Another Driving Story:

Last summer, my lead tech, two state employees and I met at a four way intersection, each of us driving separate vehicles. We pulled all four trucks to the side of the dirt road to discuss the game plan for the rest of the day. As we talked, we heard a vehicle speeding up the hill toward us. Because it was making such a loud noise, we turned, knowing whatever was coming was big. When I saw the gargantuan motor home barrel around the corner, I silently wondered if we’d all pulled off the road far enough for it to get by. The road was barely wide enough for two vehicles to pass. My concern waned when the driver didn’t hit the brakes. He just crested the hill and bombed downward toward our vehicles. I figured if the driver had that sort of confidence, he must have had plenty of room.

Wrong.

The shriek of tearing metal was deafening. I covered my ears and watched, thinking surely the driver would stop. My truck bounced up and down as the motor home tore a hole through it and ripped off the rear taillight. Then it did the exact same thing to the truck behind mine. And the driver never once touched his brakes.

The four of us stood in a dumbfounded stupor as the driver raced down the hill, leaving the scene. Needless to say, when we caught up with the driver (which took awhile because he was driving his ginormous motor home way too fast on a narrow, twisting, gravel road with potholes and washboards), he wasn’t nearly as apologetic as the man on the four-wheeler.

Us: “Excuse me, sir, did you know you hit two state vehicles back there?”

Him: “I had no idea.”

Us, jaws dropped because how could he not have heard or felt it: “Well, you did.”

Him: “I thought there was plenty of room.”

Us: “There would’ve been if you had slowed down, but you didn’t touch your brakes once.”

Him: “Because I thought there was plenty of room, but obviously there wasn’t, so this is your fault.”

Good thing the insurance companies—all three of them—didn’t see it that way.

Confessions of a Bingo Moron.

Today I’m taking a break from making fun of others to make fun of myself.

Last week I played Bingo with some co-workers. This was my third time playing bingo. My third time winning. But unless I have someone looking over my shoulder, I’m too stupid to know I’ve won. The first two times I played, I collected my earnings only because a friend of mine (the same friend both times) caught my bingo. Alas, my guardian angel was not there last week when I got bingo and didn’t realize it. Of all people, the Bingo Lady pointed it out. She glanced at my card for two seconds as she walked by, and said, “Oh look, you got bingo. Too bad it was five calls ago. Better luck next time.”
That was a proud moment.

Joe Public

Last year I fired a kid for reckless driving. Or rather that was Rock Star’s final straw. Joe Public had called into the office to complain about him. I’d had it. So I let him go.

With that said, most of the time it’s Joe Public who drives like an idiot. I know this, so I instruct my crew to drive defensively. We’ve had many close calls with people on four wheelers. Seriously, people! You’re on four wheelers! With your two-year-old. Next to you is your five-year-old who’s driving his very own four wheeler. Where is the big bad truck supposed to go when you and your kids are taking up the whole road? Never mind none of you have on helmets and ninety percent of you are drunk and you’re all driving fast. Too fast!

Lucky for you, we have several helicopter landing sites in the area so you and/or your child can be life-flighted out when you hit the truck (‘Cause let’s face facts. The truck’s gonna win). Too bad there’s no cell phone reception.

I’ve had many encounters with drunken idiots on Quads, but one incident stands out. I was done with field work for the week and heading home. I’d just left my crew, turned on the radio and settled in for the five hour drive. Thirty seconds down the road, I heard something. Not sure what it was, I turned down the radio and listened. Still not sure, I pulled my foot off the gas. Good thing because as I rounded a bend in the road, two four wheelers (driven by men in their sixties) came whizzing at me. Of course, they were side by side…and racing. I slammed on my brakes and turned my wheel so my truck would hit the bank and not the guy heading straight for me. I don’t know how I didn’t hit him. I don’t know how he didn’t end up a hood ornament. By the time we both stopped, there were only inches between our vehicles. And I could see the fear in his eyes.

He stands out because he was the only person to ever stop and thank me for being a good driver. He admitted he and his buddy had been racing. He was profusely apologetic and grateful. Very grateful.

Now if we could only get the other idiots out there to understand…or, better yet, stop reproducing.

Oh Deer:

While there are those in the world who do not realize that fish and wildlife agencies have law enforcement officers, there are those who believe everyone who drives a state fish and wildlife vehicle is a game warden, and hence, equipped to deal with wildlife emergencies.

Case in point, I was driving through town, on a Sunday, in a state vehicle, minding my own business, when a cop pulled up beside me, honking his horn and waving his hand. Confused because he was NOT behind me and his lights were NOT flashing, I pulled into a parking lot. I became even more confused when he knocked on the passenger side window. Breathing a sigh of relief because I was buckled, I unlatched my seatbelt and unlocked the door, at which point, he opened it and said, “Thank God I ran into you. We’ve been trying to get a hold of a game warden for the past few hours. There’s a deer in the middle of the town and we need to move it, can you help us?”

“Uh...” I responded with intelligence as I thought about what he was asking me to do. As luck would have it, he flagged down a person who had access to drugs and could immobilize a deer. Problem was these things almost always went wrong. The biologist or warden or whoever was trying to do a good deed either screwed up, or the animal went crazy, or Joe Public got involved. Either way the so-called professional (that’s me) ended up looking like an ass...on YouTube. So I stammered, weighing my options, and eventually said, “Yeah, I can help.”

Fortunately, everything went smoothly. I darted the deer without any trauma, and after several minutes, it fell asleep...and about fifty people poured out of banks, bars and other businesses, hands clapping and cell phones and cameras snapping.

I gave myself a pat on the back, thinking, “Wow, not only will the deer be okay, but I made the agency look good.” Or so I thought. Everything was so anticlimactic, the event didn’t even make the local news. But we all know, had things gone wrong...the whole world would’ve seen it.

GENERATION Y-BOTHER:

Sorry for the two weeks off, folks. I see (and have heard) that my audience is not impressed with me. Sigh. Story of my life. So, I’m used to the nagging. I don’t give in that easily. Besides I know who you are and where you live, so watch out!

And now for the next blog:

Even in the field of wildlife biology, technology is advancing and generations are finding it more difficult to communicate. I’m a gen Xer. My techs are gen Y. I learned how to get around the woods by using a map, compass and altimeter. I was literally dumped in the middle of the woods by my boss, told to go to points A through G, and meet him back at his truck at point H at 5pm. I got lost…a lot, but I learned. And I found his truck.

My techs know how to use a GPS and claimed during the interview that they knew how to read maps and use compasses. Before we went into the field, I asked again if they knew how to read a map and use a compass. “Sure do,” they said.

If they knew how to use a map so well, why did my crew leader and I walk around a ridge for an hour looking for a hair snare they installed? Why did we have to give up searching, start cussing them out, then go back to the truck, resigned to set a new one? Why did we then look down the ridge and see the snare in the valley? ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ROAD FROM WHERE THEY PLACED IT ON THE MAP!

After my crew leader and I finally baited the snare in the valley and got into our truck, he looked at me and said, “So, time for you to learn how to use a GPS?”

I did. I learned. Now I use a GPS sometimes and a map all the time. As for my techs? They still claimed they knew how to read a map and refused to let me teach them.

In the case of many of my techs, generation Y was aptly named. As in, Y-bother.

Off to the Races

I don’t know how it was possible, but my second field season on this project was worse than the first. I went into the field knowing what we were going to do. I had a plan. Too bad I hired techs that made the Gnome look like Einstein. Our first day in the field, my mother and father, who came to visit and see my field site, did more work than my techs. When tech number one arrived, he sat on the couch and stared at the wall while my parents, my crew leader, and I unloaded supplies. Occasionally, we’d ask him to do something, hoping his brain would turn on and he’d start taking some initiative. No such luck. He’d do whatever task we asked him to do then he’d sit back on the couch and stare at the wall. When tech number two arrived, we’d finished unloading, so he sat with tech number one and stared at the wall. Apparently, it was a fascinating wall. Tech number three? Didn’t bother showing up.

And thus began season number two, a season filled with killer Slinkys and wannabe rock stars.

Are You Grousing Me?

Okay, so grouse isn’t a verb. It’s a bird. And grousing isn’t a word, but so what. This is my blog. Get over it.

If you know what a grouse is, then you might know they eat vegetation. When they’re young, they even eat insects. But they don’t eat salmon. So when I was in a meeting earlier this year and a wildlife biologist said he and his team wanted to study the effects of adding dead salmon to streams on grouse, I was stunned. There were so many things wrong with that statement, but I managed to keep my argument simple.

“We need to study the effects of throwing dead salmon in streams on bears (or some other fish-eating animal), because we already know how bears respond in a natural salmon system,” I said. “If bears don’t respond as we would expect, our management strategy may not be working for wildlife species that are known to use salmon in intact systems. Because no one has ever studied the effects of salmon on grouse, you must first study grouse in an intact salmon system, not in a management area where salmon no longer occur.”

“But everyone knows bears eat salmon,” he said. “We want to study grouse.”

“But grouse don’t eat salmon. And the question isn’t just will the bears eat the dead fish, it’s will the bears consume enough to effect growth rates, reproduction, survival, etc.”

“We want to study grouse.”

And I want to win the lottery, but it ain’t gonna happen...just like the grouse study.

TSWB