed.

The calm before the storm...

We woke up at 4:40am (had to get up early for the hour drive into the park – 30 minutes to the park, 30 minutes inside), and Dianne (the grad student mainly running the trips to PK) came by our room to say that now there were two storm fronts that were going to collide over the park around 1pm, so we needed to haul ass, get our stuff done, and hopefully get out by 12 or 12:30. That meant that we cut territory mapping and my group (me and Frank) were going to help Chelsea and Brianna out with their point counts since we would likely finish first. Seemed like a reasonable plan, especially considering that there were clear skies when we finally got out there at 6:30. We split into our groups and were tackling our point counts when I got a call from Heather at 10:45 (Dianne didn’t have reception). Let me first say that Heather apparently hates storms and said that had she gotten ahold of us before we left yesterday, she would’ve told us to cancel the trip. Let me also point out that she called the one person in the group who was terrified of being out during a tornado warning. Here’s a snippet of what she said: “There’s a strong storm with a high chance of tornadoes and large hail heading straight for y’all and it’s 30 minutes away, so y’all just need to GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE. NOW. Just radio the others and GET OUT. And call me back.” I think I said something along the lines of, “Oh, okay, I will notify the others. Thank you for calling”, and then got on the radio in a “panicked” voice (psh, I was steady as a rock… but the others disagreed): “CHELSEA. BRIANNA. DIANNE. Can anyone hear me??” They all told me afterward that they were sure Frank had fallen down a canyon and I was radioing for help – woops! But I told them what Heather had said and then Frank and I ran to find the car a few kilometers away, Dianne did the same from a different direction, and then we went to pick up the other two and get the heck out of there. It was very… exciting, that’s for sure. I’m glad that we didn’t actually run into any tornadoes!

SPURS!

4-5 days old

Other excitement during the rest of the week… I found several new BCVI nests! The first was on Sunday and it had four nestlings that were about to fledge! They were about 10 days old by the look of them, and BCVI nestlings fledge at around 10-12 days. I found the second nest on Wednesday and it also had near-fledglings (10-11 days old). The third was on Thursday and it had 4-5 day old nestlings (apparently I’m really good at finding them at the very end). That last nest was an absolute pain in the butt to find – I saw the male bring food into the middle of a big clump of shrubs, and later the female flew out of that same clump. I walked around the edge of it a few times, peering in trying to see the nest from the outside, but eventually I had to dive right in. Usually there is *some* kind of path into a clump of shrubs, even just by working your way between the branches of two separate shrubs. This time all of the shrubs were so tightly packed together that there was no path. I ended up fighting and tripping my way into the middle of the clump in such an inelegant way that I was just hoping that I hadn’t completely squashed the nest and anything in it to a pulp. Fortunately for me, the nest was just next to the trail I had blazed, and even better the nestlings had not decided to jump ship. Woohoo! Three nests this week!

10-11 days old

Wednesday night the bee situation reached a new level – they found a gap in Marisa and Michaela’s bedroom sliding door, and they had slowly been inching their way into the room. Since it was nighttime and cooler, they were all just crawling slowly on the carpet (THANKFULLY). There were at least 70 bees on the carpet, which we vacuumed up, and there were probably another 70 that were stuck in the gap between the carpet and the sliding door track. It is suuuper creepy to see >100 bees being sucked up and collected in a vacuum… and not all of them were dead.

Yesterday (Friday) we had plans to go to the Blue Bonnet Café in Marble Falls after work for their pie happy hour. I had been dreaming about key lime pie for days, but they didn’t have any! I got peanut butter pie instead, which was good, but it was no key lime… I’m feeling kind of desperate at the moment, so I might end up taking some obscenely long drive in order to get some pie. Sounds ridiculous in my mind, but not to my stomach!

Last night a storm hit with lots of rain, lightning, and thunder, and it continued again this morning. Fortunately Chelsea and I had the day off, but Dianne, Marisa, and Michaela went out thinking that it was going to hit around noon and that they could beat it – they were back at the house by 8am soaking wet. I braved the storm to drive to Marble Falls for internet (the fast setting on my windshield wipers was hardly being effective!), and within the last couple hours two of the other girls have wandered in here, too. I can tell today is going to be an exciting day off…

Lichen-butt spider! These things are HUGE and they build their webs right across the open paths at face height...

BONUS: Things on my Pants

I find myself at Starbucks earlier than anticipated (one of the work vehicles needed gas), so I figured I'd give y'all a super special bonus post!

First, let me explain how laundry works during the field season: doing laundry is kind of a strange ritual, because ten minutes of being out in the field and your clothes are already disgusting. They will always look disgusting, but that does not warrant washing them. The deciding factor of when to wash your clothes is when they smell disgusting. Not just, "man, this shirt kind of smells a little". No. When even you can't stand the smell of your own clothing, then it's time to wash them. As a result, I wear the same field clothing for many days in a row - longer, if it's my favorite pair of pants that we're talking about. Last week I was getting ready to retire my favorite pants to the oh-god-get-this-smell-off-of-me pile when I took a moment to appreciate all the crap (figuratively and literally) that was on them:

• Dirt
• Grass stains
• Blood
• Dead bugs
• Live bug
• Snot
• Cow feces
• Sweat
• Twigs (in the pockets)
• Char (from burnt wood)
• Clay
• Water
• Rust (from hopping barbed wire fences)
• Burs
• Pencil lead

Next time you think your clothing is dirty, think again!

My Weekend (an actual weekend!) Getaway

Okay, so about that TWO DAY WEEKEND – Chelsea and I woke up early on Saturday and headed down to the Natural Bridge Caverns outside of San Antonio. These caverns were nice, but not quite as magnificent as the ones in Carlsbad. They get their name from a natural rock bridge that formed (or rather remained) after a sinkhole created a huge gap that exposed the caverns. We went on a guided tour of the caverns, which was an interesting experience. At these caverns you are not allowed to explore on your own – you have to pay for some type of tour. The tours can be upwards of 40 people – fortunately we were on the first tour of the day, so there were only about 20 of us (including a baby… who brings a baby into a cave?). The guide pointed out lots of interesting features and shared a lot of history, but she did it using a portable microphone (echo much?) and we only stopped at designated stopping points (you could pause for a quick picture here and there, but anything longer and you were holding up the people behind you). These caverns were also much wetter than the ones in Carlsbad, so it got pretty warm and humid in some of the rooms. All in all it was a nice stop, but I still definitely recommend the Carlsbad Caverns over anything else.

Jellyfish!

After that we went to our hotel and checked in (3 hours early!), then took a bus to the Market Square. We wandered around the different shops for a couple of hours, watched people performing traditional Mexican dances, bought margaritas at a food stand and discovered that there are apparently no open container laws in the general area from the Riverwalk to the Alamo.

We made our way down to the Riverwalk and did a lap (while perusing the stores and restaurants), then finally settled on The Original Mexican Restaurant for an early dinner. Chelsea and I both got chicken enchiladas with a cream sauce (suiza?) – SO GOOD! Definitely no room for the ice cream we were planning on getting afterward (which is sad considering that now the nearest ice cream is 30 minutes away).

A scene in Miss Congeniality was filmed here.

From there we went to the Rivercenter Mall and wandered around for a while. We stopped in a bookstore where some author was trying to promote her book in a very… in-your-face kind of way. Chelsea was able to duck out of the way, but I got the full blast. She started by pointing out a couple pictures on the walls of her with famous people, and then took me to the shelf where her book was on display. She thrust a copy of her book into my hands, said that if I like reading then I will love her book, told me to sit and read the first chapter, and finished by saying, “if you think you’ve had a hard life, just WAIT until you read about mine!” Umm… thanks, but no thanks. I held onto the book and walked around for a couple minutes while she started her spiel for the next pair of girls to walk in, then casually walked past her display and slid it back onto the shelf as nonchalantly as I could… and that’s when I heard (shouted from across the store), “I SAW YOU PUT MY BOOK BACK. WHAT, YOU DON’T LIKE MY BOOK?” Come on, lady, I was trying to be polite! Needless to say we left soon after that.

Right after that charming encounter we ran into Really Tall Guy (we met a lot of interesting people and didn’t get a single person’s name, so we gave everyone nicknames). Really Tall Guy was, as you might have guessed, really tall. No – like REALLY tall, as in 6’8’’ tall. He was working at a jewelry store but was standing outside trying to get people to come inside, and he saw us wandering aimlessly and said that we looked lost. I was pretty much staring straight up in order to see his face. We chatted with him for a couple minutes but then went on our way. Okay maybe that’s not as exciting as I thought it was. But he had to be the tallest guy I’ve ever met – I think that’s exciting!

After Really Tall Guy was Bearded Wine Guy. Bearded Wine Guy worked at a tropical winery outside the mall and beckoned us in for free wine tasting. He was super nice, funny, and generous with the free samples. We tried a bunch of different fruity wines – raspberry, kiwi, passion fruit (!), etc – and then Chelsea bought a bottle of wine (and he gave her a free corksicle), and we each bought wine slushies (which he gave us half off). He also asked if we had plans that night and gave me his VIP access card to a club called Celebs. Apparently all of the employees on the Riverwalk get this VIP card, which gets you and a friend to the front of the line and neither of you have to pay the cover charge. Heck yeah! So that was our new late-night plan.

After leaving the winery we killed some time by wandering around in front of the Alamo (with our wine slushies, of course). Then we went to a comedy club at 8:30 – all three guys were really funny, and it was Chelsea’s first time at a comedy club! Our stomach muscles were still hurting the next day from laughing so much. We got out of the comedy club around 10:30 and decided to check out this Celebs place (only a few blocks away). Chelsea was getting nervous about using the VIP card, but I just said screw it, whipped out the card from Bearded Wine Guy, walked up to Doorman, said “I have a VIP card, and she’s with me!” and hoped like hell he didn’t question me. Fortunately Doorman directed us inside without saying anything! However, there was a woman standing there who asked the name we were under. I momentarily froze, thinking that “Bearded Wine Guy” would not be an acceptable response. But Doorman came to our rescue just in time and said that I had a VIP card and could just go right in. YEAH!

Spice Girls on the wall... talk about celebs!

This club was surprisingly large. The first room that we walked into had a pretty big bar, a stage for karaoke, and lots of seating. From there we saw doors leading to another room which also had a bar, as well as a mini dance floor and some random seating around the room – turns out that was the hookah lounge. It was a while before we realized that there was a third room upstairs with the dance floor (and another bar)! We definitely wished we had discovered the dance floor sooner, but we had a blast the entire time anyways. Some of the people we met that night: Barman, Air Force Guys (3), Tall Guy (not REALLY tall, but maybe 6’5’’), Awkward Guy, Hookah Guy, and Tall Guy’s Roommate. Quite the collection of guys that night.

The next day we slept in until 7:30ish (4 hours of sleep on our day off??) and went down to breakfast where there were TEXAS-SHAPED WAFFLES. I’m starting to like the way that Texans do things. Sure, sometimes it can be a bit in your face, but way to be proud about where you come from by having Texas-shaped waffles every morning. I guess places like Colorado and Wyoming do that, too, so way to go guys. After that it was a slow morning until we finally got out of bed (the second time around), checked out, and went to the San Antonio Botanical Garden. Chelsea and I both wore dresses in the hopes of them making us feel more with it, but I don’t think that was the case. In fact, I don’t know if there were two people at the botanic garden who were less interested in plants than we were that morning. Whatever… it was still nice, and we tried.

As for the rest of the week, we finished up our second round of point counts, so I was mostly doing those for a few days. Tuesday was particularly nice because Diane and I were able to drive fairly close to most of our point count locations, so we got them done a lot more quickly than we otherwise would have. Wednesday was a different story – Chelsea and I had to walk to every point (14 on that property), so we ended up walking over 16km that day! Oh, and there were lightning storms early Wednesday morning which pushed back our start time by an hour. It also meant that the dirt roads were completely wet and muddy, so I got to experience driving a Jeep with tires caked in an inch of mud and sliding all over the road. It was kind of fun, actually, but crazy how little control you can have over something that big. Thursday there were more early-morning storms, but it cleared up in time to head out at the usual 6:15am. Stormy mornings are nice because it stays relatively cool for much of the day, but ALL of the vegetation is wet, so even if it’s not actively raining, you still get soaked. Yesterday (Friday) felt like the first real day of summer – hot and humid all day. You know it’s a bad sign when you think the temperature is perfect and it’s only 6:45am. The weird thing is that it’s kind of backwards from how it was in the jungle – much hotter (not much canopy to provide constant shade) but much less humid (I would literally soak an entire outfit in sweat in the jungle just from the insane amount of humidity – here I only sweat a little bit and pretty much only in the normal places). I don’t know which I prefer more – HOT and humid (Texas) or hot and HUMID (jungle). I guess I need to wait until it really is the middle of summer before I can make that call!

Male BCVI just hanging out - can you see the pink on his legs? I was slightly too far away to get a good shot of his bands.

Last night was another fun night out – all four of us (Michaela, Marisa, Chelsea, and me) went out for Mexican food (I am always craving Mexican food here) and to see The Great Gatsby. It was the first time that all four of us went out, which was really nice, but also kind of sad that we were all pooped by 9:30 when the movie got out (to be fair, Michaela and Marisa still had to work today). Chelsea and I have plans to tan in the backyard (more than just our hands and faces) and invest in a kiddie pool, since the pond out back is for fish, not feet.

Also, and it sounds like I’ll be going to Possum Kingdom again with Chelsea, Ashley, and Diane on Monday! Should but fun if it’s not excruciatingly hot and my feet aren’t still hurting from this week’s point counts!

Oh yes, an update on the bee situation: we caulked up the gap in the living room ceiling where the bees where getting in but they continued to swarm outside. A couple days later some guys from the refuge came and caulked the gap outside, but they said they didn’t really want to do anything to remove them since they want to have pollinators around (we’d prefer it if they were around somewhere else rather than our living room ceiling, but oh well…). Later Michaela caulked some gaps in the wooden beams that we saw them crawling into from the outside. The next day the number of bees quadrupled – they were all flying around and crawling all over the beams trying to find new ways in (we think we trapped the queen inside). So now it’s just a waiting game to see if and where they get in next! Anyone have suggestions for getting rid of bees?