June | 2003 | Kellybones's Xanga Site

another day, another goose roundup

this time, I got up at 3am and drove up to near Port Clinton with a friend of mine from lab…

THIS TIME I GOT TO RIDE IN THE HELICOPTER AND SEE BALD EAGLES AND LAKE ERIE AND TERNS AND EGRETS AND HERONS…

*pant, pant*
I am a little bit excited about that
especially the helicopter

it was open…and glass bottomed…like the most cracked out rollercoaster you can imagine

my beautiful freshly dyed red hair was all blowin’ in the breeze…the pilot was hitting on my friend and I

and we were flying…SO MUCH BETTER THAN AN AIRPLANE

on the other hand…I’m also a wee bit sunburnt…and discovered I have no aloe vera in the apartment and that lotion BURNS …!

otherwise…working weekend here I come…I was such a slacker all weekend and Monday and Tuesday because I had such wonderful company…it was beyond wonderful to slack off, do fun things and just…be.

wish that I could do so more often…but…duty and the PCR machines call…

so here it is…not yet 10pm…and I’m almost ready for bed…

but I guess I’ve been up since 3am…so that’s 19 hours?

well!

I apologize for my lack of commenting on anyone’s Xanga’s…I haven’t had time to really read anyone…but! I will be reading them in the coming week or so (thank god for a few weeks of rest!)

I am fully moved in, and though I have a few things yet to do/rearrange/hang up/decorate, I am overall, very happy with my apartment.

I have air conditioning, I have a dishwasher, I have a garbage disposal. I have a patio where my cats love to frolick and play while I cook on my sweet little grill (thanks to my big sib for that one). Is it a step up in the world? Fuck yes. Is it more expensive? Yup. Is it worth it? Hell yes. In a heartbeat, I would go through the hassle of moving again. No more drug deals in the street, no more shady shitty landlord… is it perfect? not quite, but as good as I think it could get and still have me keep my peace of mind!

The city pool is right next door, so there tends to be a dull roar of shouting and screaming from about 10am until about 9pm on sunny (or at least Unrainy days!). This is semi-irritating, but it is also nice to realize that this is a place where people feel safe frolicking outdoors and letting their children do the same. It is also about 3 miles from work and not on the bus line – so…I can either hoof it in and take about an hour to get there, or bike in and take about 20 minutes, depending on traffic. This is damn good exercise, I’m sure, but I will miss the bus, especially come wintertime. My neighbor above me is also a smoker…which is not allowed in the apartments, so he sits on his balcony, above my patio and smokes. Which stinks, both literally and figuratively. I will live, I’m sure, but I just hate that smell. Let’s see…that’s about all I can find wrong with the place…I guess the toilet sometimes runs (but the landlords pay for water) and my shower has too much water pressure (it’s along the lines of AHHHHHH I’m DROWNING if you turn it on all the way)…but otherwise, I’m damn happy with my new little apartment (which is two point five times the size of the old).

****

In other news, Spring Quarter is over. FINALLY. I didn’t think it was ever going to end. I am ass poor from paying two months rent but hope to maybe get some money from the shit head landlords (but not hoping too much). Lab work is stalled, still, but that is more due to other issues and not to bad data.

Our lab moves on July 1st, which means we start packing the week before – yay! More boxes. Blech. However, I am in charge of the computers, so not TOO much work. I do however, need to determine how we are to reformat the hard drives and re-install software and make a network connection…which is beyond me. We’ll also be getting a new one, hopefully NOT a gateway. bad gateway!

We went goosing, a day late, but who cares? It was so much fun. If all field work were like this, I might say fuck lab science and go play in the field. We were working with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources…lots of people in camoflauge (I had envy, I wanted some, I only had green pants) and we were going to catch Canadian Geese. This time of year, geese are molting (period of about 2 to 3 weeks where they can’t fly), so using boats and helicopters, one crew would drive the geese to the shore where a second crew had set up a big ass net. Two other crews would be waiting on the open sides, hiding, to drive the geese into the net while they were out of the water. This involves spreading your arms wide and chasing the geese, typically making funny noises and waving your outspread arms about to scare the geese (indeed, one of the times we caught a group was in front of a farm house, where the whole family came out on the porch to watch us). After the geese are herded in, they are grabbed by their wings and taken to be sexed and banded and the crew I was on (a DNR desk man and my professor) would grab every 5th gosling and get some DNA. We got the DNA by pulling blood feathers (it’s where feathers come from…I really don’t know how to explain what they are, if you’re interested, I recommend looking it up online or reading some ornithology books). It doesn’t hurt the geese much, in fact, they usually didn’t notice. They were much more concerned with escape or biting us. The wing grabbing sounds kind of brutal and looked brutal in retrospect, until you watched a 20+lb bird beating a man with its wings in an attempt to get away. These birds are not nice and they are not little. Holding them by the wings prevents them from hurting people and from hurting themselves in the process. We had five captures in about 6 hours. The smallest gaggle was only about 20 and the largest was well over 100.

So why do this? The DNR in Ohio and in many places bands the geese yearly (like many other birds) in an attempt to keep track of population sizes and migration routes. The Flyway Council uses information obtained from bird banding drives and bands returned by hunters to determine when hunting season is and how many birds will be allowed per hunter. So why the DNA? Well, the DNR wants to know where these birds come from (the band return rate is not great…1/1,000 or less I believe) and DNA is more reliable. The reason it is important to know this is that the main reason Canadian Geese are still relatively well protected is because of one endangered population some where in the north, I think in Canada. If the birds in Ohio are genetically related to the ones from that endangered population, it can be determined how protected these birds here should be – as well as if any of the endangered population are flying through Ohio on a migration route (birds migrate along specific pathways – ask birdwatchers, they typically know all about it).

This is a large project that our lab is participating in, primarily done by a good friend of mine who is graduating today (GO SARAH!).

The downsides to goosing – getting up at 5am to be at a DNR location by 8am…and getting shat upon by one particularly freaked out little goose (and it wasn’t a little shit, it was a WHOLE LOT of shit. and it was runny and dark brownish green. I smelled. All day. What fun!). Oh yes. And it was raining for 3 of the 5 captures.

Aren’t you all envious? Don’t you want to go do something like that?
I know…reading it, it doesn’t sound like fun. But, it was. We were filthy, smelly…got bit by mosquitos…

but it felt like we were doing something worthwhile…like…this mattered and it was real. and I don’t know about you…but I’ll put up with some pretty shitty conditions just to feel like that, even for one day.

oh, that and I met a man named Kelly Kelly. and laughed a whole lot at these big huge men, probably more used to hunting geese than to banding them…my favorite was this very large man (200+lbs) chasing a little tiny gosling to prevent it from getting onto the road, yelling “no! don’t go out there! You’ll get killed!” the gosling was darting in ditches, under cars, around brambles…and this big man chased it everywhere and finally flying tackled it – actually, I saw several flying tackles of geese, which doesn’t sound brave until you get bit by a goose or land nose first in goose poop!

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Month: June 2003

Kellybones