Sunday, 6/1

- Took the Girl Scouts out for a canoe ride up to the Patuxent. Someone had to stay back in the VC (where the power was out) and tell visitors they couldn't use the bathroom. That person was me, and the visitors were a never ending parade of cyclists in spandex.

- Animal sightings: Painted turtle, swimming in the pond behind the VC. Lots of bullfrogs, but they wouldn't hold still for a picture... every time I walked by they would go "BREEEP!" loudly and jump into the pond with a loud splash. I tried sitting on the bridge and waiting for one to poke its head out, but they're too smart for me.
Painted Turtle:


- Also saw a brown thrasher attacking a black rat snake! This is apparently the national crest of Mexico (sort of), and it was the sign that it was time to found a country.

The seal of Mexico:

Saturday, 5/31

- This morning, Morgan got locked out on the balcony for several hours. Bill came all the way over from Cedarville to let her in, and was annoyed to find out that I actually had been in the Visitor's Center for the last 20 minutes... Oops. I just hadn't gotten around to figuring out where the heck Morgan was, because:

- A woman came in this morning to report a 6 foot long snake hanging out near Windmill Pond. She said it was a "Water Moccasin" but we don't actually, you know, have any of those in Maryland, so I spent my first 20 minutes at work trying to figure out what this lady had seen (results: totally inconclusive, aside from "not a copperhead").

- Animal sightings: 2 bullfrogs in the small pond behind the VC

- At some point in the day it began to hail bits of hail the size of bottle caps, and then there was a very exciting thunder storm centered approximately over Merkle Pond. I learned what herons do in the rain, which is stand still in the middle of a pond, look miserable, and get very wet. Oh, and then the power went out. And stayed out until mid-day Monday.

- In the evening, we hosted a campfire program for Girl Scouts. They were adorable.

Friday, 5/30

- Since both of the big chainsaws are out of commision, we tried for the third time to clear the two downed trees on the upper loop of the Poplar Springs trail. We used the arborist's saw, a tiny little baby chainsaw meant for taking with you as you climb up trees. We got the thing started (not easily) and then the damn thing was too dull to cut through the tree (and of course we don't have any way of sharpening the blade at Merkle). It smoked like crazy, and left burn marks on the wood. So, Tara and Kristin and I sawed the trees with hand saws, lopped anything smaller than our wrists, and wailed on them like crazy-people with an axe. Mission accomplished.

- Took the red-eared slider out for a walk. It was pretty chill.