Un-bee-lievable

Last week I, along with some co-workers, were feeding dead salmon to bears. As you can probably imagine, the fish reeks (and so do we). The lovely smell attracts a zillion yellow jackets. They gather on the fish, the sidewalk, and us. A real pain for anyone, but especially if you’re allergic to bees, which I am.

At one point, I was using a garden hose to spray off my hands, which were covered in fish guts. Several yellow jackets kept coming at me. So what do I do? I spray them with the hose. One pesky fellow is only inches from the nozzle and I can’t quite get him, so I change my aim, waving the hose back and forth, trying to zap him away.

Then I realize what I’ve done.

In changing my aim, I’m no longer spraying toward the ground. I’m spraying my friend JT. In the face. And he’s just standing there. In silence. Wondering what he’s done to piss me off.

Lightning Peak

My almost fearless tech, SP, who had been with me for four years and got his Master’s degree, left this weekend for a real job. Silly boy. A group of us went to dinner on Thursday to say good-bye, and someone asked if anyone knew any good/embarrassing stories about him.

I don’t know why everyone looked at me.

Another friend said, “Tell the story about Lightning Peak.”

So I did.

Last year, SP and I killed ourselves to put in the most beautiful barbed-wire hair snares anyone has ever seen. And we hiked them far off the roads to increase our chances of getting bears to come into them. Hiking them off roads in our study area meant hiking straight up. Our study area is not only very steep, it gets things called micro-cells, tiny storms that blaze through the area in minutes. When I say tiny, I mean one cloud. When I say storm, I mean full on thunder, lightning and a downpour of rain or hail. When I say minutes, I mean like five. And sometimes you will see the storm, but it will NEVER COME YOUR WAY.

One day, while SP and I were pounding barbed-wire into trees on top of a rather high ridge, I felt the wind kick up. I looked out over the horizon and saw IN THE FAR OFF DISTANCE a black cloud and a single bolt of lightning. Stupidly and quite casually, I said, “Hmm…lightning.”

SP looked up from what he was doing and said, “Oh, shit, lightning? Where? I’m out of here.” Then he dropped his tools and ran down the ridge, leaving me alone.

“Uh…Okay, I’ll just finish up,” I said as he disappeared from sight.

To this day that story makes me laugh because SP is a six-foot-tall, two-hundred pound, twenty-something male who left a five-foot-five, one hundred and thirty pound, forty-something female alone on a ridge to get struck by lightning…that never came our way.

Glamour

Being a wildlife biologist isn't as glamorous as you may think. Yes, we have seriously cool moments, but more times than not, we’re either sitting at a desk, or sweating, freezing or something to death in the great outdoors. In my case, lately, I smell. Bad. So bad in fact that when I stopped at a rest area, a little kid sniffed the air and wrinkled his nose in disgust.

“What stinks?” he said.

I looked down at myself, my pants and shirt covered in red goo, and shook my head. What stinks? That would be me and my truck full of bear bait.

Yep, it’s a glamorous job.

I Have No Idea How I Got Here.

I went to a barbeque this weekend and someone asked how I became a wildlife biologist. Hell if I know. I didn’t grow up in the outdoors, doing outdoor sports, and given one of my first outdoor experiences, I’m surprised I ever went back into the woods.

When I was in college, I spent a year in Australia. My first week there, my fellow Americans wanted to go for a hike. I decided to tag along, even though I’d never been hiking before. Admittedly, I was quite intimidated by everyone’s gear. I had on a T-shirt, jeans and sneakers, while everyone else had on moisture-wicking tank-tops, outdoor pants and hiking boots. Hiking boots? I didn’t know there was such a thing!

Because I had no idea how to read a map, I had to rely on everyone else to tell me where we were going. When we got to the trailhead and started down the trail, I got more comfortable. I was fit and kept up just fine, even though my clothes were not “field worthy.”

After several miles, one of the girls wearing shorts screamed. She had looked at her legs and noticed black worms along her sock-line. At closer observation, we realized they were attached to her…sucking her blood. Then we realized we were all covered with them.

While most of the others screamed (even the guys) and threw hissy fits, I quietly removed the black worms. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t pleased, but I didn’t scream and throw a fit.

Several miles later, we came to a lodge. THE ACTUAL TRAILHEAD! Had we started here, we would’ve learned all about these little black LEECHES! We would’ve also gotten salt packets to help ward them off. But because the so-called outdoorsmen and women of the group couldn’t actually read a map and took us to the wrong “trailhead,” we didn’t get this information until we were half-way through our hike.

So no, this was NOT when I decided that working in the woods for a living would be cool, but it was when I realized two things about myself that helped me succeed in this business: I’m not prone to panic in crappy situations, and I like being in charge.

Years later, I learned how to read a map…and got some super cool hiking boots.

Prickly Business

Before I was a lowly grad student, I was a lowlier wildlife tech working on an Island off the coast of California. The Island was covered in cactus. When I arrived on the Island, I was issued a Leatherman. (For those of you who don’t know what a Leatherman is, see the picture to the left and notice the handy pliers).

“What’s this for?” I asked.

“Cactus,” replied my boss. Then he smiled. “You’ll understand soon enough.”

I spent twelve weeks smashing trails through fields of prickly pear cactus and evading jumping cholla like they were land mines. For those of you who have never had the pleasure of meeting a cholla cactus, they are called jumping cholla (pronounced choya) because all you have to do is walk by one and they throw spiny cactus balls at you! Spines 360 degrees around!

Occasionally, the spine of a prickly pear would spear me in the leg or slice through my boot to my foot, but that was no big deal. The Cholla were evil. And one day, I learned just how evil they were.

I was walking on my smashed prickly pear trail, minding my own business, when a spiny cholla ball flew at me and attached to the back of my calf. I didn’t realize the cholla had stuck to me until I was mid-stride…and had effectively glued the back of my calf to the back of my thigh with a ball of cactus.

Yes, that’s right folks. I found myself standing in the middle of a field of cactus on one leg! With no place to sit! Because I had a ton of spines stuck in me, I couldn’t pull my calf from my thigh. Nor could I grab the cholla ball with my hand…unless I wanted my hand to join the cholla ball party.

So yes, I thanked my boss when I finally made it back to camp, because I had somehow managed to pull the Leatherman out of my pocket and pick, spine by spine, the cholla out of my flesh without falling over into a field of cactus.

Infamy

A year after yelling at the resident about her lack of common sense, I was sitting in a bar with some friends. Unbeknownst to me, we were surrounded by a bunch of vet students, one of whom was my friend, Ben.

“Hey, Snarky,” Ben said. (Okay, he didn’t call me Snarky. He called me by name.)

“Hey, Ben,” I said.

“Wait,” said a young woman sitting with him. “You’re Snarky?”

“Uh…” I glanced at Ben for a little help. Why did this random woman think she knew who I was?

Before Ben could open his mouth, several more women leaned toward my table. “You’re Snarky?”

Ben bowed his head and started laughing, but didn’t offer assistance.

“Well,” I said, thinking they had me confused with someone else, “that’s my name, but there are a lot of us around. I don’t think…”

“You’re the one who yelled at Dr. Resident last year!” one of the very young women squealed.

“Uh…” I glanced at Ben, who was nodding his head and still laughing. Seriously, that’s what this was about? “Yeah…I guess.”

“We’ve heard about you,” another one said. “You’re a scary bitch.”

I glared at her. “You have no idea.”

I May Have an Attitude Problem

When I was but a lowly grad student, I took bears to the vet hospital monthly for body fat analysis.

And one day, I got into a tiff with a resident.

I had been bringing bears to the vet hospital for almost two years, and unfortunately for me, the two people who normally helped went onto bigger and better things. So, this time, I was stuck with a resident…who had a very big ego.

Everything went smoothly, until we were finished. We had loaded the still sleeping bears into our truck and I went back to get the data. The data that would normally be ready and waiting.

Not this time.

The resident, who I’m sure was good at her job, but apparently had zero common sense, decided this would be a good time to teach a bunch of fourth year students how to use the piece of equipment that measured body fat. She was taking them through the process of how to set up the calculations…step–by slow as molasses–step.

I stood in the doorway…and because I’m super patient *cough*… I let her ramble on for about a minute before interrupting her and calmly *cough* explaining to her that it was not appropriate to make us wait because we had GRIZZLY BEARS with us. GRIZZLY BEARS that would wake up in minutes! I suggested it might be more appropriate to use, oh I don’t know, a dog or cat as a teaching tool.

She scowled then finished the data analysis, printed it out and handed to me…still scowling.

When I got back to the truck, I said to my advisor, “FYI, I yelled at the resident because she was taking her sweet ass time teaching students how to use the DEXA.”

He nodded and said, “I wondered what took you so long.”

Later that day, I had a message on my voicemail from said resident, yelling at me and demanding an apology. Several minutes after listening to her long-winded message and wondering what I should do, my advisor sauntered into my office.

“Your favorite resident left a message on my machine,” he said. “She wanted me to know how unprofessional you were and that she expects verbal and written apologies. She also wanted me to tell you that you are but a grad student. She’s a doctor and you had no right to speak to her that way, especially in front of her students.”

She had a point, and if my advisor, who I had (and still have) the utmost respect for, wanted me to apologize, I would…*gulp*

“So…I should call her?”

“I already did,” he said. “I told her she was an idiot. I don’t think she’s expecting an apology anymore.

Did I mention how much I respected my advisor?