Day 15: Team Blunt Machete and Team Dandelion

Day Fifteen: Team Blunt Machete and Team Dandelion

6/22/11:

On June twenty-second, I realized my exact worth as an entertainer (not so great) and was forced to own up to my own abundant nerdiness. Yelena and I were again “assisting” the bio interns, Quentin and Joe. Today, that meant trailing each of them respectively as we surveyed for noxious weeds on the burn area of Kendrick Mountain. The targets of our noxious weed survey were three invasive species: cheatgrass, butter n’ eggs, and bull thistle. These three weeds repopulate burn areas rapidly, choking out the potential growth of “better” plants and trees. Our objective was to walk this area (again at systematic distances) and to make GPS points whenever we found these species. With this data, noxious weed exterminators could neutralize these vicious and tenacious little plants and allow the area to flourish once more.

After a minor kerfuffle (“Ooooh, look, a hummingbird!”), Team Blunt Machete (Yelena and Quentin) and Team Dandelion (Joe and I) set off to combat some noxious weeds. The going was a bit rough with Team Dandelion initially heading off in the completely wrong direction. Things didn’t get easier when we realized that “pervasive” was somehow inadequate to describe an area coated with these three species. With Joe manning the GPS and absolutely no need for an extra set of eyes (the weeds were everywhere), I was relegated to the role of entertainer.

Welcome to Clare's stream of consciousness: following an extensive discussion of “Firefly,” I naturally progressed to Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, at which point Joe gave me a brief tutorial on the steam punk genre. Shortly after, we wandered into a dialogue on Hellboy and Pan’s Labyrinth, before rounding out the nerd-fest with praise for “Sherlock,” a new BBC miniseries (that you must watch!).

Somewhere in between the direct quoting and character analysis, I found a pair of shed antlers. Yup, my sole contribution to our first day of noxious weed survey (other than unbridled nerdiness) was a pair of antlers. Strapping the shed to Joe’s pack, we labored on in our weed-thwarting quest.

Those six hours of tromping and vanquishing, however, did not mark the end of our day. Nope, we still had some Mexican Spotted Owls (MSO) to entice with our hooting.

Veering up the Bill Williams Mountain road in our rig did not require any pathetic attempts from me at entertainment: the sheer falls of certain death pretty much took care of that. After toddling to the top, Roger (who had joined us for the survey) and Joe walked the mountain trail down to the Williams Ranger District, hooting merrily in the twilight.

This left Quentin, Yelena, and I with the pleasure of descending the mountain again via rig. We had four stops along the way and procedure was the same as when we’d surveyed on Kendrick Mountain: reach point, hoot (and feel absolutely ridiculous) for ten minutes, listen and watch for ten minutes, repeat at next point. We didn’t have high hopes for finding any owls, as no MSOs had been spotted on Bill Williams Mountain since the early 1990s (and yes, all the wildlife bios are a bit exasperated that we had to continue looking, but someone somewhere mandated that we did).

Despite the death road, everything progressed incredibly smoothly; the first three points being, dare I say it, quite easy to complete. Our fourth and final point, however, wasn’t about to treat us kindly.

Premonitions of general badness set in when Quentin declared the path to point four was too much trouble to find and quite cheerily took off into the undergrowth. Not wanting to lose our sprightly and intrepid leader, Yelena and I scrambled down the hill after Quentin’s bobbing headlight. To the tune of snapping twigs, we fought, half-blind, against trees, hidden stumps, and prolific shrubbery. About halfway to our point, I found myself climbing through a rather sizeable bush: that is, not under, not over, but through. At this moment, Yelena let out a disbelieving howl from somewhere in the dark behind me: “Are you serious?!”

Yes, Quentin was quite serious. Undeterred, he pushed us on to the designated point where, following some rather irritated hoots, we were greeted by a Northern Pygmy-Owl, several Flammulated Owls, and (surprise, surprise) no MSOs.

Sprawled out on a log in the unrelenting dark, I looked up at the stars through the trees and realized that I’d climb through more than a few bushes for a view like this.

Photos: 1. Burn area on Kendrick Mountain 2. Half of Team Dandelion 3. Road back to Williams Ranger District