This weekend: Friday afternoon Joy, my Natural Resources video project partner, came over and we left for Sauvie Island around 1:30. After a couple stops and traffic backups, we arrived at the ODFW office around 4:15. We obtained keys for the Hunt House, the dilapidated little old structure where I've stayed in the past when volunteering at the hunter check stations. It was so ridiculously cold in there, we ended up leaving the door open for a while cause it was warmer outside! Eventually we walked down towards the wetland area, which is right out the door practically. There were hundreds of ducks and geese flying around. We filmed a bit of the sunset as we thought it would be a good opening shot for our video. Our video is going to be about chronic wasting disease. On a subsequent stroll towards the water we were confronted by a goose hunter staying or visiting at an RV trailer by the Hunt House. He claimed that no one was allowed to go down there on "off days" (non-season days?). I don't know, there were no signs prohibiting our walking down to the water...sometimes being told what not to do around wildlife areas seems ridiculous, because I certainly feel knowledgeable enough given my background to decide what activities actually pose a threat to the well-being and/or safety of the animals. Plus, he was a freaking hunter! I guess wildlife management really caters to the hunters instead of people who like to be outdoors and just watch for wildlife. ARG.

Anyway, back to Friday evening. We ended up drinking my organic soup out of little mugs because the bowls looked sketchy. And pretty much everything IS sketchy at that house..the water in particular. It smells of rust and minerals, there were sprung mouse traps, evidence of mice, a giant spider..yeah. We were going to go to the little store on the island for water and ended up taking the wrong road. We ended up in the middle of a bunch of pumpkin-patch goers and decided, why not, let's stop at the patch. We ended up experiencing our first (very chilly and dark) hay ride and got to pet/view some pretty adorable animals. There was a pair of turkeys named Mr. T and Sandy, and Sandy made some noises pretty much equivalent to those produced by that spitting dinosaur in Jurassic Park. There was also a feather top knotted rooster, absolutely ridiculous, named "Falcon." I got to pet an adorable baby Holstein calf too. Joy got a caramel apple coated with mini M&Ms and I got a really amazing pumpkin cookie with cream cheese frosting. We went back to the house and went to bed not long after, as we were getting up early the next morning.

We got up at 5 and left the house around 5:40. The island was covered in a low fog which made navigating the roads tedious. An animal crossed our path about halfway between the office and the house, and I'm pretty sure it was a fox. If not it was a coyote, but my first impression was fox so that's pretty cool. It took us about an hour and 15 min. to reach Jewell Meadows. Most of the time there was a dense fog so I had to drive pretty slowly. It was just beginning to get light out when we arrived. Luckily just a quick walk from the office there yielded a view of about 40 elk grazing in a field. Unfortunately the fog was still thick. We filmed the bulk of the herd for a while and then went to the other end of the parking area where, through the fence that prevents people from wandering out to the elk we saw a spike bull and either a yearling spike or cow amongst some apple trees. Joy got a pretty good shot of them. I took over the camcorder as they moved to join the herd but the camera pretty much just focused on the damn fence and spider webs. I thought the fog would lift as the morning progressed but it just got worse and the elk moved away too.

On our way out we stopped at the other viewing area down the road. We couldn't see anything but I got to hear an elk bugle for the first time, so that was cool. We then headed back towards hwy. 26 where we stopped at the check station led by the lead volunteer and then the other one where Rick, the district biologist, was stationed with two student volunteers. When we arrived there Rick had gone up the road to look into an illegal kill. We got an interview with one of the volunteers and Rick brought back a button buck blacktail 20 min. later. It had been killed in a fork or better unit. I got to tape the whole sampling process and then got an interview with Rick by his ODFW truck, so we had all the footage we needed - 35 min.!

It was a productive trip. I watched the footage and it's all pretty good except the first parts of both interviews where there's wind or clothe interference with the external mic. There's one shot, about 40 seconds, that's really awesome looking - a cow elk looking at us, standing beneath a tree in the fog, and the shot is framed by the dewy branches of a decidous tree in the foreground. The colors are all subdued - it's definitely a keeper for our video.

Well, I could rant about my huge-ass ecology lecture and the non-interactive teaching style and the fact that all the tests measure is a student's ability to learn from the textbook and memorize facts by pounding them into the brain for the sole purpose of pulling a good grade, but I'll not.
It's nearly Halloween! I broke out the candy corn and mello-creme pumpkins today. Oh, and in other news, I believe I'm slightly intolerant of lactose.