Mistakes - My Own Worst Enemy

One day, I almost thought I got almost eaten by a maybe mountain lion.

I've said before that I've never felt in danger of life or limb due to a wild animal, but I suppose that's not strictly true. I did get awfully close to that grizzly bear sow the day the yellow telemetry plane saved us. And I got growled at by a captive wolf once when I was sitting next to him. That was freaky.

But there was a day in South Dakota that I was almost certain I was going to be eaten by a mountain lion. Why? Did I see this mountain lion? Did I stumble upon a fresh kill site? Did I hear his fearsome scream echoing through the hills?

Nope.

It was during the 2005 season working with woodpeckers in the Black Hills. Back then - and, I believe, this is still the case - mountain lions lived in the area in extremely high densities, owing to the large populations of deer and elk and the complete absence of any other predators. I never saw one. One day, however, my coworker Halle and I stumbled upon a fresh kill site.

I had never seen a lion kill site before, and I was just a sophomore in college with very little experience around these things, but it was pretty clear what it was. It was a mule deer buck, dead in the forest just outside the border fence in Wind Cave National Park, no wounds of any kind, but the fur had been plucked off of it and lay in a little furry carpet around the carcass. It was so fresh it didn't even smell. (Lions often kill their prey with a single bite to sever the spinal cord. Pretty clean.)

Now, if I'd have known anything about mountain lions at that time, I'd have gotten the heck out of there. But even though we kind of guessed what had happened, our position there beside it didn't strike me as particularly precarious. After all, we hadn't seen a mountain lion there, so it must be gone, right? So Halle and I casually finished what we were doing and headed back. Now that I know better, I'd guess that that lion was hiding just yards away, watching us, wondering what to do about us.

Anyway, a few weeks later, late one afternoon when the temperature was high and big storm clouds were beginning to creep into the Black Hills, Halle and I were faced with a predicament.

We had this one woodpecker nest we had to check which was an absolute pain in the neck to get to. There were two ways we could access the site - from the west, or the Old Shirttail Road, or from the east, where the Wind Cave National Park campground road cut into the hills. The roads didn't connect, and it took about 40 minutes to drive all the way from Wind Cave to the opposite end of the Shirttail Road, even though the roads themselves were probably less than half a mile from each other as the crow flies. The nest was about halfway between them.

The reason the nest was so horrible was because it was surrounded by a large thicket of mountain mahogany, a poky shrub that ripped our clothes and contained millions of strange bug things that got all over us when we bushwhacked through. It was also on the top of a steep ridge. Between hiking with our heavy extendable camera + battery (which together weighed probably 50 pounds) up the hills and through the horrible shrubs, in the heat of the afternoon, it was pretty miserable.

On this particular day, the Horrible Nest was the only one left to check. It was getting late, toward quitting time, and with the heat and the storm coming we were ready to call it a day. Halle and I were already on the east side, off Shirttail Road, but if we hiked to the nest and then hiked back, then had to drive all the way back to the Park (where we lived), it would take forever; but if we drove to the campsite and hiked in from there, it would be a harder hike and we might not get there before the storm arrived. Thus, I decided that I would hike to the nest alone, while Halle would drive out and pick me up at the campsite at the other end.

She departed, and I was left with just the extendable camera and battery - no water, no food, nothing. I didn't have a GPS unit, either. We knew the locations of each nest pretty well by now, and we scarcely ever had to use the GPS. However, normally we didn't approach the Horrible Nest from this direction, though I was confident I could find it.

There was a deep gully separating the road from the ridge the nest was on. There were several ridges that ran parallel here, but I knew which one I wanted, so I aimed for it. I had to beat through a dense thicket of shrubs and oaks in the gully, then face the blazing sun as I hiked up the ridge opposite. To my delight, there was not a mountain mahogany bush to be seen. Hey, I thought,  maybe this is the way to go from now on! By the time I got to the top I was already sweating and exhausted, and it didn't take me longer than a few seconds to get my bearings and realize my mistake:

I was on the wrong ridge.

By now I could hear thunder rumbling. Sweat was pouring into my eyes as I headed down the other side, certain now that the Horrible Nest was on the next ridge over. All the while I had the heavy extendable camera draped across my shoulders and the even heavier battery cinched around my waist, no water to drink, no GPS unit, nothing. I hoped and prayed that I was right about the Nest, because if it wasn't there, then I really had no idea where I was. And no sooner had I begun hiking up again than I found myself, much to my dismay, swimming in another sea of mountain mahogany. There was just no escaping it.

Half an hour had maybe passed since I'd left Halle on Shirttail Road. I was exhausted and hot and worried about the storm which, although it would certainly cool me off, would probably ruin the thousands of dollars-worth of equipment I was carrying. And then, just when I thought I couldn't get anymore panicked, the memory of the mountain lion kill popped into my head. It had been right in this area somewhere.

This country is crawling with lions, I thought, and here I am, alone, weak, tired...easy pickings.

I could imagine a great big tom staring at me through the bushes, calculating where on my neck to aim his canines, wondering what to do about the strange big tube-thing sitting on my shoulders.

Perhaps it was that new-found worry that sparked me to make my legs most faster, but eventually I made it to the top of the ridge and found the Horrible Nest there waiting for me, the pink flagging tape blowing in the wind. In addition to its horrible location the Horrible Nest was also horrible to check; some malevolent Northern flicker had chosen a cavity high up on a dead tree that was leaning 45-degrees forward into the next gully, and it took a great deal of coordination and patience to get the camera into the hole, then a great deal more coordination and patience to fiddle with it to where it was actually looking down at the eggs. You basically had to lean the camera pole back 45-degrees - on a 45-degree slope - and bear all its weight while manipulating the camera. Since I was already frustrated and tired and nearly done in with nervous exertion, I found this additional fight almost too much to bear, especially without Halle there to help. The thunder was rumbling. I had to get out of there.

So for all that effort, I didn't even get a proper view of the nest.

As fast as I could I lowered the camera and slung it over my shoulders again and headed down the ridge toward Wind Cave. Once again I had to bushwhack through the grove of mountain mahogany, dip under the barbed-wire fence, and keep an eye open for grumpy bison sleeping in the shadows, all the while expecting a lion to pounce on my shoulders at any time. Eventually I made it out and set my feet on the pavement of the campground road.

Exhausted, I walked over to one of the restrooms, set down my burden, and swallowed as much water from the drinking fountain as I could stomach. I was drenched in sweat, filthy, covered in little mountain mahogany bugs, and my hair was a rat's nest of twigs and dirt and leaves. As soon as I finished my drink and sat down against the building, Halle arrived. It turned out, she had been worried too about my excursion alone - we weren't supposed to ever go hiking alone, for our safety - and had driven like the devil back to the park.

No sooner had I told her about my journey than our boss, Dale, also pulled into the campground. I forget why he was there, but it was an odd thing for us to run into him in the field - usually he was out by himself far away doing point counts. I cursed our luck. I knew he would scold me if he found out what we had done. So we lied. Somehow, he believed our story that both of us had just finished hiking in to the Horrible Nest, even though while I looked like an absolute mess, Halle was still clean and sweat-free. He turned around and headed back home.

In the end, the storm didn't even hit, but dissipated before it got to Wind Cave. I never saw a lion but I was convinced they had been all around me, waiting for their moment to kill me, when, in all likelihood, the only thing I was ever in danger of was getting lost or dehydrated. And my panic made the real danger greater.

I really freaked myself out. To this day I think it's the most afraid I've ever been in the field. If I hadn't panicked so much, I would have checked the nest properly, wouldn't have worked myself up nearly to the point of collapse, wouldn't have put myself in the amount of real danger that I had. And really, I should never have broken the rules in the first place.

Sometimes, you're your own worst enemy.

Let this be a warnin' to ya

Lots of days, I did stupid things.

I feel like no blog about wildlife field research would be complete without some injury stories.

I also feel like nearly every time I've gone to work one of these jobs, particularly the ones with more ferocious-type beasts, my mom and dad bite their lips, try to still their quaking hearts, and spend the next few months expecting the phone to ring at any moment with the news that I was eaten by something with sharp teeth.

But in reality, I don't think I have ever been in fear for life or limb because of an animal.

A prelude: when I started the mountain lion job, I remember asking my boss Kevin how dangerous he felt the job was (after all, we were hiking - ALONE - to lion kills). He assured me that the likelihood of my being attacked by a lion was extremely low, provided I took the same reasonable precautions anybody should take when hiking in the woods in Carnivore Country. No, he said, no, you're more likely to be injured by falling down the crazy steep hills that abound along the Front Range. This I made sure to do, at least once. There's really no way to describe the feeling of suddenly losing your feet, finding them above your head the very next second, and then slamming your hips/butt into the rocks, then thanking your lucky stars that you stopped there and didn't continue rolling.

Well, I suppose I have three main stories about being injured in the field. I'm going to go in order of least exciting to most exciting, so skip to number three if you are desperate to be entertained.

1. Don't be a cheapskate. BUY BOOTS. 

My very first field research job was studying woodpeckers in South Dakota in the summer of 2005, in Custer State Park and Wind Cave National Park. I won't go into terribly much detail, but basically what my one coworker and I did was locate woodpecker nests by birdwatching (what a way to make a paycheck, eh?), then returning to each nest twice a week with an extendable camera to check on the eggs/chicks. We would record the number of eggs, the day they hatched, and the day they fledged (and how many made it that far).

Anyway, since this was my first field job, I really had no concept of the importance of proper footwear. And boots are expensive. And I was a poor college student. So I stubbornly refused to buy them, trekking out in the Black Hills with tennis shoes. This worked out well...for about a week.

One particular study area in Custer State Park looked like a Martian landscape, with flat, smooth, overlapping red rocks stacked haphazardly on top of each other, occasionally (and unexpectedly) loose in places, and pocked with rounded holes (aerial photo on the right). Also, since we were studying woodpeckers, and woodpeckers like dead trees, we were continually dodging deadfall with every step, adding to the difficulty. Oh, and they also were a favorite hangout of rattlesnakes. I had several near misses hiking around in that area.

One day, we were searching for a nest located somewhere in this area, and it was turning out to be difficult because the landscape looked pretty much identical everywhere you turned, and a single little pink ribbon marking the correct tree can be incredibly difficult to find. GPS units could only get you so far, but a lot of the time we'd get close and have to turn in circles looking for the spot. I was walking confidently, looking around as I went, trying to keep track of where I was placing my feet, when all of a sudden I just went down.

This was how it looked a week or so later.

I'm not sure exactly what happened; I must have slipped off the edge of one of the rocks, and twisted my ankle very, very badly; it was certainly the worst I've ever hurt my ankle, to this day. Luckily, it was the end of the day, and the end of the week, so I had the entire weekend to nurse it. I never went to see a doctor (PhD students are not typically the sort who want to deal with worker's comp forms, and our supervisor convinced me my ankle would get better on my own). However, in a relatively short amount of time I could walk pretty freely on it again, so I guess I lucked out.

I bought some boots the next day.


2. Don't be lazy. WEAR THE FREAKING BOOTS.

So, now I have boots, and I've always had a pair of boots for every field job ever after. However, I still don't particularly like to wear them when I don't have to, and this usually means I ride around with them in the truck and don't put them on until I need to do some hiking.

My current coworkers especially make fun of me for this. I don't honestly understand how people can wear those tight, hot, sweaty boots all day if they don't need to. I love the quote from "A Far Off Place", one of my favorite books: "Hadn't it been wonderful to recover the freedom of one's own feet after years of imprisonment in boots and shoes?" I suppose it could be a byproduct of my upbringing in the Arizona desert, where the weather really never gets bad enough to warrant closed-toed shoes of any kind. At any given time during my childhood I probably had 5 pairs of sandals/flip-flops, a couple pairs of dressy shoes, and a pair of tennis shoes for gym class. My first pair of boots were the ones I bought in South Dakota (in the above story) - I was 21 years old. I grew up with free feet and now they will never tolerate being confined.

Anyway, I really got into the habit of working in my sandals on the Mexican wolf project, since most of the time we were just driving around, triangulating on the wolves from our trucks, rarely having to do much hiking. I could easily just hop out of the truck in my sandals, take a bearing, hop back in, and speed away to the next site.

In New Mexico, when we couldn't hear a wolf's signal, one of our favorite places to go was the Negrito Lookout Tower. It was no longer manned, so we could climb up to the top and, most of the time, depending

on where the wolf was, the added height was enough for us to hear a signal. However, the road to Negrito was awful. I had a 4x4 truck, but the boulders on either side - and in the middle - of the narrow, steep road were huge, and I feared for my vehicle's undercarriage. Therefore, most of the time I would stop the truck before I reached the worst parts, and just walk up the rest of the road to the tower. Happily, I could do this in my flip flops, because however bad the road was, it was still a road. No problem.

One day, as I was creeping along up toward Negrito, I pulled over to begin the trek, but I was feeling particularly lazy. The road kind of curved around in a big arc (see picture) before finally getting to the tower, but if I just cut straight uphill through the woods, I could get there much faster.

I looked at the woods. It was a nice ponderosa pine forest, nice and open and inviting as they almost always are. Clearly no need for me to put my boots on. So I grabbed my gear and set off in my flip flops.

I hadn't gotten far when an unbelievable pain shot through the ball of my foot.

I had stepped on something that went right through my shoe and deep through the skin. I searched and searched on the ground around me and couldn't find anything that looked like it could be the culprit. But man, I was out for the count. The pain was even worse than spraining my ankle. There was hardly any blood, hardly even a puncture in my puny flip flop, but something had definitely done some damage.

I debated telling my boss. He didn't like me as it was, and, of course, there was the dreaded paperwork. I suffered in silence for a few days and then finally told him what happened. He frowned at me and told me what an idiot I was (because it was true), but he did say I could go to Show Low to get it looked at if I wanted to. But my stubbornness kicked in. He already hated me, and I would not give him reason to hate me more. Stupid. Yes.

Whatever happened - whether I actually fractured a bone in the bottom of my foot, or just got a really bad stone bruise - it took ages for it to heal. Months later, when I was in grad school, it would still ache occasionally.

I'd like to say I learned my lesson, but I suppose it's debatable. I still drive around with my boots in the truck, wearing my flip flops. However, I certainly put the boots on now whenever I go hike, even for just a short distance.

3. Bear spray. It works (on humans, at least).

This is one of my favorite stories to tell because a) there's a good lesson in it, b) people like to laugh at other people's pain, and c) for once, this time the injury wasn't entirely my fault.

Back to the mountain lion project, 2010...

bear spray

Whenever I went out hiking by myself, I typically carried a canister of bear spray in case I came face-to-face with a scavenging black bear at an old mountain lion kill, or a mountain lion itself. (We also carried bear spray all the time, even when hiking in groups, in Yellowstone because of the number of grizzlies there. I highly recommend doing this, and would not even consider hiking alone in Yellowstone, Glacier, or any other part of Bear Country without bear spray.) Bear spray is basically the same stuff in the typical can of mace on your keychain, just more of it, and stronger. I believe it has been proven very effective on bears, but nobody really knew what it would do to mountain lions. Still, I was too lazy to get my Concealed Carry license, and too cheap to buy a gun, so the free bear spray the Division of Wildlife let me use was going to have to do.

I usually had two backpacks with me every day, a small one just big enough for a bottle of water, some data sheets, and my Spot Unit (an emergency location device), and a bigger one that I put all my daily junk in and used whenever I had to go a greater distance and carry more food and water. As I said, I usually carried the bear spray whenever I was out alone. However, I sometimes didn't take it when I was doing shorter hikes, only a half mile or so away from the truck, because it didn't fit well in my small backpack. Also, when I was with another coworker, I wouldn't bother with it, since the odds were greater that an animal would hear us coming and leave, or be more hesitant to attack. Thus, much of the time my canister of bear spray got left in the truck.

One day, my coworker Kirstie and I were going to check out some data points in a canyon on some Open Space (public) land, just off of Flagstaff Road above Boulder. The road was too
rough for the truck, but we had brought along our ATV. We unloaded it and sped off down the road. I only took a small bag with my water and some other supplies, leaving my larger backpack - and can of bear spray - in the backseat of the truck. We collected the data, turned around, and came back to the truck within the span of about an hour.

When we got back, we loaded up the ATV, and then Kirstie and I prepared to head back to Fort Collins. I opened the little side-door behind the driver's seat, threw my little backpack on top of my bigger backpack, and instantly got a face-full of mace.

Evidently the safety had come off the canister. And the nozzle was pointed directly at me. When my little backpack hit it, it fired off a pretty good dose, directly into my right eye.

Nothing can describe the agony. You'd have to experience it yourself to know how it feels. I doubled over and clasped my hands to my face. Kirstie instantly knew what happened; she had been standing on the other side of the truck, putting things in the passenger seat, in the fresh air, away from the direction of the spray, and yet the instant it went off, she started coughing. That stuff is potent. She rushed over to me and handed me a Camelbak, and I lifted my head and rinsed my eye as best I could.

I was probably spared some pain by my contact lens absorbing some of the blast. I peeled it off and threw it on the dirt. After a couple of minutes, the pain in my eye subsided somewhat, and Kirstie and I decided to get back to Fort Collins as soon as possible. On the drive, I called the Poison Control Center to see if I needed medical attention. Luckily, they assured me I didn't; the stuff was just intended to be an irritant, not to cause serious chemical burns.

The stinging in my eye didn't last very long...but wasn't the only effect. It got all over my skin, too, on my face and some on my right arm. For days, I felt like I had gotten a horrible sunburn, my skin hot and tender to the touch. And my poor truck... for about a week afterward nobody could get into it without coughing, until the residue finally went away.

So, if you ever doubt the usefulness of bear spray, I can assure you that it works. I can't imagine any bear - or mountain lion - getting sprayed with that stuff and not being completely discombobulated, at least for a few minutes; enough time, anyway, for you to get away. And if you don't have any other weapon, it's certainly a great thing to have.

But the main lesson of the story: when not in use, always make sure the safety's on.

I have a canister of my own bear spray now, and you can bet I'm extremely careful with it.

(In recommending bear spray, I feel the need to emphasize that anyone who uses it needs to be aware of several things: they do expire and they do need to be tested periodically.)

Babe

Meet Babe.

I did not take these pictures. Back in 2007, pretty much anyone who came to Upper Newport Bay in Orange County, CA, could see and photograph Babe whenever they felt like it. She was extremely visible, often parading her newest litter of kittens out in front of joggers and motorists in the middle of the day, not at all afraid of the crowds of humans who visited the popular area.

Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of Babe's kittens, and it appears the ocphotosite.com website no longer exists. As of 2010, she was apparently still alive (Click here for a little news story and photo.). But when I worked with her, it was back in 2007-2008.

I worked for the US Geological Survey for about a year studying the movement of bobcats and coyotes through urban corridors. It was a really interesting study. We drove around Newport Beach, Irvine, Tustin, Laguna Beach, Laguna Woods, Costa Mesa, Lake Forest, and Aliso Viejo monitoring the cats with telemetry, regularly checking a few dozen remote cameras we had set throughout the area, and trying to get more collars out on the animals. The main purpose of the study was to learn more about what the animals needed in a corridor, so that when the Orange County Great Park, which was in the process of being built on the old El Toro Marine Base, was completed, it could facilitate the movement of individuals between the Cleveland National Forest in the east and the San Joaquin Hills along the coast. (Interesting note: Will Smith's character was based out of the El Toro Marine Base in the movie Independence Day.)

Babe was already a pretty well-known cat before she was captured, which happened a few weeks before I got on the project. The capture crew had initially wanted to call her Tamale*, because she began to overheat while they were working her up. This happens occasionally, and they doused her with water and put alcohol on her ears to help her cool off. Eventually, though, they decided to call her Babe, after her habit of cruising Upper Newport Bay.

Unlike the collars we used on the mountain lions in Colorado, the bobcats had GPS collars that collected data points every few hours but could NOT be remotely downloaded. The data was stored on the collar, and when the collar's battery got low, it was programmed to automatically drop off the animal, and emit a different signal to let us know. Then we could walk in and retrieve the collar, plug it in, and get all the GPS data off of it.

Unfortunately, many of our collars failed. Often the drop-off mechanism would fail, the battery would die, and we would lose all ability to find the bobcat, relying then on spotting the cats on remote cameras and trying to recapture them to manually remove the collars. Thus, whenever we detected the drop-off signal, we weren't always 100% sure that the collar was actually no longer on the animal.

One day, Babe's collar started emitting that drop-off signal. Upper Newport Bay itself is a nature preserve, but it is surrounded by very densely populated neighborhoods and a handful of ritzy golf courses. Now Babe had been on her own for a while, having booted off her last litter of kittens, and had kind of disappeared out of her normal area for the previous few weeks. We actually feared she had gotten killed on the road somewhere. When Robert finally did pick up her signal, it was a few miles away from UNB in the heart of one of the neighborhoods. A day or so later, it started to give the drop-off signal.

So Robert set off to find it, eventually pinpointing it in someone's backyard. Robert knew there was the possibility that Babe was still wearing it, so he gave her a few days before walking in to retrieve it. When he returned, the signal was still there, so he got permission from the homeowner and walked into the backyard to get it. The backyard was small, lined by a row of hedges planted in a raised bed that backed up against the stone fence behind it. Robert crawled back behind the stickly, poky hedge with difficulty, came around a corner, and came face to face with Babe herself. 

She didn't act aggressive at all, but Robert immediately got out of there and told us the news. We easily figured she had had her kittens back there. It was quite a protected spot, out of reach of any coyotes or other bobcats that could kill her kittens, and sheltered from the elements. Our best guess was that the collar just happened to drop off there shortly after she gave birth, and her kittens were probably snuggling with it. We decided to give her a few weeks to get out of the area before trying to get the collar. Now, of course, we had absolutely no way of knowing where she was at any given time. 

And so, when the few weeks were up, they sent me in to try to get the collar. 

Robert and one of our supervisors, Lisa, came along. This time it was my turn to poke my head through the hedge. I dove in at the corner and cruised against the stone wall where the foliage was thinnest. When I reached the spot, I stared hard, trying to see through the darkness of the thick greenery. At first, I thought I could see a divot in the dirt, and eagerly moved closer to try to find the collar. But as my eyes adjusted, the dark form in front of me changed, morphed, took a different shape, until I could perceive the barely visible twinkle of a cat's eye against a dark bobcat-shaped head, tufted ears and all. She was still there. 

Again, she didn't react. I could have gotten a face-full of bobcat claws, since I was probably only about five or six feet away from her. I think she understood by now, after her years of frequenting the Bay, that we humans weren't likely to hurt her or her kittens, and bobcats, unlike canids, typically crouch and take cover when threatened rather than run for it. But needless to say, I got the heck out of there. 

 Eventually we were able to retrieve the collar, and Babe came back to Upper Newport Bay with a new set of kittens trailing behind her. She no longer had her necklace, just colorful earrings that she would have for the rest of her life. 

I don't actually know where Babe is now, if she's still alive, what happened to her, etc. Odds are, she got hit by a car, because that seems to be the fate of pretty much every urban bobcat in southern California. But she was one of our greatest tools in educating the southern California public about carnivores, letting them see the untamed beauty first-hand, and teaching them that bobcats can live alongside humans peacefully with no need for fear, as long as we maintain the appropriate distance and respect.

Regarding the bigger project, we ended up getting some interesting data from our cats. We found that in the more densely human-populated areas, somewhat removed from big expanses of habitat like Upper Newport Bay, the Laguna Coast Wilderness, and Crystal Cove, the bobcats were using whatever they could find to move around and build their territory. Two of our cats, named Homer and Sloane (both cats I got to help capture - Homer was my first), were caught right at the junction of the I-5 and I-405 freeways behind a Carmax Superstore. Both had almost completely linear home ranges along the riparian strip that wove between office complexes and neighborhoods. I don't know the status of the Orange County Great Park project, but I hope it's able to connect the east and west habitats, allowing more gene flow among the bobcats to help them maintain their populations in Orange County....because in this world of increasing distance between Man and Nature, the bobcats were the perfect ambassadors.

P.S. If you're interested in that kind of thing, you can find the final report of our project at the following link: Click here! Toward the end, in the appendices, are a bunch of really cool camera-trap photos, including some taken when a wildfire swept over our Cuddeback cameras without damaging them.

*Now that I have spent four months in Mexico, I feel the need to emphasize that the singular of "tamales" should be "tamal", not "tamale". That bugged our Spanish teachers to no end while we were in language class.

In the Lion's Den

One day, I found some mountain lion kittens.

By far, my favorite moments working in the field of wildlife biology have been, and will always be, when I get to see wildlife out doing its thing. When one works primarily with carnivores, this is not a frequent occurrence.

During my time on the mountain lion job in Colorado, I was lucky enough to get a few glimpses of some of our collared cats, as well as an older kitten when I accidentally stumbled upon it (see the post "Here, Kitty"). But what I really wanted was to see kittens in a den. My boss and a tech who was only working part-time for us - which only added insult to injury - had found a den earlier in the season, and I had searched a few likely spots since then but come up empty. 

We usually only checked the den sites to confirm whether or not one of our female cats had had kittens. We weren't cleared to handle them at all - you need special permission from Animal Care and Use committees to do that, apparently. We also had very narrow windows during which to search, as we had to wait until Mama was off hunting, since the last thing we wanted was to stumble upon a very defensive mother mountain lion. The few times I did den searches, we either missed the kittens, or the mother had already moved them. 

I say "miss the kittens" because if you've ever seen a mountain lion den site, you'll understand why it can be so hard to find them. Of the four I had seen, two were located in extremely dense scrub oak thickets, and the other two were in boulder fields. Scrub oak is a species of oak that is short, tough as nails, and grows really close together in enormous groups. You basically have to crawl on your hands and knees underneath the snagging branches to get through it, twisting through it like a labyrinth. Scrub oak destroyed my favorite pair of field pants, for which I have not yet forgiven it. The boulder fields are almost equally annoying, as you have to hop from rock to rock, checking for protected spaces underneath them where a mother might stash kittens, all the while trying not to slip and fall and break your neck. 

As I've said in previous posts, we had GPS locations for all of our cats from their collars, taken every four hours and remotely downloaded; so den sites were usually easy to spot on the maps as an enormous jumble of GPS locations all concentrated in the same general area. But satellite fixes, at least with our technology, are not 100% accurate - depending on the location of the satellites, the position of the cat, the weather, the vegetation, etc., a cat can stay in the same spot for hours and we'll get a map of points sprawled out over maybe a fifty-square-foot area. The kittens could be anywhere in there.

Skunk kill from this cat

And now, I'd like to introduce another star cat, one of my favorites because of her interesting eating habits. She was apparently quite old, and the last time she'd been captured the crew had noticed that her canines were worn almost to stubs. She had had multiple litters of kittens but, to the knowledge of the team, none had ever survived - for some reason, she always abandoned her kittens shortly after giving birth to them. But the most interesting thing about her was the most common prey item I logged for her: skunks. Her data was always easy to collect because I just had to follow my nose, and more often than not it would lead me to a pile of black-and-white hair and little bones, with the occasional intact head or tail sitting amidst it all. Whether her inability to raise young, broken teeth, and taste for skunks were all tied in somehow, maybe to a brain injury or other deformity this cat had, we could never be certain. 

It became clear late in the winter that something was going on - whether she was injured or had kittens, we weren't sure. All we knew was that she was sticking around a particular area for a long, long time. It seemed an odd time for her to have had kittens, but then again Colorado lions don't seem to stick to a regular breeding schedule - they can have their kittens year-round. 

And so, one day, I was instructed to go with another technician to investigate. 

At first, it was an easy hike. The other tech and I - an older, seasoned guy who had worked with lions for decades - drove as far as we could over a rough two-track road, then walked the rest of the way, along a creek and around a gently-rising hill. It didn't take long, however, before the trail ended at a massive boulder field. Below, we could see enormous rocks littering the hillside, the area devoid of almost all vegetation except for a tiny oasis of scrubby trees and shrubs in the very middle of it. We had to backtrack and hike over some pretty sketchy stuff to get down into it. We clambered over the boulders as best we could, and all the while I checked the mother lion's telemetry to make sure she wasn't in the area; we were able to hear her signal, but it was very weak, clearly indicating that she was far across the valley below.

It took a long time but we finally reached the trees in the middle. We were in the middle of the big jumble of GPS points, most of which were concentrated, of course, around the boulder field. I balked at the task before us; it was going to take ages to search under the rocks. I briefly considered giving up. After all, the kittens were probably gone or dead, and I had learned from experience that trying to find these guys in this kind of situation was like - pardon the cliche - trying to find a needle in a haystack.

However, Nature itself, this time, came to my aid.

From startlingly nearby, I heard a shrill whistle. It sounded completely out of place in this barren, silent landscape. I thought maybe my coworker had made the noise, but when I looked at him, his eyes had gone wide. "Kittens!" he said.

"What?" I said. Surely mountain lion kittens didn't whistle.

But the whistling continued, and as I was closer, I scrambled over the enormous boulders, trying to pinpoint the source of the sound. When I stood atop a particularly gigantic rock, looking down at a little patch of soil separating it from its neighboring rocks, a slight movement caught my eye.

A mountain lion kitten, days old, crawled out from under the boulder, its ears and eyes still shut, its fur speckled with little black spots. In between its whistles, we could hear the whistling of a sibling, still concealed beneath the rock. The visible kitten groped blindly in the dirt for just a few seconds before heading back toward the safety of the den.

I couldn't believe my luck. I had finally seen a mountain lion kitten.

Click on the video below from the Cincinnati Zoo for some examples of the sound.

The whistling is the kittens' method of communicating with their mother, and I heard it later, from the Golden lion's kitten ("The Cat Came Back - Part II"). It's certainly not the sound you would expect to come from a cat. I was glad the little kittens had done it, though, or we probably never would have found them.

Unfortunately, the crazy mother did abandon them, as her behavior over the next few weeks didn't indicate she was still supporting kittens. And so, a little while later, I brought my boss Kevin to the site to see if we could find them.

We made the difficult journey back to the site, and I lowered myself down into the space between the boulders to dig around in the dirt. It didn't take long for me to find little bones and poofs of spotted kitten fur. Kevin even got down and crawled as deep into the den as he could go, which was pretty deep (see pictures).

See if you can find his shoes

So, it was kind of a sad story, as the kittens didn't make it; but these things happen, and I'm not sure I would have felt better if we had had ACUC permission to rescue the kittens and bring them back to Fort Collins. There, they would have grown up in a pen (if they survived at all), then probably been translocated out in the woods again to fend for themselves. Some lions can thrive in those circumstances, it's true. At the risk of sounding like a hypocrite, since I love seeing wildlife up close and getting the chance to touch and smell and hear the animals while processing them at capture, it's always best to interfere with these animals' lives as little as possible.

Nature can be harsh, yes. Mothers abandon their young for reasons we don't understand. Animals take the lives of other animals to survive. Even though I love carnivores, and I myself eat meat occasionally, whenever I'm watching a documentary of a wolf or a pride of lions chasing down its prey, I find myself rooting for the chased, the underdog, the victim. We find ourselves empathizing with creatures, allotting human rights and qualities to them, finding sadness in tragedies such as these. Some people think it's in our nature as humans to fear the wilderness and all its ferocity, its untamedness, its danger, to want to distance ourselves from this life-and-death struggle that goes on outside our cities.

But is our fear of wilderness in our nature? Or do we fear it because we have lost our nature?

Chasing wolves with painball guns - Part 2

A few days later, I became Paintball Rambo.

The second adventure took place during my second tour at the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument. After several volunteers and staff had patrolled the park for several weeks, I was asked to return - actually, it was my last week of work before driving to Missouri to start grad school.

I reluctantly drove back, remembering the incredibly socially awkward fisheries scientists, and stopping by a store in Silver City to purchase a mattress pad for the back of the Ford Explorer. After my previous, extremely boring 4-hour-each-way drive with no radio, I had rigged up a handy system with my iPod, plugged into my iHome, plugged into a power converter, plugged into the cigarette lighter, so I could sing my head off and make the drive a bit less monotonous. It worked beautifully, except that the iHome wall transformer was huge and heavy and, if I stopped suddenly or hit a bump, the whole ensemble collapsed.

The first few days were uneventful, me continuing my nightly patrols and daily naps, stalking the screened-in porch during the days to enjoy the view of the Gila River and read one of the many books I'd brought with me. A woman who worked for Defenders of Wildlife, named Cynthia, had been in the area as well, talking with ranchers and campers and overall trying to, in whatever ways she could, change people's minds about wolves. Although I had mixed feelings about Defenders of Wildlife, this particular woman was extremely level-headed, drawing from a lifetime of experience living and working alongside ranchers, with a clear understanding of the challenges they faced and the reasons they disliked the wolves. She cruised around Gila Hot Springs and the National Monument doing her thing, while I cruised around doing mine, and occasionally our vehicles met and we rolled down the windows to chat for a few minutes. I kept her updated on what the wolves were doing - which, that week, was primarily staying off to the west and north of the Monument. I was counting down the days until I left for Missouri, just hoping the wolves would continue to behave themselves and make my job easier (though, admittedly, much less exciting).

The last night, however, things changed.

It was early in the evening, and as I started my patrol, I turned on my telemetry receiver and listened with surprise as both the wolves' signals came booming in.

I cruised westward toward the Monument, hopping out of the truck every few minutes to roughly triangulate their position. They were together, just north of the main road, probably on top of the first ridge. At the corral, I decided I was close enough that I could run up there with my paintball gun and chase them back northward. As quickly as I could, I grabbed the H-antenna, paintball gun, and an extra load of paintballs, locked the car, and sprinted up the scrubby hillside. I had a little waist pack that could hold the telemetry receiver, and I stuffed the pack of paintballs in it with my headlamp and car keys. The sun had set, but there was still plenty of light.

At the top of the hill, I listened to the signals, which still were booming in. Gain low. Signal strength high. They were here, somewhere, probably watching me, their rusty fur blending perfectly with the rocks and dirt in the dim light. I switched off the receiver and listened. All was silent.

Even though I couldn't see them, they were so close that I figured this would be the best location to fire at them. I strained to remember the exact radio conditions that previous time with James, when the figure of the male wolf had materialized through the fog not 50 yards from where I stood. I might even hit them, wherever they were. It would be better to fire now, make some noise, than try to sneak closer and let them slink off on their own terms.

So I slung the paintball gun to my shoulder and pulled the trigger.

Nothing.

The CO2 canister was empty.

Frustrated, I threw it across my back, took the receiver and antenna in my right hand, and started running north like a maniac, yelling as loud as I could in as low a voice as I could, trying to make myself sound as scary and intimidating as possible.

Once atop that first ridge, the ground sloped up and down in a more or less gentle undulation of continuous, low hills. The Middle Fork of the Gila River flowed parallel to my right - eastward - where it swept past the Visitors Center and joined the West Fork in a broad, sandy wash near the intersection of the roads. Here, where they met, the rivers had carved the hills I now ran on into steep cliffs between them, which gradually lowered the further they got from the confluence.

I continued chasing the wolves, pausing at the top of each little hill to check the telemetry. They kept moving northward, but also eastward, toward the Middle Fork north of the Visitors Center. I knew about the cliff, and knew I was approaching it, but since the signals were still so strong, I assumed the wolves were still up on top with me. However, after a few more minutes of jogging, I reached the brink and stared down, thirty feet above the broad bank sloping gently down to the water. The wolves were already in the valley.

I really didn't want them to go back south; south and east was Gila Hot Springs. There was no way I could get down from where I was, so I continued north, running a few paces from the edge, looking for a gully or some rocky stairs that would get me down, all the while monitoring the wolves' signals. To my dismay, as my H-antenna sought the radio signals, I found myself pointing southeast. They were headed right toward Gila Hot Springs and a smorgasbord of goats and sheep. The light was considerably dimmer now, the Visitors Center had long since closed, and I began to feel panic gripping the edges of my consciousness.

I urgently sought a way down and eventually found one, maybe five minutes after I'd reached the edge. I slunk and slid down the side and lurched through the shallow waters of the Middle Fork, running past the Visitors Center and hitting the pavement of the road. I imagined what an odd sight I must be - soggy boots, paintball gun in one hand and antenna in the other, running down the road as if all the hounds of hell were at my heels. By the time I crossed the bridge, the darkness was nearly complete, the sandy banks of the river a blue-gray shadow with the black water cutting through the middle.

When I reached the intersection with the main road, I checked the signals again and learned that the wolves hadn't crossed the road, but were heading toward the town along the northern ridge. Here, private property prevented me from following on foot, so I decided to fetch the truck. I jogged all the way and hopped in, throwing the paintball gun disdainfully on the floor, and sped back toward town as fast as I could.

I cruised the main road listening with the roof antenna, and soon learned that the wolves hadn't made it very far east yet. Their signals were relatively weak, bouncing in and out, suggesting to me that they were a ways uphill away from the road. I hoped that I had at least given them a scare and that they wouldn't try anything with the livestock tonight, and decided to monitor them every half hour. First, I had to make a phone call.

I headed back to the house of the awkward fisheries scientists and plugged my calling card numbers in. I reached my boss and told him that the wolves were now close to town, paraphrasing my adventure with the cliffs. He sounded unhappy, but also admitted that there was little I could do - since everything was private property, I could only monitor them and hope they didn't get into any trouble. I hung up the phone and headed back, parking my truck near the intersection of the main road and the road to the Visitor Center.

After a few minutes, a familiar truck pulled alongside me. Cynthia stepped out and walked to my open window. Before I could recount my tale, she trumped me with one of her own:

"Somebody spotted a mountain lion down there near the river this evening," she said. "Apparently it killed an elk and dragged it underneath the bridge, and is there right now eating it."

My heart jumped. I had been sprinting down that bridge like a lunatic not half an hour before. And all the while there'd been a mountain lion beneath my feet, eating an elk that it probably would have readily defended if it felt threatened.

I told her about the wolves, and she generously agreed to help me keep a lookout. Fortunately, the wolves never did get into trouble, at least not that night. It was a month or so later, when I was all settled in at graduate school, that I finally learned what became of the Laredo Pack.

One evening, the caretaker of a ranch saw the male wolf on his property. He reportedly mistook it for a feral German shepherd that was after his calves, shot it, and killed it. That could have been the end of it - Mexican wolves are all too frequently illegally shot, and there rarely is enough evidence to convict the perpetrator.

The wolf team noted his sudden absence and began searching for him from the airplane. Topography and, in this case, several feet of dirt or concrete, can hinder reception from the ground, but many times signals can still be detected aerially. The biologists quickly found themselves circling above a house in the vicinity of Gila Hot Springs and sent the USFWS Special Agent over to check things out. Apparently, the guy buried the carcass, or put it in his basement, or something - radio collar and all. Check out the news release here.

His mate high-tailed it, at least for a little while, and after that I'm not sure what happened to her. The ranch caretaker claimed to be a supporter of the reintroduction program, making an honest mistake about the identity of the animal threatening his employer's livestock.

I try not to make judgments about these things, even though they can be very emotionally charged. Heck, I fostered a lifetime fondness for the species, and then spent two weeks of my life staying up all night and sleeping in the back of a Ford Explorer trying to keep that wolf out of trouble, and he got shot anyway.

Maybe one day I'll write a post about my opinions on wolves, which, to say the least, have morphed greatly over time.

Chasing wolves with paintball guns - Part 1

One day, I stalked some wolves with a paintball gun.

Wolves are pretty smart. They're resourceful, too, which often leads them into trouble. When I volunteered on the Mexican Wolf Blue Range Reintroduction Project, I had to spend a few weeks dealing with a pair of resourceful wolves who, having found themselves hungry and in unfamiliar territory in the Gila National Wilderness of New Mexico, rather quickly identified a handy solution: haunt the campsites of the nearby National Monument.

Map of the area. The large green blob is the Gila Wilderness.

Because livestock depredation can be a serious temptation for the Mexican wolves in the reintroduction area, one of the jobs of us volunteers was occasionally to "haze" wolves away from livestock when they got too close for comfort. Most of the wolves had radio collars, so if one of us drove through ranch land and detected a wolf nearby, or the ranchers reported wolf sightings, we would spend the next few evenings sitting near the herds with paintball guns to prevent a depredation. As a volunteer, the only firearm I was cleared to handle was a paintball gun. The technicians who were employed by the Arizona or New Mexico state wildlife management agencies were cleared to handle shotguns loaded with nonlethal ammunition including cracker shells (also known as "noisemaker rounds"), beanbag rounds, and rubber bullets. Prior to the following story, I had only gone out on one or two hazing excursions during which the wolves never actually approached the livestock.

This story begins with two wolves, a male and female, who were translocated from captivity to the Gila Wilderness in an effort to start a new pack. I can't remember the particular backgrounds of the two wolves who were chosen, but I don't believe either one had been born in captivity. Sometimes wolves are moved to captivity if they're injured, orphaned, or have shown an inclination to kill livestock. After that, they are genetically profiled. Decisions to breed wolves in captivity or translocate them to other locations are based on a synthesis of all the data about the genetic potential, behavioral history, and health of each wolf, in conjunction with the status of the wild wolves and the identification of "holes" in the reintroduction area that could be filled with new individuals, to boost the genetic diversity and size of the entire population.

This particular pair of wolves was dubbed the Laredo Pack. The field team translocated them via a "soft release", in which a temporary enclosure is built and the wolves can chew their way out when they're ready to go. The wolves' diets were supplemented by a few other volunteers who stayed with them in the heart of the Gila Wilderness while the wolves got used to their surroundings. The Laredo Pack didn't spend too long in their temporary enclosure, flying the coop after only a few days.

The field crew monitored them in the area for a few extra days, then packed up their mules and headed back to the field office. It soon became clear, however, that the wolves weren't being so successful in locating food on their own; at some point in their wild roaming, they stumbled upon what must have seemed like a jackpot to them: the campsites at Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument.

The National Monument is located about an hour up a windy two-lane road north of Silver City, New Mexico, which is itself two and a half hours away from the Mexican wolf field office in Alpine, Arizona. The Monument is relatively small, with a visitors center, a small number of campgrounds, and some trails winding around to view the cliff dwellings or connect to larger trails that traverse the Gila Wilderness. There is a small town called Gila Hot Springs located just east of the Monument, in which a few people raised livestock.

Because of the livestock nearby, and the fact that the wolves were being spotted looting campsites during the early mornings and evenings, my supervisors decided to keep a staff member in the area 24/7 to haze the wolves as often as possible until they left. The other volunteers and the New Mexico state technician on the project (James) took the job in shifts, usually lasting about a week. I was the first person to go, and ended up having to go a second time right before I left the project. My supervisors had made arrangements for us to stay in a crappy cabin shared by two incredibly socially awkward fisheries scientists doing research in the Gila River (I think the West Fork). They had the craziest work schedules, and no place for me to sleep; as a result, on my second trip, I purchased a mattress pad from a store in Silver City and slept in the back of the Ford Explorer (which also didn't have a working radio, so I drove the whole 7-hour round trip with my iPod plugged into my iHome plugged into a power converter plugged into the cigarette lighter, which, oddly enough, did work).

Since wolves are most active during dusk and dawn (i.e. the "crepuscular" hours - how's that for science vocab?), I spent my days hiking the trails, checking out the cliff dwellings, chatting with the visitors center staff, reading, and making my rounds to the campgrounds to talk to the campers, asking if they'd seen anything, and telling them about proper food storage. Sometimes huge storms would roll in in the evenings, with dangerous lightning, torrential downpours, and frightening gusts of wind tearing through the willows and cottonwoods around the cabin, and I'd sit in the cheap outdoor furniture on the wraparound, screened-in porch and watch.

I monitored the wolves' radio signals closely, trying to learn their habits and figure out where they went during the day. For the most part, their signals were only barely audible; there are many creeks and canyons surrounding the National Monument, and they could have been hunkering down in any one of them. The one time I did try to hike back into the Wilderness to find them, I got so frustrated with the number of river crossings that I gave up - after all, not only is constantly taking on and off yours boots annoying, but toting thousands of dollars' worth of telemetry equipment over slippery rock beds over and over again isn't exactly prudent. I settled for hiking up to the top of one of the ridges every day to get a general idea where they were, then waiting for night to fall so my real work could begin.

Main road along the river, between the cliff dwellings
 trailhead and visitors center access road. 

It was interesting work. I have two good stories to tell about the time I spent here. For the most part, though, starting around dusk, I would just drive the main road back and forth between the visitors center and the trailhead to the cliff dwellings, scanning constantly with the roof antenna to listen for changes in the volume and quality of the signals. Later, I would sleep in the Explorer and wake up every hour to make another trip down the road. If I felt like the wolves were getting too close to the campsites, I would park the truck and stand there with my paintball gun at the ready, a sort of guardian of the campsites, sometimes hiking past the sleeping campers up the ridge behind and firing a bunch of warning rounds out into the darkness. I don't know how effective it was; the wolves never got close enough for me to hit them, and my objective was just to impress upon them the futility of their haunting by never letting them get access to the camp food.

One night, as I made another round, driving slowly and quietly down the road with the windows open, listening to the Gila River flowing swiftly on the other side of the thick rushes that separated it from me, a large herd of javelina ran out in front of my truck. I killed the engine, listening to their grunting and looking at my headlights reflected in their eyes as they turned and trotted past me down the road.

-----

The first story involves my coworker James, who was a volunteer with me before being hired on as the New Mexico technician for the wolf project. Because he was a paid employee, he was permitted to use the shotguns with nonlethal ammunition to haze the wolves.

James was sent out to take over the next shift at the Cliff Dwellings, but our shifts overlapped by a day or two so I could tell him what I'd learned. Since there were two of us, and we finally had more powerful ammunition, we decided to make a more concerted effort to locate the wolves and scare the crap out of them. Thus, very early one morning, we convened at a corral east of the campsites, a spot I'd located that provided easier access to the ridgeline north of the main road, and allowed us to avoid bothering the sleeping campers. James took his shotgun, and I took my paintball gun and the telemetry equipment.

Map of the area. The encounter described took place north of the main east-west road. 

It was a creepy morning. All was gray and silent, with a thick fog rolling through the canyons and up onto the ridges. We left the truck at the corral and headed uphill, arriving at the top of the ridgeline easily and hiking northwestward, all the while monitoring the radio signals. The male's signal was louder, but the female was nearby too. We sneaked along as quickly and quietly as we could through the scrubby vegetation.

The signals got louder and louder. I motioned to James to proceed more slowly. With the fog, we could see maybe 40-50 feet in front of us.

To our left - west - there was a shallow gully that separated our hillside from the one next to us. By now, the male wolf's signal was so strong, even with the gain on my receiver down extremely low, that I knew he had to be somewhere on the adjacent hillside. James walked in front of me a few paces, his eyes fixed ahead, as I followed with my gaze directed westward.

Suddenly, silently, like a ghost, the figure of the male wolf appeared out of the fog on the hill beside us. "James!" I whispered urgently. He whipped his head around and saw the wolf too, just as the wolf saw us and made a dash back into the cover of the clouds, heading northwest. James threw his shotgun to the ready and fired two cracker shells in his direction. I followed suit, albeit pathetically, with paintballs.

James quickly reloaded his shotgun and we took off running after the wolf, dipping down into the shallow gully and emerging on the other hillside where the wolf had been moments ago. We really had no hope of catching him, but James was determined to dog him, firing off more cracker shells as often as he could to tell the wolf we meant business. By the radio signals, I could tell that the male's signal was getting further and further away, but the female's was still somewhere north of us. It too was receding.

Finally, we gave up. I was out of paintballs, the sun was higher, the fog was burning off, and the radio signals were barely audible. The wolves were probably in a canyon somewhere. James and I turned around and headed back to the truck, which proved to be a bit more of a challenge than we expected - with the excitement of the chase, and the fog obscuring our view, we couldn't really remember how we'd gotten where we were. Fortunately, we were prepared with a GPS unit, and we eventually found our way back to the truck.

I returned to Alpine soon after. From James's reports, and the reports of the volunteer who went to the Monument after him, the wolves were still staying in the area, though they weren't coming down into the campsites as often. Thus, three weeks later, I arrived at the cliff dwellings once again. And that's when Part 2 happened.

To be continued....

Mistakes - Part 1 of many

One day, I discovered I ought to learn more about plumbing.

I've made many mistakes in my career as a biologist or field technician. Losing field equipment, damaging a vehicle, or similar things are embarrassing and sometimes expensive, but these things don't usually stick with me - what sticks with me most are the times I've made assumptions, had a bad attitude, or let my ambitions get the better of me at work, creating memories I wish I didn't have. Maybe I'm depressed right now, or homesick, or whatever, but for some reason I feel like expounding on some of the times I've made bad choices which have impacted my relationships with my supervisors and coworkers, and maybe even impacted my future in this field. I sure hope not.

It's not good to harbor regrets, but maybe these memories can be useful to someone by showing him or her what not to do.

I'll start with a lighter, shorter story, though, a little mistake that falls more in the category of "embarrassing and sometimes expensive" errors, and only slightly in the other, more serious category.

When I worked in Yellowstone, we all lived in small travel trailers in a residential area near the Lake intended for temporary employees and volunteers. The trailers were connected for electricity, gray water drainage, and fresh water for drinking and cooking, but we had to use nearby bathroom buildings to take showers and use the toilets. The electricity and water we used were monitored per trailer site, and the cost came out of the grant money for our boss's research study. Heating and gas for cooking were provided by small propane tanks attached outside the trailer.

I arrived late in the season to fill in for another employee who had to go back to school. My first day was sometime in the beginning of September. The Lake area of Yellowstone is at an altitude of about 8000 feet or more, and in September, the cold weather really starts to settle in. Nighttime freezing temperatures are common, as are freak snowfalls.

For my first few days of work, I slept in my trailer by myself. My roommate Shannon was visiting Livingston, Montana where she lived with her husband on her days off, and a friend of my boss Jenn, who was visiting from Idaho, was using the spare bed - but the two of them were off on a multi-day camping trip. I hadn't even met my boss yet, actually.

I awoke for a day of front-country hiking to collect bear data, the morning dawning bright and cold. I staggered to the sink and turned the tap to fill up my tea kettle, but no water came out - the pipes had frozen during the night.

In my drowsiness, I realized I couldn't remember which direction I had turned the tap. I experimented with the other tap, the hot water one, but it didn't really help me figure out the problem. If the hot tap turns on to the left, does that mean the cold tap does the same? Or are they opposite? I'm not a plumber. I had no idea how these things work, and I've lived in so many places with so many little differences in things like plumbing that I couldn't remember if I'd ever observed a clear pattern with these things.

I had a 50/50 chance. So I picked a side and cranked the tap all the way, got my things together, and left the trailer. I had to meet my coworkers and other boss, Justin, at their two trailers, which were side by side and located a bit further down the road. We discussed the day's plans and headed out to the West Thumb area, where Justin trained me and the other new employees, Gabe and Caryn, in the field collection techniques.

After a day of fun scooping mushroom-y bear poop and identifying day beds, I returned to my trailer. I walked through the door to find things slightly re-arranged - apparently Jenn and her friend had returned from their trip sometime during the day. I also noticed some wet towels hanging around the sink area.

As I began preparing dinner, standing over the sink, a face appeared outside the kitchen window. "Rebecca?" she said. I put down what I was working on and walked outside.

"You must be Jenn!" I said cheerily. After all, first impressions are everything.

"Yeah," she said. She didn't look happy.

"How was your trip?" I asked, now a bit uncertain.

"Good. So, did you know that you left the tap turned all the way on, and it flooded the trailer?"

Oops.

I tried to explain about the frozen pipes, and how I couldn't remember which way I'd turned the tap. She never broke a smile, instead making sure I knew about how she had to pay for all the water we used out of her grant money, and how all I needed to do was turn the faucet to a slow drip during the night to keep the pipes from freezing again. I apologized and went back inside with my tail tucked between my legs.

Well, so much for that first impression.