A day off?!?!?!?
Well, the past couple of days have been a little hectic, despite the fact that everyone seems to think we're on days-off!!!
Thursday we checked the phone messages for both bear biologists we are covering while we're down. There was a call for a dead black bear (hit by car) south of Bigfork, Montana...where the bear was was actually on Indian Reservation land, which is out of our juristiction...so we called to see if they wanted us to get it or them...and they told us to go ahead and pick it up...so, down we went to go get the bear...well, we pulled up and this bear was HUGE!!!!!!!!!! There was NO WAY D and I could lift it into the pickup truck bed ourselves...they needed a truck with a winch...this bear was easily 350-400 pounds!!! A HUGE black bear! Plus, its head and paws had been cut off...and, while I tried to make phone calls to transfer the responsibility, D rolled the bear over and found the bullet hole...this bear wasn't hit by a car. Well, the tribe told us to leave the bear and sent their wardens up to take care of it...I told them, "Make sure it's someone with a winch! This guy is HUGE!"
So, that took up a good three hours of our day after driving down and spending the time to make calls on barely-there cell coverage...and the drive back up to Kalispell...we then took our state rig in to get cleaned (poor car wash guys)...then went to HQ, picked up a replacement truck that we'll work out of for a couple of weeks...then went to Borders and got books to occupy our time in the Palace...then I went to get stocked up on groceries and D went to go meet with the DNA crew to teach them how their new cameras worked.
At home I turned into Mom...had to do laundry and feed Tim and Carol's kids and read with Quia. D came home and we listened to problem bear calls and there was one that needed to be dealt with ASAP, so D ran a trap out to the house while I turned into Mom again and did Quia's hair for her because she had her school pictures the next day.
We finally got to bed.
Friday morning (this morning) we received a call at 6:45 AM from the house where D set the trap and there wasn't a bear in the trap...phew...because D and I had to drive our state truck to Helena and to have a bear in a trap would just be a pain. The kids got off to school, D and I checked email and started getting ready for the drive...7:15 AM the woman called again to tell us that now there was a bear in the trap...sigh.
D went and picked it up while I continued getting ready for the trip to Helena...it was a black bear that he pulled up with (thank goodness!)...so we parked it in Tim's garage, gave it water and off we went to Helena...we called Tim and told him that there would be a black bear in a trap in his garage when he got home...and that we could process it when we got back. The bear was very aggressive in the trap when we first put her in the garage...here's picture of her giving us the stink-eye! She's chomping her jaw in this picture, which is why she looks like her nose is a mile long:
The drive to Helena was uneventful and pretty...four hour drive each way...I've been to Helena a number of times before for other FWP business and there's this great chocolate shop there they I always visit when I go...so, after dropping the truck off (with a bit of a heavy heart as I really liked our state rig...never failed in the trickiest situations) we went to grab a bit for lunch and went to the chocolate shop and got some goodies for the drive home. Then...we headed home!
I've been exhausted all day as I think I'm working on a cold (everyone's got one) and I didn't sleep well at all last night and D and I were kinda geared up for a nice dinner together at a nice restaurant...assuming, of course, that Tim had processed the black bear without us. We just wanted a little bit of non-work, non-kid, non-dog time...a nice romantic and CLEAN place to have a lovely meal together. But, when we got home, Tim and Carol had only been home for a short time (we thought they were getting home in the early afternoon)...it was 6 PM when we rolled in...so...we had to drug and process the bear...and, of course...in the middle of getting ready and me feeling sick and tired and sad that I wasn't going to get my lovely, quiet dinner with my hubby...it starts pouring rain. Luckily the bear was in the garage, so we stayed pretty dry dealing with her. She had quieted down by this time (11 hours in a culvert trap will do that to a bear) and we tried to figure out her sex before having to drug her(if it was a male, we wouldn't have to drug it, but if it as a female, we would have to in order to figure out if she was lactating)...this entailed us sticking metal poles into the trap to try and move hair away from her delicate areas and I was expecting her to be as aggressive as she was earlier...but bless her little heart...she would just put a paw on the pole and push it to the ground...no aggression, nothing...she was gentle in her pushing the poles down...and, by this time, she was just trembling with fear...
We, at that point, couldn't really tell her sex, although we were leaning toward female just because she looked so feminine. Fall bears have a big layer of fat on them...so it took about 4 dosings from me to get enough drug into her for her to go all of the way down. Sure enough...she was a she...luckily not lactating, so we didn't have to worry about cubs having been left behind when she was trapped. She was a lovely brown black bear with a white spot on her chest...in wonderful condition...down right fat...we put a tag in her ear, checked her temperature...and put her back in the trap to wake up.
We'll release her tomorrow...unless Tim does the release so we can get back up to re-set our snares and start our trapline again.
D and I are exhausted...we haven't had a day off, yet...and we're about to head back up to the field...not that it's grueling work (well, that last few days have been, working three jobs at once and having to toss in a trip to Helena as well)...but every so often I'd love the chance to sleep in!!!
I think it might be bad, us staying up at the Palace...we get so much time in a lovely place in lovely surroundings and it's just the two of us with our dogs...when we come down to Columbia Falls and Kalispell, we get so sick of people so quickly and are so eager to get back up to our little haven...and it's not like Kalispell is a HUGE place!!! The more time we spend in solitude, the more withdrawn from people we get...we could so easily be hermits!!!!!
Thursday we checked the phone messages for both bear biologists we are covering while we're down. There was a call for a dead black bear (hit by car) south of Bigfork, Montana...where the bear was was actually on Indian Reservation land, which is out of our juristiction...so we called to see if they wanted us to get it or them...and they told us to go ahead and pick it up...so, down we went to go get the bear...well, we pulled up and this bear was HUGE!!!!!!!!!! There was NO WAY D and I could lift it into the pickup truck bed ourselves...they needed a truck with a winch...this bear was easily 350-400 pounds!!! A HUGE black bear! Plus, its head and paws had been cut off...and, while I tried to make phone calls to transfer the responsibility, D rolled the bear over and found the bullet hole...this bear wasn't hit by a car. Well, the tribe told us to leave the bear and sent their wardens up to take care of it...I told them, "Make sure it's someone with a winch! This guy is HUGE!"
So, that took up a good three hours of our day after driving down and spending the time to make calls on barely-there cell coverage...and the drive back up to Kalispell...we then took our state rig in to get cleaned (poor car wash guys)...then went to HQ, picked up a replacement truck that we'll work out of for a couple of weeks...then went to Borders and got books to occupy our time in the Palace...then I went to get stocked up on groceries and D went to go meet with the DNA crew to teach them how their new cameras worked.
At home I turned into Mom...had to do laundry and feed Tim and Carol's kids and read with Quia. D came home and we listened to problem bear calls and there was one that needed to be dealt with ASAP, so D ran a trap out to the house while I turned into Mom again and did Quia's hair for her because she had her school pictures the next day.
We finally got to bed.
Friday morning (this morning) we received a call at 6:45 AM from the house where D set the trap and there wasn't a bear in the trap...phew...because D and I had to drive our state truck to Helena and to have a bear in a trap would just be a pain. The kids got off to school, D and I checked email and started getting ready for the drive...7:15 AM the woman called again to tell us that now there was a bear in the trap...sigh.
D went and picked it up while I continued getting ready for the trip to Helena...it was a black bear that he pulled up with (thank goodness!)...so we parked it in Tim's garage, gave it water and off we went to Helena...we called Tim and told him that there would be a black bear in a trap in his garage when he got home...and that we could process it when we got back. The bear was very aggressive in the trap when we first put her in the garage...here's picture of her giving us the stink-eye! She's chomping her jaw in this picture, which is why she looks like her nose is a mile long:
The drive to Helena was uneventful and pretty...four hour drive each way...I've been to Helena a number of times before for other FWP business and there's this great chocolate shop there they I always visit when I go...so, after dropping the truck off (with a bit of a heavy heart as I really liked our state rig...never failed in the trickiest situations) we went to grab a bit for lunch and went to the chocolate shop and got some goodies for the drive home. Then...we headed home!
I've been exhausted all day as I think I'm working on a cold (everyone's got one) and I didn't sleep well at all last night and D and I were kinda geared up for a nice dinner together at a nice restaurant...assuming, of course, that Tim had processed the black bear without us. We just wanted a little bit of non-work, non-kid, non-dog time...a nice romantic and CLEAN place to have a lovely meal together. But, when we got home, Tim and Carol had only been home for a short time (we thought they were getting home in the early afternoon)...it was 6 PM when we rolled in...so...we had to drug and process the bear...and, of course...in the middle of getting ready and me feeling sick and tired and sad that I wasn't going to get my lovely, quiet dinner with my hubby...it starts pouring rain. Luckily the bear was in the garage, so we stayed pretty dry dealing with her. She had quieted down by this time (11 hours in a culvert trap will do that to a bear) and we tried to figure out her sex before having to drug her(if it was a male, we wouldn't have to drug it, but if it as a female, we would have to in order to figure out if she was lactating)...this entailed us sticking metal poles into the trap to try and move hair away from her delicate areas and I was expecting her to be as aggressive as she was earlier...but bless her little heart...she would just put a paw on the pole and push it to the ground...no aggression, nothing...she was gentle in her pushing the poles down...and, by this time, she was just trembling with fear...
We, at that point, couldn't really tell her sex, although we were leaning toward female just because she looked so feminine. Fall bears have a big layer of fat on them...so it took about 4 dosings from me to get enough drug into her for her to go all of the way down. Sure enough...she was a she...luckily not lactating, so we didn't have to worry about cubs having been left behind when she was trapped. She was a lovely brown black bear with a white spot on her chest...in wonderful condition...down right fat...we put a tag in her ear, checked her temperature...and put her back in the trap to wake up.
We'll release her tomorrow...unless Tim does the release so we can get back up to re-set our snares and start our trapline again.
D and I are exhausted...we haven't had a day off, yet...and we're about to head back up to the field...not that it's grueling work (well, that last few days have been, working three jobs at once and having to toss in a trip to Helena as well)...but every so often I'd love the chance to sleep in!!!
I think it might be bad, us staying up at the Palace...we get so much time in a lovely place in lovely surroundings and it's just the two of us with our dogs...when we come down to Columbia Falls and Kalispell, we get so sick of people so quickly and are so eager to get back up to our little haven...and it's not like Kalispell is a HUGE place!!! The more time we spend in solitude, the more withdrawn from people we get...we could so easily be hermits!!!!!