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... |
No comments:
Post a Comment