When Nature Calls: Future Plans and Fourth of July

By now most of you probably already know this, but I recently accepted an internship with Point Blue Conservation Science for the fall! The work will be based at the Palomarin Field Station near Point Reyes. It’s a fall migration internship, so I’ll be doing mist netting every day to catch and band birds on their migration south. I’ll also be walking transects to identify birds by sight and sound that may not be represented in the nets (jays, for instance, are super smart and avoid the nets once they know they are there). It will be nice to get properly trained in ageing and sexing birds, as well as just getting to see and handle a bunch of different species – I’m definitely looking forward to it! Plus it’s not that far from my friends/family in the Bay Area, so stop by our field station if you’re ever up in Point Reyes!

A couple weeks ago my Aunt Kathy drove down from Illinois, so I got to spend a couple of days visiting her and my grandma. We went out for Greek food at our favorite restaurant, my aunt and I walked along the beach for a couple hours both mornings, we watched The Bachelorette, and basically ate everything in sight. It was a great weekend! One of my favorite parts was when we were getting frozen yogurt from this new place in town. We were waiting in the drive-thru line, but the line was so long that they had a guy (Ryan) walking car-to-car to take peoples’ orders. Unfortunately he got to our car before we even got to the menu sign, so we were totally unprepared. After spending like 7 minutes learning about all the items and combos on the menu, we ordered and kept inching our way forward. However, then we hit a SECOND menu sign that was totally different from the first one!! It had actual food on it instead of just fro-yo (though, to be fair, we were going to treat the fro-yo as a meal anyways). My aunt and I looked at each other, and then she stuck her head out the window and shouted, “Ryan! Run your ass back here! I just saw a picture of sliders!” This was of course while he was in the middle of taking someone else’s order, and was the epitome of our weekend. Couldn’t have had more fun if we tried :)

"You know we're eating those gingerbread men in the car, right?"

"Stephanie, we have to eat all these sliders before we get home or Grandma will want some!"

Dinner.

As for work, I’m mostly doing data entry in the office, which, as you can imagine, is not very thrilling. However, there are a couple of things that make it a lot more enjoyable: a comedy station on Pandora and tiny kittens. The Pandora station is great and speaks for itself. The challenging part is trying not to burst out laughing (I listen to it on headphones). One time I kind of slipped as someone was showing me some really funky looking pants online. They thought I was laughing at the pants, so they started showing me more pictures. Meanwhile I was still listening to the comedy act in one ear, so I started laughing harder. It spiraled from there, until I probably seemed like I was high for being so entertained by a pair of pants. Comedy is great. Then this weekend we added kittens to the mix – Michelle is a foster parent for the Humane Society, and they asked her to take care of a pair of kittens for a few weeks until they find a home for them. Since they’re so young (2-3 weeks), Michelle has to feed them every few hours, so they hang out in the office with us! I don’t know if I’ve ever held kittens that small before, but they are adorable! They also pee everywhere, so I actually have to change my shirt every day (I’m a field biologist – if it’s not sweaty or smelly, it’s still fine to wear to work for days in a row).

I didn’t end up doing much for the Fourth of July. I actually worked that morning, took a big fat nap in the afternoon, and then I drove down to Lake Jackson in Sebring to watch the fireworks. I showed up a bit early, though, so I spent 3 hours running between my spot by the water to some kind of covering when a patch of rain would roll through. It did that all afternoon! Fortunately we were still able to have fireworks, but they had the 5^th AND 6^th reserved as alternatives depending on the weather. Watching on the lake was nice because there were fireworks going off all around it! Wild being in a place where fireworks are legal. In California I used to sit on the hill by my house, watch a burst of fireworks in the distance, followed by the sound of cop sirens, then see fireworks somewhere else, followed by more sirens…

The daily thunderstorms here are kind of annoying, because when they were first starting out, I was really good about not showering when there was lightning. I wouldn’t take a shower if there had been any thunder for a good while, which was fine because the storms were short and not a daily thing. However, now some of these storms last most of the afternoon evening, from 2 or 3 until 8 or 9. Waiting for a thunderless stretch is getting more and more difficult, so it’s kind of like “Well, I haven’t heard thunder RIGHT ON TOP OF US in like 10 minutes…. It’s probably okay to just hop in for a few minutes”. And when I say RIGHT ON TOP OF US, I mean it. We watch the radar and see storms developing right on top of the range. The blinking dot of me in my trailer is usually the center of this big green-to-yellow-to-red blob that has some seriously insane lightning and thunder. We can SEE it striking down across the field next to the prison, and the thunder shakes our entire trailer. Our power even flickers when it’s right on top of us, and it sounds like that super crackly thunder from scary/haunted movies. So when it’s not doing THAT and just sounds like normal thunder, that’s when I decide it’s safe enough to take a shower.

Since I’m leaving a week early in order to get back to CA in time to start my new job, I’m down to my last 3.5 weeks here! I’m going to Fort Myers one last time this weekend, and for my last day off I’m FINALLY going to go to HARRY POTTER WORLD! Good thing I waited as long as I did, because now I can see the addition, too! Jealous? I thought so.

Other random pictures...