Today I remembered why I wanted to be a Park Ranger. Today is Thursday and that meant program night for Laura. Now as a recap- last Thursday 5 people came to my presentation and I had thrown it together that day. I worked on my program all day long today and I’ve been thinking about it and planning it for the past week. 50 people showed up!!! I had my act together and it all just went so well. There were so many people, kids were sitting on the floor and people were standing in the back and all kinds of crazy stuff. I was so thankful that there were lots of young kids too- they asked a lot of questions and got excited about all the creepy crawlers. I think everyone learned something and had a good time. This is the whole reason I wanted to work at the park- to teach and learn and inspire… really get people to take a closer look at whats around them and think about how beautiful insects can be, not just scary. I am so so excited about this- I don’t know what else I could be doing that I would possibly enjoy more- except maybe be in the field learning more so I have more to report back on. Its really funny too because when I woke up this morning- honestly- all I was thinking about was ways I could get out of giving this presentation- thinking I could fake sick or “accidentally” delete my presentation. Sandy and I are really good salespeople I guess- after I told half a dozen families about the program I started getting excited myself. Its no at the stage that I feel confident in it and proud enough of it to ask my colleagues and my boss to come and see it. That’s absolutely all I did today- I was in uniform from 8am til 9pm working on this program. After the program was over a family and I went out searching for some bugs right outside the interpretive center- we found a female black widow under a rock that and that really made the night. Possibly the most fun thing I’ve done so far on my adventure!
In other news…
My radio call sign is 238
There was an unconfirmed report of a mountain lion on the land directly adjacent to the park being circled by 3 coyotes, seen from the top of skyline drive in the park. I want to believe this is true, but we’ve got some feral hogs out here that can be as heavy as 150 pounds and from a distance might look an awful lot like a mountain lion. Who knows, maybe we’ll have another sighting.
I don’t know if I mentioned it but last time I was down at
I’m getting a little tired of working in the office. Just days like today when no one comes in and its really slow and there isn’t a thing to do. I’ve been in the office for a few weeks now and I’m hoping pretty soon I’ll move on to do something else or at least combine office work with other things. The wildlife biologist for the area came in yesterday to talk to me because Maria asked him to. That was really neat to get to talk to him and learn about his job. It took about 5 seconds to realize its not something I would want to do for a career, but it still seemed like a very exciting gig- he does lots of surveys for the game animals in west texas- lots of being in airplanes and helicopters doing deer counts and elk counts and ram counts and things like that. Pretty awesome! He is going to put me in touch with the regional diversity biologist who does stuff that I think might be more up my ally- less oriented towards hunting.
Remember to be open minded but don’t be afraid to take a stance when its important.
p.s. This cot that I’m sleeping on is awesome! I haven’t even realized how awesome it is because I never notice it- I just have pleasant sleeps every night with no trouble at all. Thank you grandma!
238 Clear
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