Emily gets into position to open the trap but the door is stuck
The bear sticks his head alarmingly high through the raccoon hole in the top of the trap
Goodbye for now - we will return later with assistance to get the trap door unstuck
Leaving corn at a different site
WE ARE VERY OFFICIAL AND IMPORTANT
Hog wallows
Revisiting the trapped bear, only to discover it has escaped
Yes, that is the giant hole the bear tore in the top of the trap to escape to sweet, sweet freedom
I had another resource day today, but this time instead of mapping ash trees, I got to go out with the wildlife SCA intern, Emily, to go check hog traps.
Wild hogs have been an invasive species in the park for about a century and cause a lot of damage to the natural environment. In an effort to curb their populations, the park has been trapping the hogs in these giant, chainwire traps and then delivering a PETA-endorsed kill shot in the brain, just above the eyes (think of how Javier Bardem from No Country For Old Men would do it).
We checked a handful of traps today, and here are some things we found instead of hogs:
Evidence of wild turkeys
A LARGE puddle of coagulated blood from a recently executed piggy
A black bear
The very first trap we checked had a giant, surprisingly calm black bear in it. I was offered the honorable option of fleeing to the safety of the vehicle, but like the opportunistic invincible young fool I am, I stood at a distance to snap pictures while Emily, the wildlife SCA, attempted to open the now badly-warped trap.
Sadly, I never got to see the bear amble off because she was unable to dislodge the stuck trap door, and by the time we returned with help, the bear had made its timely jailbust and escaped. Still, it was exciting for me and a great excuse to get out of the office.
PS Happy St. Patrick's Day, especially to Levi since he has Scarlet Fever and is obsessed with the color green. Feel better, buddy!
Yours truly next to a jar of pickled hellbenders (aka giant salamanders)
Why'd it have to be snakes?
A skull of something or other
What's cuter than a stuffed bear cub?
There are multiple visitor centers in the park and each has its own educational program. This week, the other SCA Educational Interns have arrived, and together with the rest of the Resource Education staff, went through training together.
It has definitely been nice getting to know some other people in my position and seeing the different working conditions we're in. For instance, at Cades Cove, the two interns have Wednesday-Thursday off instead of the weekend and they share housing with each other. On the North Carolina side at Oconoluftee, Laura gets to dress up as an old-timey Southern Appalachian woman and guide kids through a historical cookie-making activity.
In the pictures above, Adrian, the museum curator, showed us the park's archives, which were pretty damn cool. Have you ever seen rattlesnakes stuffed in a jar? Or plant specimens that are a hundred years old? Or a buttload of disgusting beetles pinned to a tray all fancy-like? I have, and it was cool.
This is what I look like standing under a waterfall
Grotto Falls
Grotto Falls is the only waterfall in the park you can actually walk behind, and as you can see from the pictures, it's pretty neat. Round trip was about 3 miles or so – a nice, gentle start to the hiking season if I do say so myself. Plus, I got to go out with my coworkers, who made the slushy-muddy trek up the mountain a hoot and a half.
It's been the nicest day since I've arrived in the park, so as soon as I got back and ate some lunch, I changed my clothes and decided to walk into Gatlinburg for the first time.
On the surface, Gatlinburg appears to be a shrine to hyper-consumerism, the epitome of all that is toxic about American materialism, and it sort of is. Underlying its miles of putt-putt, novelty restaurants, and Cooter's go-kart racing/Dukes of Hazzard Museum is a sort of saccharine self-awareness. Gatlinburg is not, as I first thought, simply a side effect of the park, but a destination all its own, and people come from miles around just to visit the town, regardless of its proximity to the park.
Sure, there are a thousand fat white people walking around and old-timey photo studios on every corner – that's what the tourists are expecting, and damn it all to the hell if that ain't what they're gunna git. Leave your pretenses at the door and be prepared to spend exorbitant amounts of money on average-quality fudge and you've got yourself a good time.
Snow outside my back door this morning. Quelle surprise!
A small heater for a small person.
There was just enough snow on the ground this morning to make me feel slightly less weird about wearing my long johns into work today.
I knew I was going to be working in the office all day today, and the let me tell you what – the basement of the Park Heardquarters building is comparable to something of a hermetically sealed freezer, climactically speaking. The combination of being sub-terrainian and managing the impossible feat of absolutely no air flow means that there is a palpable temperature differential from one side of a doorway to another. Fortunately, I have long johns, tea, and the world's tiniest heater to help combat the cold.
Tonight I'm going to have dinner at Joy's and then HOPEFULLY get to bed early to catch up on some must needed sleep. I'm hoping to get a hike in this weekend too – cross your fingers for good weather!
A huge thanks to Lauren for this brilliant work of art that arrived in the mail for me yesterday. If anyone else would like to send me a care package, you'll have to get my address from Amy or Lauren, who, by my measure, are my only TRUE friends because they are the only ones who have sent me anything.
(That's not 100% true, as Josh did send me a copy of my amended tax return. Thanks for doing my taxes Josh! Keep up the good work.)
This morning, I went along with Emily and Sarah to a meeting about a couple of impending ecological threats to the park, including the emerald ash borer (EAB), a grossy little green beetle. You can read more about the EAB on the park website, but for the purposes of this post, here's what you need to know:
The EAB burrows in ash trees, killing them within a few years
Their populations can spread hundreds of miles a year due to the transportation of infested firewood
The EAB has already been found in pretty much all the states north of here, all the way up to Ontario and Quebec
There are two types of ash tree in the park - white ash and green ash
We aren't sure of how many ash trees we have, nor what their distribution is
Naturally, we need to figure out a way to detect the presence of EAB in the park, but first we need to find out where the ash trees are. Yesterday, I got to go out with Susan, a biotech, and Doug, a "citizen scientist" (which is a really sexy way of saying park volunteer) to map and measure ash trees.
In other words, I got to hike around for a bit while trying to learn how to identify trees. It's really difficult by the way. Apparently you're supposed to be able to differentiate between bark texture, color, trunk shape, branch type, etc, but they pretty much all just looked like trees to me. Even distinguishing the trees from the tree-like shrubs was difficult. Trees are hard!
Good news! After a thousand terrible experiences with Verizon, I finally got my phone situation figured out, and I'm happy report that this update comes to you via a brand new, mega-geeky Droid 2. Tomorrow everything should be business a usual, and I'll post some backlogged posts and pictures from my exiting weekend, including the following shenanigans:
That time I fell in a river
Alicia learns how to use a map and compass, kind of
Hot guys playing hockey and getting in fights
My first self-administered haircut, motivated by rage
I spent this morning making the 24-mile drive out to Cades Cove, where the preserved buildings of many Appalachian settlers still stand resolute. The Cades Cove loop is a one-way road that runs 11-miles around a wide valley where many buildings such as churches, houses, and schools, remain in tact. Most breathtaking of all was the landscape. It was crystal clear today, and the "smoky" clouds hung over the trees like a veil, suspended in place by invisible strings just below the freshly-powdered ridge. The sun was shining, the air was cool, the brooks were babbling, and I saw deer, woodepeckers, and even my first wild turkey. And it looked absolutely delicious. Yeah, it was kind of idyllic like that.
Unfortunately, this is one of those pesky areas of the park that is so beautiful, all the dumb people come out to see it too. The 11-mile loop is one lane with scenic pullouts every few hundred feet or so. Interspersed with these pullouts are signs that say something to the effect of
DO NOT STOP. PLEASE PULL OVER TO ENJOY VIEW.
To be fair, these signs are awfully distracting amidst all the beautiful splendor of nature; they sometimes can take seconds to read, so it should come to no surprise that every single car you come upon will be parked squarely in the middle of the road, its inhabitants oggling some spectacle of wildlife. After several minutes of hemming and hawing by said inhabitants, it will then necessarily dawn on someone that, oh! other people in the world exist in addition to ourselves? This is a shock to most people and often results in a further delay of at least two or three minutes – up to five if they are truly flabbergasted. At this point, something like a shifting of gears happens as the driver attempts to recall what seems to be the forgotten skill of driving. After some time, the feat is finally accomplished, at which point, I have peed my pants or starved to death or come to some other unattractive end, all while forcefully maintaining my "I'm in a government vehicle" smile, which I do because I am a good employee*.
It is a testament to the beauty of Cades Cove that this ordeal was absolutely worth it in every respect. You soon come to find out that every person you were stuck behind always gave a cheerful wave as you passed, indicating that none of them were the drooling mouth-breathers you had pictured, but instead, were good-natured tourists, dumbstruck by the beauty of the cove. And then you remember that the busy season hasn't even started yet, and then you feel slightly sad once more. Such is the dichotomous nature of a park, I suppose.
*I am, in fact, not an employee at all, but a lowly, unpaid, peon intern. Weep for me and my plight.
Well poop. I was hoping to go on a hike today, and I guess I still could've if I didn't mind snow-shoeing back, but the thing is, yuck. Also, it's Sunday, and Sundays are for being lazy, so I'm not really sure who I thought I was kidding with this whole "wake up early and go on a hike" idea.
The good news is, I've gotten lots of chores done today. I did my laundry, washed my dishes, cleaned my bathroom kind of, and I even gave my bed a good sleeping in. Good job, me!
Even though I don't think I'm technically an employee of the park, I still get to take classes from the Smoky Mountains Field School for free*, so when Joy handed me the pamphlet of available classes, I basically circled anything that my schedule accomodated (which was pretty much everything since I have no life). Today was my first class – Introduction to Orienteering.
The class was almost exclusively in the classroom, and I got to learn cool things like
The different components of a map
How to read a topographical map
The difference between True North, Grid North, and Magnetic North
How to use a map and compass to get from one location to another
What a spur, draw, ridge, and saddle are
Of course, I immediately forgot almost all of this, which was a shame because 1) it's quite interesting, and 2) we had to put it all into practice in a simple exercise at the end of the 7-hour class. This, of course, resulted in me taking the "hard route" and "crossing" (splashing about in) a river, only to find that my last compass reading was a tad inaccurate (completely and irrevocably wrong). Naturally, I found this whole pride-killing exercise brilliant, and I left the class smiling, soaking wet, and with a cute little pin as an affirmation of a job well done.
Tonight I went up to Knoxville with the girls from work to grab dinner and catch the hockey game - Knoxville Ice Bears versus Fayetteville FireAntz. We ate a restaurant called Cancun, and I think this may be the only Mexican restaurant in the history of the planet to not have hot sauce out on the table. Also, the restaurant had far fewer topless men and women than its name would have you believe. Color me disappointed on TWO counts.
I have been to one hockey game before in my life, and this game was only about a gabillion times better. First of all, SO MANY FIGHTS! It was great. If there's something better than sweaty, athletic men sucker-punching it out in ice skates, I don't want to know. Plus, we got free posters of the team, which is great, because the walls of my efficiency apartment are looking pretty bare…
*Although the field school is independent of the park, their classes take place throughout the park and even in some of the park's indoor facilities. It's my understanding that they get to do this for free in exchange for letting employees take courses for free, which is pretty great for hangers-on like me.
