Tag Archives: interns

Harvest Time At The Institute

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It’s harvest time at The Institute and like any other gigantic, inorganic, semi-corrupt, uncaring mega-agriculture corporation we have to get the crops in. We’re not like that grasshopper you hear about that fiddled away the summer and now has nothing to show for it. We’re like the ants, those ones from South America someplace that voraciously consume everything in their path and what they can’t eat they pack away in their ant warehouses and storage units, and those small freighters off-shore, even going so far as stuffing it in an ant Tuff shed here and there.

We’ve been asked “Why do you have so many unpaid interns hanging around The Institute?”. Because its times like this when we need them, that and we don’t usually let them go once they’ve signed our work agreement and we have confiscated their car keys. We send them off into the fields to work, to harvest the bounty our land has produced. Like these red things in the photo above. We don’t know what they are, or if they taste good, or even whether they’re healthy or deadly or what ever, but nature grew them so that’s what we’re going to harvest. We have tons of them growing down along the dry stream bed in the arboretum so it’s easy to harvest them and we don’t lose many interns because they can find their way back simply by following the creek up hill.

It’s a welcome sight to see the long lines of interns, their huge baskets filled to the brim with these red things, singing songs of the working classes, stamping their feet rhythmically on the narrow snake-infested trails, their trump lines making indentations in their foreheads from the back-breaking weight of their overfilled baskets, perspiring as they labor up the 42% grade to the red thing dumping site. It’s a good feeling to know we can provide for our people. We know that the labor will pay off when we need something to feed them over the winter. Our staff of nutritionists gleaned from fast food restaurants all over the world tell us that they can make a delicious paste of some kind that can be smeared on other edible produce and that will sustain the bulk of the interns unless it gets too cold. That ‘s also taking into account of course, that the red things are not poisonous.

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We also harvest another crop that grows wild on our boulders and smaller rocks. It is called lichen and it is chock full of healthy stuff like riboflavin’s, free radicals, imprisoned radicals, natural chemicals, riboflavin’s, yellow dye number 5, some orange stuff you have to scrape off before you can eat it, certain minerals and vitamin C and D and R.

Lichen is difficult to harvest as the boulders and smaller rocks have to be rolled up the incline to the lichen harvesting place where other interns whose knees are shot from harvesting the Red Things, scrape it off the boulders with old putty knives. Being that The Institute believes in sustainability and the well being of Mother Earth, the boulders have to be rolled back to their original positions so the seeds of the next harvest can be planted. Rolling a 7 or  8 ton boulder back down the hill without anyone getting injured or killed dead on the spot is a tricky business.

Luckily we have staff brought on from various County Rehabilitation programs in Georgia, Alabama and Wisconsin, that previously supervised the work crews that performed work similar to our lichen harvesting procedures along various southern roadsides. We value their experience and knowledge of how to handle unwilling workers, plus it’s nice to see how the German Shepherds keep everyone closely clustered around the boulder as they lower it.

The experience gleaned from their Work and Not Release program that has been so effective for them down there has been invaluable. These officers overseers guards  work facilitators are always ready to offer advice and moral support. It goes without saying that we do not condone the use of chains or other manacles and we offer them breaks several times a week. The Institute has placed the highest regard for safety for our volunteer workers and will continue to do so right down to the last one.

We have asked our nutritionists if the red paste they are creating might be combined with the lichen for a more well-balanced foodstuff. They said it could and they have found other uses for it as well. It makes an incredible chinking material as the first few volunteers who have consumed it state they have not had use of their digestive tract since eating it four weeks ago. Anything that will clog a system like that will keep the sub-zero wind from blasting through the logs of the bunkhouses. And apparently it’s waterproof. Another benefit.

Got to run just got word from the overseers that something happened to twenty or thirty of the interns down near the lichen field. Rope probably broke on that big boulder they were trying to lower.

Blood Moon Eclipse

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On September 27 the Institute’s observatory began to record a serious anomaly with the moon. We had noticed that the moon had started getting bigger and rounder than it usually did but that wasn’t all that unnerving as we had seen it do that once before. It was several years ago and one of our observatory personnel came screeching into the Director’s office saying the moon was going to explode because it was getting bigger and we should all run for our lives. He dove under the settee and it took all manner of prodding and poking with the cattle prod the Director keeps near his desk kept just for situations like this.

It turned out that it was nothing at all to be alarmed about. Apparently one of our observatory interns read somewhere that the moon would occasionally do this. Get all big and swollen-like and all we had to do was wait a few days and all that swelling and bloating would go down. The moon apparently embarrassed by its behavior began to shrink until it was just a pale sliver of itself and the potential catastrophe was averted. We were relieved to say the least and made copious notes in our Observatories Moon book. This is what is called “A Natural Phenomenon” by scientists and other guys and it has added hugely to the sum total of our knowledge of the moon and other celestial bodies.

This was a different kettle of moonbeams this time though. Rumors and mutinous comments about this being a “Blood” moon began to spread quickly through the interns camp and soon you couldn’t find a chicken left alive as they huddled around their smoky campfires and chanted, casting fearful looks towards the sky. When there was no apparent change in the moons behavior, in fact it was getting worse, darkening and a strange shadow began appearing across its blood red face, that they realized that the sacrifices they were making were not big enough. That’s when they really flew into a frenzy and began looking at the Staff hoping to find one alone and unarmed. We had to call all our critical staff back to the main Institute’s center and activate the mine field around the building. A few Bouncing Betty’s and they pulled back. We lost three good oxen and a mule but they didn’t breach the walls of the main hall. It was a long night fraught with terror as the weaker among us wept with fear, but our defenses held and morning came none too soon.

When it was finally concluded that this was a harmless natural event although startling in its intensity, we immediately began an instructional program to educate the interns. A few beatings, some sleep deprivation, waterboarding for the more recalcitrant ones who still had the blood lust in their eyes and we were almost back to normal. One of our Observatoryologists who watches Fox news constantly said that although this event was uncommon it was not rare and we should all just calm the hell down and worry about something important, like our upcoming national elections. Now that is really freaky.

If you look at the image above, it’s scary for sure, being all over red like that, but it’s not disastrous, except for the oxen and the mule and the eight interns that charged the minefield. They found it pretty darn scary. It’s a natural event sent to us by Mother Nature to instruct us. We added a huge store of knowledge both to our Moon book and to our HR manual in how to handle employees during a crisis. The moral I guess, is don’t like totally freak just because it looks like the end of the world. Save that energy for something important.

Monday Morning Blues

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This morning feels like Monday Morning Blues. After 10 days of standing out in the searing heat under a white-hot sun, photographing the Greeley Stampede rodeo, it was a relief to be back home and find The Institute grounds shrouded in a cool mist this morning. The temp up at the weather station located in the east tower is 58° as the dawn approaches and the dew point was enough to make your tennis shoes wet when you walked out to check on how the interns were faring.

There were a few smoldering fires in front of several of the tents down in tent city, or as everyone calls it, Internville, in the meadow below, so it looks like they may be up soon getting ready for the days activities but right now it’s pretty quiet. Even the bears are silent as they wander through the small tent city looking for something to eat.

Sometimes you need the gentle calmness of a day like this to change your perspective and allow you to decompress, a time kind of like Luke had, to get his mind right. That’s what makes The Institute special. It provides you with what ever you need. If you’re wound tight and need to reach your inner zen you can do that here. If you need the opposite and have to rev up so you can go out and do good things then that can be found here also.

A good way to get every one pointed in the same direction and up to speed is set the interns to locating and removing the rattlesnake population in the area. That always sets the tone for the day. It’s enjoyable to see them spread out in a long line beating the grass with rattlesnake whippy sticks and hear the call of “There it is! It’s a big one. Get the snake grabber over here before it gets away. OH, man it bit me!” and the gentle chuckles from the other interns who haven’t been bitten yet.

But the best times are when it’s quiet like this and the day hasn’t started yet. The birds are making their first morning noises. The tin roofs are making the creaking groaning sounds they make when there’s been a drastic temperature change, expanding and contracting to their own rhythm. There’s so much dew on the roof that you can hear it running in the rain gutters and dripping into the interns water collection barrel. As Director I walk around the deck in the morning, looking at the grounds, checking to see if any of the interns have escaped, deciding what monumental task we will choose for our next big earth-shaking project and I can almost hear the sound the mist makes as it bumps into the side of the main hall, the center of The Institute’s heart. This is what makes our time here special. Even if it is the Monday Morning Blues.

The image above is Moulton’s Barn in Grand Teton National Park. It gets the blues sometimes too.

Redtail Hawk 1 Rattlesnake 0

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As they say out here in Colorado “The mail needed picking up” and since we occasionally get financial remuneration via snail mail and we haven’t had any interns able to pass the strict bonding requirements we have here at The Institute, it fell to the Director to go and get  the mail.

Our mail box is located down the five mile dirt road that gets you up and down from the mountain top The Institute is located on, to the modern one lane highway below. On the way down the ‘hill’ you run the chance of seeing wild animals being wild, such as turkeys walking around trying not to get eaten by the coyotes, elk in both male and female forms, mule deer of course, bears, just the black ones not the big grizzlies that roam further north, foxes, the red ones, the aforementioned coyotes, Eagles mostly Goldens but once in a while a bald one will fly by, and lots of birds. Everything from songbirds to grouse and now some Chukar. Hawks, falcons, pelicans flying by to get to somewhere where there is enough water, lots of migratory birds and our favorite species the Redtail hawk.

The Redtail is the hands down favorite because it does one really neat thing. It hunts, kills, and eats rattlesnakes. Rattlesnakes are what takes the fun out of running barefoot through the tall grass. Rattlesnakes bite. We had a neighbor near us, who was minding her own business doing absolutely nothing provoking, get bit and besides costing what a small Korean car costs it made her foot swell up to the size of your standard microwave oven. And she said it hurt too. A lot.

Most people in this country don’t like rattlesnakes. I mean, there’s a few that like them but they are not the majority by any means. People who don’t like them, the rattlesnakes not the people who do like them, generally hit them with a shovel until they’re dead. It is said by those folks who do like rattlesnakes that one of the reasons we should take these rattlesnakes close to our bosoms, are of the opinion that they do good by eating rodents, therefore let’s have them hang around doing that. Others say “Nope. Don’t think so. Gonna kill ’em”.  We believe that if they, the rattlesnakes, want to act that way they should do it way, and I mean way far away from where good American taxpaying citizens hang around. So there is a difference of opinion there.

It’s amazing that the Redtail hawk sides with the shovel smacking people and kill every one of those rattlers they see. They also pass this trait on to the young Redtail hawks by bringing home the snake, often still wriggling, for their little ones to eat. We at The Institute believe this is laudable behavior and compliment the Redtail parents on their good sense whenever we chance to speak with them.

The image above, which was taken just across the highway from our mailbox, shows the Redtail parent in the act of taking the rattlesnake it has just that moment caught, to a tall telephone pole where it would begin the process of making it not alive. Then it flew it back to the nest for the young to eat. We cheered and gave it the universal thumbs up gesture of approval before returning to sorting out the bills from the junk mail, then throwing the entire mess in the dumpster. I know, you’re saying if you’re just going to throw it all in the dumpster why bother sorting it out. We sort because every once in a while there is a check in there and then we’d have to go back and do dumpster diving which is not very dignified for a Director of a major Institute like ours to be doing. Which of course brings us to, if you’re looking for nominations for the “Most Useful Bird of the Year” award we heartily recommend Nature’s helper the Redtail hawk. Remember vote now and vote often. These birds need our support.

Finalizing Our Report

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Over the last few days we have been sharing items from our semi-annual inspection report of Yellowstone National Park. Every year we have made the arduous journey from The Institute compound, I mean campus, to our favorite national park to provide the public at large a comprehensive overview of the conditions and state of the various park elements. This year was no different. We worked hard to cover every line item on our report, no matter how small or large it appeared to be, we were up at the crack of noon, trudging into the park with all of gear, sometimes doing with only three or four cups of tea and a huge but hearty breakfast, to get everything done that we needed to do that day.

As noted in our opening post the park passed its inspection with flying colors, but as in every year we have produced this report, the park has been noticeably different each year. Some years, it is the year of the wolf, where you find yourself tripping over them as they scramble to be included in every picture. Some years It is the year of the bison where they deliberately have calves in plain sight, right in front of you, even though the park is rated G. Other years it is the year of the bear, that was this year with the bears so plentiful, some were being excluded from the many pictures taken because they weren’t deemed attractive enough by the more discerning viewer, who wanted only the most photogenic bears in their view finders. I know that seems unfair, but life is unfair, and often unkind.

This year the overall atmosphere of the park was, the year it rained forever. It rained everyday, sometimes three or four times at once. It was hard on our equipment, hard on our interns who had to sleep under the Mothership due to them smelling like the dumpster out behind our favorite Italian restaurant, hard on our ability to stay focused and get our work done. Hard to figure out a way of presenting this in a way that would engender sympathy for us doing a job that most folks would kill for, and whining about a little rain. Well quite a bit of rain actually, but even so.

But in many ways it was amazing. The weather in the park although volatile, is usually incredible. Bright blue skies, huge towering clouds, intense colors, incredible blooms of flowers everywhere you looked, everything approaching perfect nearly all the time. It was a  welcome change to see the park under different conditions. To see magnificent storms blow up in moments and have rain so heavy you couldn’t make out the buffalo herd standing twenty-five yards out in the meadows. Normally placid rivers became raging torrents of water, filling their banks, turning small waterfalls into Niagara’s, then just as suddenly stopping, leaving only the sound of raindrops falling from the trees. Places where the mist and fog changed into some kind of fairyland where sound was muffled and huge pine trees would suddenly loom out of the mist as you walked through the woods. It was different but magnificent.

It seems there is change in the park, but then that’s not surprising, seeing as how there is change in the world every where we look. The image above, taken along the Firehole  river as you traveled south towards Old Faithful, represents the endless changes in the conditions at the park this year. It is just clearing after a major downpour that had everyone pulling off the road as the windshield wipers couldn’t handle the amount of water falling. The sun is trying it hardest to break through the clouds, unsuccessfully this time, but long enough to get some of that late afternoon light to shine down on the herd as it grazed. The stark trees in the foreground add a melancholy look to the image but they are just symbols of the change happening every day here in the park. Tomorrow they’ll be gone but will be replaced by saplings that are sprouting around their roots. So will some of these buffalo grazing peacefully. Wolves, impossible winters, old age, all will take its toll but if you look closely you’ll see the bright orange of this years calves. They’ll be here next time, older, bigger, ready to take their place in the herd, filling in the spots that are vacant.

Although there has been a valiant attempt to show you the many different items on our inspection report we have been able to show you only a few of them. This is primarily due to space and time constraints, and partially due to the inability of The Director who will often start a project like this only to wander away and be found staring at a bug or something. Totally oblivious of his responsibilities as the chief creator of this report. But as in many other projects we have explored here at The Institute somehow it all gets done. You may be saying to yourselves ” Wait just a darn minute here. Does Yellowstone National Park really need to be inspected twice a year. Or are you just doing this because you get off on being up there, having fun, misplacing interns, watching animals, taking pictures, meeting new people, saying ‘Hey!” to those you already know, getting goose bumps while listening to the Lamar wolf pack howl. We want to know.” To that we can only answer “You figure it out, Einstein.”

Note : To those of you tuning in late the following posts will catch you up on preceding events. There is no extra charge for this service, it is included in the cost of admission. We know you don’t want to miss a minute of our fascinating but undocumented report.

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/the-words-out/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/yellowstone-passes-inspection/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/ghosts-in-the-darkness/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/you-dont-see-that-every-day/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/now-are-the-foxes/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/into-each-park-some-rain-must-fall/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/through-the-keyhole/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/reflectivity/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/resolvability/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/terminal-cuteness/

Yellowstone Passes Inspection

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Those of you who follow the blog religiously or even non-religiously, know that we have just been on our bi-annual inspection trip of Yellowstone National park. We let you know of our plans to inspect the park in this posting http://www.bigshotsnow.com/the-words-out/ . Well we’re back and we are excited to announce that Yellowstone has passed its inspection with flying colors.

As mentioned before we went up there this year with a new research vessel, aptly named The Mothership, a newly commissioned, completely overhauled and refitted land yacht, large enough and strong enough to be able to tow our shuttle craft and haul the nearly eight dozen interns we intended to use as bait animal aggressiveness testing investigators. We had decided on a new strategy this trip which included dressing our interns up in various animal costumes, to mimic small prey and injured or helpless larger animals such as an elk calf with a damaged leg, etc. to see if the predator population in the park would act in an appropriate manner or not.

We have good news and bad news as to the success of that strategy. The good news was the predators acted in a completely predictable way when confronted with our bait animal aggressiveness testing investigators. The bad news is it resulted in a complete loss of every single one of our interns. That’s a great big oops on our part. We were hoping that at least a few of them would make it through the different testing situations but that was not to be the case. However we are able to completely verify that a wolf will always be a wolf and a bear will always be a bear.

After completing the section on our report titled “Predator population still aggressive in its pursuit of prey” we were able to check that item off as a yes and get on with the rest of the inspection. This resulted in The Director, who is of course me, having to handle a much larger work load than originally considered. (Note to self: Consider holding back some of the interns in the next inspection this fall to do all of the crap work required.) But as one who leads from the front we sucked it up and got on with all the remaining tasks involved in completing an inspection of a facility as large as Yellowstone National Park.

There are many, many areas to be checked to complete this task and over the following days we will attempt to show you the various areas and critical events which must take place to keep the park functioning at the level expected by the visiting public. Are the young being born on time? Are the thermal events turned on and operating properly? Are the predators doing their jobs? Well we can cross that one off now. We know the answer to that one. Are there the proper number of smaller activities being performed, birds doing bird stuff, plants situated in the most scenic areas, large overviews of the park like snow being on the peaks in the Lamar valley, rivers running up to their banks but not over, all the usual stuff the public doesn’t notice until it’s not there.

We can state at this time that park is functioning exactly as required. Our first function check, the one we do right before we release the interns, is to see if the Buffalo, especially the bulls, are placed strategically throughout the park and in the proper numbers. As our inspection of the park always begins through the West entrance of the park along the Madison river, it is imperative that a master bull, one of the better looking more regal appearing ones, be stationed just past Seven mile bridge, in the first major meadow but not too far from the road, so it can fulfill its duty as the official icon of the park. We checked that one off as done.

Watch this space for further reports on your very favorite national park. Tomorrow should bring something interesting.

The Word’s Out

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When we, and the we would be me, The Director of the World Famous Institute and any of the many staffers and interns we choose to bring along, attempt to slip into Yellowstone National Park for our annual inspection tour, we try to do it on the sly. We don’t want the usual Pomp And Circumstance, the parades, the cheering crowds, we want to be able to travel anonymously through out the park without everyone coming up for autographs and offers of sexual favors and incredible investment possibilities. We’re here to work.

But somehow and to this date I have never figured out how, the word gets out. No matter how carefully we tell people that we’re going back to the park and it’s like a secret, don’t tell anybody kind of thing, the animals, the park personnel, the wait staff at all the park restaurants, they all seem to know about it before we do. As a wildlife photographer I can only assume we have a mole in our organization.

Our advance scouts that we send in to get things scoped out for us have been sending back pictures and as you can see all the major players are aware of our impending arrival. It ‘s like when a restaurant gets advance notice that the health inspector is coming, you won’t find a cleaner kitchen. You could do surgery in that kitchen. Well it’s the same in the park. The wolves clean up their act, only killing the healthy good looking elk and not showing you the carcasses of all the little rabbits, voles, dead stuff off the highway and other disgusting things they eat. This hampers our ability to get the nitty-gritty on what’s really going on.

 The wolves are the smartest ones of the bunch and they post watchers around the most likely spots we’ll hit, like this one at the Cascade Creek area near Canyon. We’ve seen this guy before and he is a world-class blabbermouth. If he’s seen our scouts and you can be sure he has, he’s looking right at one, we might as well abandon any hope of getting an accurate picture of park activities. This will not keep us from making our annual inspection however. We’ll be there but this time we have a surprise in store for them. This time we’re going in disguised.

That’s right. We have created costumes for some of our intern volunteers to wear, such as a badger, a cottontail, an elk calf with a damaged leg, things that the wolves wouldn’t touch if they knew we were coming in to inspect. This will hopefully allow us to get close enough to the wolves and other predators so we can photograph them and the conditions they’re living in. Now, we’re sharing this information with you, our loyal readers, so you’re aware of how we get some of the incredible exposes, not to mention world class photos that we’re famous for, but you’ve got to keep this quiet, otherwise it is not going to work and if you’ve blabbed there’s a good chance we could lose some or even all of our interns.

OK then. That’s it. We’ll be off real soon for the Spring inspection at Yellowstone National Park and we’ll do our best to bring you first hand accounts of everything that transpires. So stay tuned and watch this space for further developments.

P.S. we are always looking for bright young volunteers to fill our intern ranks. Send name and working phone number to the Director, % The institute and please be able to write your name as we need it for the Release of Liability form our lawyers require of all new workers.