Off to AZ...

Today I took the day off. One of the best things about the BLM is a system called "MaxFlex." Essentially, every hour worked past eight hours in a single day can be accrued and later used as time off. For example, I could work ten-hour days Monday through Thursday and then take Friday off. I haven't been working ten-hour days, but most days I do work 8.5 or 9. So today I decided not to go to work, and instead to do laundry, visit the humane society, and run errands.

This evening I'm headed to Buffalo, WY to meet up with some other people that work in the BLM field office there. Then tomorrow morning we're all headed down to Grand Canyon National Park in AZ for a week-long training seminar. It will be hot, and probably boring, but maybe... just maybe I'll get to see a Kaibab Squirrel!

Needless to say, it won't be until after the 4th before I'll be able to post again. I hope you all are doing well, and enjoy the upcoming holiday!

Radio Telemetry

The first two weeks I was here the sun didn't shine more than eight or nine hours, total. It rained frequently, if not lightly all day then heavily in the late afternoon or overnight. I knew it would change, but I'm not sure I was expecting it to happen so suddenly and with such intensity. Newcastle and the surrounding area went from low- to mid-fifties, clouds, and rain to high-eighties, low-nineties, and not a cloud in sight in what seemed like a matter of days. I was enjoying sleeping in a little and not going in to work until 8:00 AM, but with temperatures quickly rising every morning I've had to forgo that little bit of extra sleep and head in to work at 7:00 AM. Who knows? If the weather stays this hot, I may just end up at work at 6.

Today the temperature peaked around 92. That farmer's tan I wrote about? It's here.

The receptionist at the BLM office, K, was kind enough to order me a few BLM t-shirts to wear in the field, lending some legitimacy to my position should I ever need to make claims to curious land-owners or recreationists. She asked what size I wore, and I told her a small in men's sizes or medium in women's. To give her the benefit of doubt, I don't know whether K ordered them directly or sent the order to the state office for someone else to fill, but regardless, the shirts I received were a men's size medium... and husky.

I am by no means a "husky" individual. I have no idea where the line of communication went wrong. I do hope that it wasn't K who decided I needed "husky" shirts.

Today was sage-grouse day. Once a week until the end of my internship I'm supposed to go out on Thunder Basin National Grassland and track down five radio-collared sage-grouse, four females and a single male. Get ready for some science! Fair warning: if you're not up to reading science-y things, you might want to skip the rest of this post.

Grouse (I keep wanting to say 'grice') are lekking birds. Each breeding season groups of males gather on high, visible spots in grasslands or prairies and try their best to attract mates. Males put on displays, dancing around, singing, and flashing their plumage. Females are attracted to the leks as spots to scrutinize males, and they love it, because they can compare potential mates side-by-side. When they're satisfied with a male, they mate and go along their merry ways. Females take off and eventually nest and raise their chicks alone, and males disperse when they no longer attract hordes of females to their hilltops with their dancing and singing.

Greater Sage-Grouse lek around late April, and females should be nesting now. My job this summer is to track down the grouse, determine if the females are nesting, find out how they're using their habitats and (eventually) find where they go to hide away for winter. How do I find the grouse, you ask? Radio telemetry.

Radio telemetry is one of my absolute favorite ecological monitoring methods. The technology is continually advancing, and over the years it's almost revolutionised our ability to track individuals and populations. It has been a key in helping to understand some of the most elusive species in some of the most remote locations, and, best of all, it's fun.

Imagine you've caught an animal in a live-trap, and you want to know how it spends its time, where it lives, where is travels, or how frequently it visits a particular area. But perhaps the animal lives in a dense environment, is extremely cryptic, has become trap-shy, or travels far faster than any human could. How do you answer those questions?

Captured animals are fit will small devices that transmit a unique frequency of radio waves. Mammals are generally fit with collars, whereas birds and bats are often given backpack-like devices or small boxes glued between the shoulder blades. New advances have led to smaller transmitters, some of which can even be implanted under the skin. The animal is then released and allowed to return to its normal activities.

Later, scientists can track the movements of the animal in the field, using a receiver that will recognize the signal emitted by the radio collar and an antenna to hone in on the animal's location. The process is somewhat akin to tuning the antenna on a television in hopes of getting the best picture. The antenna is swept slowly back and forth until the direction is identified from which the signal is strongest. The scientist then moves in the proper direction, stops, checks the direction again, moves on, stops, checks the direction, and so on and so forth until he/she either flushes the animal or gets close enough to see where it is. In environments too dense to transmit signals properly or with very elusive or fast-moving animals, airplanes are occasionally used for location. If time is short or the scientist doesn't wish to disturb the animal, a series of readings can be taking in a perimeter around the supposed location of the animal, and the points can be extrapolated to gain an approximate determination of the animal's position.

In short, radio telemetry is really cool.

So how did I fare today? Poorly. The batteries in our receivers are old and don't hold charge well, and both ran out before I was able to get close enough to find/flush a bird. Luckily, we just got our new batteries in today, so after my sad attempt at finding nesting females I returned to the office and installed a more reliable power source.

Photography, anyone?

I fancy myself an amateur photographer. The tale of how I first became interested in photography and my quest to find a decent camera is both long and harrowing, particularly for the person listening. So I will spare you the details. Suffice to say that photography has become a hobby of mine, and I'm continually looking to better my skills (and drool over the really nice equipment... like the Nikon D300. Oh, man... that is the most amazing... No. Wait. I need to stop thinking about it.).

My intention for this blog was to post pictures of my adventures as I go along, but I quickly noticed that Blogger.com and their photo-hosting site are far from ideal. What's worse is the loss of image quality when I post photos, and their tiny size amidst a sea of words. I will continue to post photos here, because it makes the whole thing look spiffy, but if you're really interested in seeing my pictures, you should visit http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaxzwolf.

As I promised, here is a picture of the Badlands:


If you're interested in seeing more pictures from the weekend, including my best shots of the park and an absolutely adorable picture of a red squirrel, you should visit Flickr. The image quality there is much better. You won't regret it.

Finally, some fieldwork!

So, after nearly three weeks of waiting, I finally caught a break. Late last week someone tracked down hard copies of the two training sessions I needed to get off the ground, including defensive driving. Which meant I was finally able to get out into the field. And as I understand it, I'll be out doing fieldwork every day now until the internship ends. Dwayne has a long list of things for me to do, most of which is either bird- or vegetation-related. Not the ideal study subjects, but it's fieldwork and I'm getting paid for it, so I'm not going to complain. Perhaps I can convince Dwayne to start focusing on some mammals. Old logging accounts from the 50's and 60's suggest that there may be flying squirrels in this area!

On the list to occupy my time for the next four months? Surveys for Northern Goshawk, monitoring known raptor nests, inventories of vegetation in both Black Hills National Forest and Thunder Basin National Grassland, and tracking Greater Sage-Grouse. Like I said, I'm going to have to work up an argument for some sort of mammal survey.

This weekend my mom and stepdad came up to visit. Question: What is the best part about northeastern Wyoming? Answer: South Dakota. We packed a lot into two days. Saturday we left Newcastle and saw Mount Rushmore (not all it's cracked up to be), drove to Wall (home of the famous Wall Drug- definitely worth a visit if you're ever in the area), through Badlands National Park, back to Rapid City, then through Custer State Park before returning back to Newcastle. I'll have to post some pictures of the Badlands in the next few days. It's a desolate area, but absolutely gorgeous. Sunday we drove to Spearfish where the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service runs a fish hatchery. It may not sound like much, but I had a lot of fun! I have to admit that I was probably more tired at the end of the weekend than I was before it started, but I was really glad to have someone up here to spend time with.

Then on Monday I started my marathon summer of time in the field. Dwayne's wife had their fourth child on Monday afternoon, so Dwayne is officially on leave and unavailable to answer questions. Monday morning I took the government-owned Durango, a stack of maps, a compass, and a surprisingly complex GPS unit and drove into the Black Hills to start goshawk surveys. I'll admit that I didn't have a great time on Monday. I'm completely unfamiliar with the field office, had no idea where I was going, and was a little unsure about data collection. Additionally, it's been nearly a year since I've done intense fieldwork, and I'm definitely not in proper physical shape. I usually have an excellent sense of direction and an even stronger visual memory, but Monday I kept getting turned around, and was sure I was going to go down a bad road and end up backing into a tree or getting stuck somewhere.... not a great move to make on my first time out on my own in a federal vehicle.

Luckily no such thing happened, and I've since been getting faster and feeling better. It won't be long now before I have a well-developed farmer's tan, raccoon face (from my sunglasses), a lot more freckles, and the ability to hike up and down hills for 10 or 12 miles a day without having to stop every ten minutes to catch my breath.

I think I made decent progress with the goshawk surveys over the last three days. Although I've yet to find any goshawk, I've covered 30 of the 100 survey locations Dwayne has laid out. I need a change of pace, though. On the agenda for tomorrow? Tracking sage-grouse!

'Planes, trains, and.... Well, actually, just trains.

There are two coal mines within fairly close proximity to Newcastle. The train tracks run along the northern side of the town and across Main Street, then turn east and south. Trains that pass through town have three street crossings within ear-shot of my apartment, one only half a block behind the cottage.

Regardless of the flashing lights and gates that lower when a train nears, it is still law for trains to announce their arrival by blowing their horns. Most conductors are conservative, giving two or three quick pulls as they near each intersection. Others take their horn-blowing very seriously, and feel that if they do not blow four or five times then some citizen may be caught unawares by the thousands of tons of steel hurtling down the tracks, the flashing lights, and the lowered gates.

Then there are the conductors that realize just how important their horn-blowing duties are, and understand that if they aren't as obnoxious as they possibly can be then someone will almost certainly step out in front of the train. These fine conductors rarely let up on the horn as they pass through town, blowing it continuously from the time they near Newcastle to several hundred yards after they've crossed the last intersection.

It is estimated that around 60 trains pass through Newcastle every 24 hours.

Welcome to the BLM

Lesson for the week: The government is slow. They make an art of red tape, bureaucracy, chains of command, approvals of approvals that were previously approved by someone whose entire job it is to approve of things. As a result, I've just finished my second week of work at the BLM and still have yet to do... anything. Really. I can't do any field work until I can drive a government vehicle, I can't drive a government vehicle until I am "trained" in defensive driving, I can't get training in defensive driving until I'm registered online at the National Training Office, and I can't register online at the National Training Office until someone- that's right!- approves of it. Which, by the way, might take up to four weeks. From yesterday.

I was hired for this position more than two months ago, turned in my paperwork barely a month after that, and here I am twiddling my thumbs for eight hours a day because someone somewhere can't get around to giving my name the go-ahead for a simple activation of an online account. Needless to say, my frustration meter has nearly peaked this week.

That aside, this is where I work. The deer isn't always there. It just happened to be crossing the street when drove by. I usually park in front of the tree. You know... just in case you were wondering.

The offices make a circular-ish shape around a small area in front where there is a receptionist's desk and a broom-closet sized room containing public information. The offices (and everything else, for that matter) are only accesible by key and/or code. Evidently, they really take security at the Newcastle BLM seriously.

My desk is on the eastern side of the building. If you look in the picture, I sit directly between the two windows on the far right side of the office. As an intern, I do not get a window at my desk. Windows are only for the 'real' employees.

My boss is "Dwayne," the critter coordinator at the Newcastle Field Office. His supervisor is the field manager of the office, "Tulip." So, technically, she's my actual boss, but I take direction from Dwayne. Dwayne is.... well, he's something else. Early thirties, about my height, egg-shaped head, buzz cut, balding, thick glasses, and starting to put on a little weight. That kid you used to know back in high school or junior high that was really nerdy, wore highwaters, hung out with the computer geeks, but always tried to act like he fit in by talking about football and frequently using the phrases "That is so awesome!" and "Man that is so cool!"? Imagine that kid as being thirty-something, and you'll basically have Dwayne.

He's a really nice guy, and I know he cares about the work he's doing. He's married, has three kids, and he and his wife are expecting a fourth any day now. Which compounds my "lagard nature of the BLM" dilemma. See, Dwayne has to show me everything he wants me to work on in the field before he goes on paternity leave. Unlike many people, he sees his wife's pregnancy as a tour of active duty, and plans on taking quite a bit of time off when the kid is actually born. If I don't get driver certification before his wife goes into labor, then I may very well be stuck in the office for two weeks doing exactly what I've been doing for the last two weeks- a whole bunch of nothing. Then, when I finally do get started, I'll have four months in the field to do five months-worth of work.

So please, keep your fingers crossed that something positive will happen this coming week. I'm really tiring of the disappointments. And the waiting. That too.

A Lesson in Small-Town Acquisitions

Long before I moved here I knew that the one modern convenience I absolutely could not do without would be internet access. Although I was in the fifth grade before my family had our first computer and several years older before the internet became commonplace, I've found that my daily lifestyle has become too deeply ingrained in the instant access to information to spend much time in civilized space without it. Thus, very soon after I arrived I began trying to find an internet access provider. Which, of course, turned out to be far more difficult than I'd ever imagined.

Monday morning when I went in for my first day of work, I asked the receptionist, K, if she knew of any internet service providers in Newcastle. "Well, let me think," she said. "I don't have internet at home, and I'm not sure how we get it here at the office." She thought about it, and decided she didn't know. She told me to ask B. I asked B. B does not have internet at home, either. B told me to ask L, who, it turns out, also lacks at-home internet service. I had to ask the youngest person in the office, aside from myself- Br, who is in his early thirties. He doesn't have internet at home, but he knew that the people to contact were at RT Communications. Finally I was getting somewhere.

One quick phone call to RT and I was back to square one. They wanted either a 12-month commitment or a non-refundable $200, and their internet service, with modem rental, ran about $100 a month. No dice.

After another two days of trying to find additional internet providers I was beginning to wonder if I might never be able to check my email again. Luckily, I remembered that Verizon has a mobile broadband service, and someone told me the location of a local provider of Verizon service.

Downtown Newcastle. I checked and double-checked the address before opening the door to a glass-fronted store called "The Carter Company." When I first stepped in the door I was sure I'd made a poor decision, that the store was closed for business and in the middle of renovations. The warehouse-sized room was littered with hitches, batteries, old furniture, rusty car parts, and the back wall was covered in painter's plastic. I balked and started backing out of the store when someone said, "Good afternoon, young lady. Come on in."

The "someone" was, Mr. Carter, senior, an old man sitting at one of the tables with a frayed deck of cards, playing Solitaire. I asked politely if they were a Verizon provider, sure that he'd look at me strangely and say no. But I was wrong. It turns out that The Carter Company is a AC-Delco Automotive Parts/U-HAUL/Verizon store.... Hm.

Mr. Carter, however, could not help me; for that we needed his son, Steve. He called Steve, then told me it would be about twenty minutes, and to have a seat. While we waited, he complained about Obama, swore the country was turning to socialism, and told bad jokes. He was well-meaning, though, and as I was desperate for someone to talk to, I almost enjoyed myself.

When Steve finally arrived I had to explain to him several times what I was looking for. When I finally convinced him that it was internet through the computer, rather than the phone, in which I was interested, he told me that he did indeed have the device I sought. He went to the back of the store to a desk stacked chest-high with papers, magazines, and receipts, dug around, and finally, from the bottom of a large pile, pulled out a crushed cardboard box containing a single USB mobile broadband device. I felt like I'd won the lottery.

It took Steve nearly 45 minutes to finalize the deal. He didn't have internet access himself, so he had to call in both the order to Verizon and the charge on my credit card, all using a rotary-dial phone. While he was busy, I discussed the weather with Mr. Carter, senior. (It rained all day, every day, for the first two weeks I was here.)

I've since been back to The Carter Company, both to chat with Mr. Carter and to notify Steve that he accidentally charged my credit card twice. When I was leaving, Mr. Carter remarked that I should come in and visit sometime, on my breaks, even if I wasn't mischarged. I very well just might. Next time, though, we might have to have a discussion about socialism.

Welcome to Newcastle

Newcastle is a tiny town in northeastern Wyoming, very close to the border with South Dakota, about 35 miles west of Custer. A few facts about Newcastle: The town is a whopping 2.5 square miles, has two grocery stores, a small library, a post office, a hardware store, a couple of gas stations, a Pamida, and (fanciest of all) a Pizza Hut and a Subway (which sadly does not carry my favorite sandwich, the "Veggie Max"). The population is around 3,000. And the median age is around 60. Seriously.

The town lies on an ecotone (transition from one ecosystem to another) between sagebrush grassland and the black hills. The black hills extend to the east and north and the grasslands run south and west. I'd be lost without the black hills here. They're no comparison to the towering Rockies, nor even to the foothills of mountains, but they're better than nothing.

I have a one-bedroom "cottage" leased here for the next five months, located directly between an oil refinery (which smells) and the train tracks (which, of course, facilitate the passage of trains... which are loud). It is small, but has all the space I need. There are vast improvements over my previous apartment back home. First, the hot and cold water lines aren't crossed, so I get hot water from the 'H' tap and cold from the 'C.' Second, the hot water here won't cause third-degree burns. I'm on ground-level, and I think the daily odds of breaking my neck have been significantly decreased without the Twisty Staircase of Doom. There isn't any lead paint (of which I'm aware), the freezer is a normal size, and I don't have to pay utilities.

It isn't all better, however. I don't have a dishwasher anymore, and the kitchen lacks any semblance of counter space. I no longer have a tub, and the carpet here is of the office variety. Although I probably wouldn't utilize an outdoor space (because of the mosquitoes and the refinery) I no longer have a front porch or use of a fenced-in backyard.

I'm renting from Rohn, a guy in his mid- to late-twenties that works as an electrician at the refinery. He seems nice enough, and has responded to my requests fairly quickly. He's a little awkward, though. Maybe because he spells his name with an 'h.'

Then there's Capone, a mixed blessing. Rohn's house is right next to the cottage, and the space between his house and my front door is occupied by a small, square, muddy dog pen, wherein Capone the pit bull spends most of his time. Capone is a sweet, exuberant dog that would love nothing more for someone, anyone, to pay him some attention. The time not spent in the tiny pen is spent locked in the garage. I don't believe he's ever been in the house, and apart from feeding him twice a day and occasionally providing him with fresh water, I'm not sure Rohn ever really interacts with him. I walk him every day after I get off work, but in the grand scheme of things my efforts fall far short of the kind of exercise and attention he needs.

He's obviously unused to being on a leash, as he feels it's his duty as a respectable dog to pull as hard as he possibly can to visit the greatest number of interesting places before he's dragged back to his white-fenced prison. He's short, wide, and pure muscle, so walks with Capone are far from the easiest part of my day. I've spent the last two weeks trying to convince him that not pulling will get him farther, but the lesson has been slow to take.

Lately, he's taken to sitting in the corner of his pen next to my front door and whining. Sometimes, he howls.

Saying Goodbye

First off, I'd like to welcome any and all of you that decide to visit this page. Several of you expressed interest in viewing a weblog of my "adventures" before I left for Wyoming, so I hope this site will do my experiences justice. More than that, I hope that I have experiences to do justice to! Please know that I wasn't able to email the link to this blog to everyone... If you weren't on the receiving end of an email directly from me, it's not because I intended in any way to leave you out. I've been very poor at saving email addresses, and thus only had a few for my group mailing list. Feel free to pass the link to this site on to anyone else you know that may (or may not) be curious.

A lot has happened in the last few days. Last Friday I made the official move to Newcastle, Wyoming. Cassie the rat made the trip up with me. Her sister, Gemini, died in February from... something... A uterine tumor, perhaps, or a uterine infection too tough for antibiotics. But I still had Cassie, although getting on in age, 3 years and some number of months, at least, which is old for a rat. I joked with my mom before I left that she would make it to WY and then die at the peak of my loneliness, leaving me with no source of comfort in a foreign place. Not surprisingly (at least not with my luck), she did just that.

She made the move fine and seemed to be perfectly content with the new digs, settling in nicely and going about her ratly business as always. She died the day after my mom left.... So on my first day of work at the BLM I woke up to a dead rat. It certainly wasn't surprising. She was very, very old and lumpy and had some troubles getting around. But, unlike with Gemini, I didn't know exactly when it was going to happen. I wasn't entirely prepared for it. Especially not on my first day of work in an unfamiliar town with no other friends.

I knew it would be hard to lose her. I've become so accustomed to a small furry individual running around and begging for attention (or food, as the case may be), snuggling up in the evenings to sleep while I read, or to be groomed, bruxing and eye-boggling and gnurking (a special rat "hiccup" that signals extreme content), and the special rat privilege of being let out early to sleep in the bed for a few hours in the morning before the alarm went off. I always looked forward to coming home because I knew that she (or, at one time, they) would be there. I loved coming back to the apartment (or the dorm room, as the case once was), and letting her (or them) out of the cage, just to see how happy she/they seemed to see me. It's been very empty here the past couple days, and I do feel more alone that I think I've ever felt before.

I keep expecting her to crawl up on my foot an pull on my pants (as she often did) as a means to ask to be picked up, to hear her sounds at night...the hollow sounds of her getting food out of her bowl, or the quiet gnawing that followed, the metallic click of the ball bearing in the water bottle as she drank, the clicking sound of her claws on the ramps of her cage. I keep expecting to see her head poke out from under the bed or the couch, after having stashed some precious item (i.e. a piece of food, a stolen receipt, a tissue, a drinking straw), or to find her in front of the refrigerator hoping with all her little rat might that the door may magically open and reward her with a chunk of carrot, or some corn, or her absolute favorite, peas.

I was hoping this first entry would be about my internship, about meeting the people in the office and about my first day out in the field. If nothing else, about my new boss and his plans for me this summer, a tentative idea for the kinds of work I may be doing. But things seldom turn out the way we plan. Instead, as of today, I've still not met my boss, have a very poor idea about what my job may entail, and have little more to talk about other than the fact that I lost my best friend, and I feel very much alone.