First day!

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First day of work! Woke up a little after 6, which was only annoying because I kept waking up throughout the night. Probably too excited/nervous. Haha. Anyway, got up, had breakfast with Ingrid and then we headed over to the headquarters at 7. Basically just had orientation today, which was actually nice. Although I loved Nevada I was kinda jealous of the fact that I never got an orientation, while the interns after me did.

So yeah. Lauren and Scott gave us some paperwork and then Lauren told us a bit about the job and gave us a tour of the headquarters area and in and around the fire center. Got to meet many of the other people on site, who all seem nice. It was kind of an overload of information, but Lauren was away of that, and she said that if we need to ask questions that we shouldn’t hesitate to do so, even if it is stuff she already covered. So that is good. 😊 Then we took a little drive to see various parts of the refuge, which was neat. At first we weren’t seeing any birds which was a bummer. Lauren kept saying, “I promise there are birds! I didn’t lie to you! I didn’t bring you out here just to look at trees!” haha Anyway, as with Nevada, it seems confusing at first, but I know from that experience that you pick up everything eventually and soon all the roads and everything become almost second nature. So hopefully that will happen again. Although I must say, while in the desert getting stuck in the sand was always a possibility, I feel much more nervous about getting stuck in mud out here. They have been getting tons of rain lately (in fact, it is raining really hard right now and has been for about an hour; we are supposed to get over an inch tonight) which makes the driving even more tricky. Lauren gave us many maps, one of which shows roads that we should NEVER drive on. But other parts will depend on how recently we got rain. So yeah, we shall see what happens. I have a feeling there will be an entry depicting a long saga of getting stuck in mud and having to try to get myself out. Haha. I believe tomorrow or sometime soon we will get a quick lesson on how to use a winch to pull your truck out of mud. Hopefully I will be able to retain that information. Ya’ll know my memory kinda sucks. But even if we can’t get out, there are people on the refuge who can come help, so that is good. 😊

Another interesting thing about this job is that a fair number of areas where the birds tend to be are actually on or bordering peoples’ properties. So we have a list of people’s names and codes letting us know who has give us permission to go on their property whenever, people who let us on their property but would like us to just call first and let them know we are coming, and people who we need to call and ask permission before going. Apparently there are quite the array of people, from those who love the cranes and will call the refuge to tell them what cranes they see and when, to those who (as in Nevada and California) hate the government and therefore hate the cranes, etc. Apparently, Lauren is fairly sure that one of the people from the later group shot a crane and left it at the gate to the refuge. 😊 So that is highly unfortunate. But I suppose a part of life. Crazy people are everywhere.

While driving around near peoples’ homes we saw our first two cranes! Yay! It was quite exciting. Stopped and looked through binoculars. Very neat. Then we drove on and went on this one man’s property. Lauren had just finished saying how we should be prepared to talk to many of the landowners, who will come out and want to tell us their life story. lol. So we pull up this man’s driveway and he is in the garage so we get out of the car so Lauren can ask if he has seen any cranes and so she can introduce us to him. He was a very nice man and everything but there were a few things he said that got under my skin. Other than that he seemed to be a very nice man, who loves the cranes so that is good. Oh the other funny thing was that he asked where we were from and when I said New Jersey, he said “Oh, the south!” ummmmm, no. lol. Then he said, “well, more southern than new York anyway”. Which I guess is true. But I still couldn’t help but laugh. Lauren also laughed and said something to the effect of “That is the only time you will hear someone here say something like that”. Then he said “you don’t have a southern accent though”. Hahaha I also talk MUCH too fast to be from the south.

Following that amusing interaction we went to another part of the refuge, parked the truck and walked out down a trail to one of the blinds set up in the field (basically a raised enclosure where we can go inside and look through holes in the side at the cranes). The trail went from dry to slightly wet to extremely muddy and back again. Lauren said we should be prepared for lots of that in the savanna. Luckily, they give us gum boots (waders) and so I am sure those will be extremely helpful a lot of the time. 😊 Anyway, once in the blind, we looked out on one of the pens they have set up for some youngin’s (7-9months) that are being slowly introduced into the wild. It is an open topped pen, so they can fly out and other cranes can fly in to interact with them. But there is also food in the pens and stuff. So anyway, looked out of the blind and saw 5 cranes! Yay! Lauren has us tell her what color bands they had on their legs. Took a bit but we got it. Then she informed us that they also all had aluminum bands on one leg. That took a lot longer to be able to see (in fact, we both needed to use the scope to be able to see them) but I think that will just take time. Also, it’d be a lot easier to see them with sun reflecting off of them.

After that we headed back to the refuge and got to head home after that (around 3pm). So all in all it was a pretty great first day! I think it is going to be a really great experience. I’m gonna get to try to get fire certified so I can help with prescribed burns, ride in a helicopter searching for nests, do triangulation, handle baby cranes, do habitat management, and many other exciting things. Woo! 😊

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