Wild (snow)Goose Chase
So on Saturday, I volunteered with the Edmonton Nature Club (ENC)for the annual Snowgoose chase - they organize a number of buses for low income children and families to head out looking for migrating snow geese about an hour east of the city (as well as several buses for paying residents of Edmonton, $30 I think). Theres a town near the migration path locations, so they arrange for exhibits in the Town Hall (where everyone gets a packed lunch), and have local wildlife guides lead the buses to the flocks etc. I thought it was going to be a great day, but ultimately, a few disasters leave me neutal at best about the whole experience.
First off, the ENC turned me off a bit at our volunteer meeting last week - its in a somewhat obscure place. I meet up with another girl in the parking lot, and we walk all around the building looking for an open entrance. We find one, and a security guard buzzes us into the building. We ask where we are going for the ENC Snowgoose Chase Volunteer Meeting, and he has no idea, but knows there are 2 groups in rooms for meetings from 6:30-10:30, and we should check those. Now our meeting was to start at 7pm, not 6:30, and had no business going until 10:30, but fine - we'll check anyways. The first room has 2 people in it and they have some big blueprint thing on the table and clearly is not the right place. Up the hall a bit, is a room that looks like it could be the place - people sitting around a table, various boxes of stuff around. So we walk in, and I ask "Is this the Volunteer meeting for the Snowgoose chase?" to which we get blankstared for at least 30 seconds when a dubious looking man says "No, were planning for the jazz festival, youre in the wrong spot." The girl Im with offers an apology and asks if they know where we need to go, and they dont, so we wander back out into the hallways. 5-10 minutes later, a lady arrives, and she has some ENC crap with her, so we figure she knows what shes doing and ask her if she knows where were supposed to be. She says she thinks the room up the hall is it - we explain how we already checked there and its not the right room. She makes a phone call, and then informs us that it is the right room, and they must have been playing a joke on us. WTF - this is not a funny joke. Neither of us had ever met anyone from ENC, NO ONE responded at all or snickered or seemed at all welcoming - perhaps giving us a hint that they werent serious, there was NOTHING in or near the room indicating who the group was or where volunteers were supposed to go, and no one came to "get" us when we left, convinced of their ruse. So basically, therye a bunch of clique-based exclusionary assholes who resented the fact that they needed to recruit additional volunteers to help them out. Whatever, I didnt start writing this to rant about the crap at the volunteer meeting (and oh, there was more, including how most of ENC does not have cell phones, so theres no way for anyone to communicate with eachother except through the cell phones of us nice volunteers. Yeah. Great.
In any case, come Saturday morning, it is freezing. It is -8, windy, rainy, and the daytime high of 8 isnt supposed to arrive until 4pm, when we should be getting back to Edmonton. We load up with kids and head out - finding out that we are NOT allowed to give the kids snacks/drinks on the bus due to choking hazards, even though we were specifically told by ENC to "make the time on the bus pass" with snacks etc. We make it to our first stop - the Ministik Bird Sanctuary, which is really a large parcel of treed land that AB has protected from being farmed. There is no real entrance, there is no signage, there are no washroom facilities, no trails (a muddy path like thing that was clearly last used by a quad), and most importantly, no birds. Needless to say, within 15 minutes of our walk at Ministik, the first kid started crying with coldness. Luckily, her mom was with her so picked her up, shared her sweater etc. Thing is, within 5 minutes, next to everyone is complaining, cold, wanting to go back to the bus. Which is fine, except we cant leave for an hour - the schedules are all planned so we dont end up with an excess of kids all at one spot. So everyone goes back to the bus, and we discuss warming up and then taking another walk along this water body there that had a beaver lodge and a couple of dams etc. By the time weve warmed up and are ready to go out again, about 1/3 of the kids need to pee. Desperately. Remember I told you it was cold, rainy, and theres no bathroom, so that went well. Good thing I said to myself in the morning "Self, you should bring PT, TP, and kneenex" - and good thing I thought this cuz ENC certainly had not planned along these lines. Blah. Bottom line, about 8 of us go on the beaver walk and are lucky enough to find various piles of scat but thats it. Yeah, Ministik was a joy, and I left out the part about how our ENC volunteer misdirected the buses on the way as shes a map turner who forgets that she turned the map when she says she thinks we should turn left. But thats besides the point.
On the way to our next stop, where we were told by ENC that there would be porta potties, as the on-site toilet had been severely vandalized, our ENC navigator again misinstructed the bus on where to go, so our bus driver started to give "looks" in her direction. These covert stink eyes gave me pleasure throughout the rest of the day as I am certain the driver was 100% sure no one was on to him. We get there, and 3/4 of the kids need to use the washroom, but there are no porta potties, and no TP in the indeed severely vandalized toilet. Theres no door. And theres no "stall", and theres no sink or PT. We make a wall with our backs facing over the doorway etc, and one by one, everyone gets to go. PT and TP supplies starting to dwindle at this point in time, but luckily someone on our companion bus had thought similarly, and there was more to go around. Anyhow, it takes less than 15 minutes in the windy drizzle for people to want to get back on the bus again. Even though there was a sweet barred owl you could stroke. Very soft and warm. So, more bus time for our group, who are starting to get bored of our bus scavenger hunts and "I spy" games. Not that there was anything to see at this "lookout" except empty fields. At this time, we were scheduled to head into town for our packed lunch and exploration time for the exhibits in the community hall.
This is getting frustrating to type in detail as Im reliving the experience. Ok fine. Packed lunch consists of: Balonga and cheese sandwich with butter on both sides and mustard on one. Handy Snack cheese crackers, 2 fruits, and a granola bar. Not bad really. Except that some of the fruit was rotten or moldy. I took 2 separate plums away from a girl that were literally BLACK inside, finally convincing her that a banana was a better choice. But I wonder how many of those kids didnt have someone see them eating a rotten fruit and later had diarrhea or vomiting*. The exhibits in the community hall were a mixed bag. The creepy, gruff, taxidermist for example, did not go over to well with the kids. In contrast, some bug guy from the U of A had a kiddy pool of various shrimp/bug larve and spoons and magnifying glasses, so kids could catch and examine things. Sweet. The RAM brough some spiders and scorpions, the Valley zoo had 3 owls and a red tailed hawk for occasional demonstration - both of which were big hits. But then, there was a large exhibit of bird carvers. Where no one could touch anything, no one was really willing to show things to the kids, and they were trying to sell expensive carved birds (remember that this is a program for inner city children for the most part). Blah. I did buy a raffle ticket for a nice carved bird Ill give my dad for Fathers day if I win. The community hall was still the best part of the day though, as it was inside, and there was actual wildlife to see. After lunch, we had a local nature expert guide, who "knew where to go" to see Snowgeese. So, our convoy is: Him, our bus, companion bus, 2 cars, and a pickup truck.
We leave the community hall and follow him further east, when he suddently slams on his brakes and makes a right hand turn. Much to the chagrin of our poor bus driver, he didnt signal this turn until he was almost stopped and could make it, so our bus did not have time to slow down enough to make the turn (which is highway to gravel road style). The second bus makes it as he saw us try to and give up, so they all have to wait for us to turn around and come back. So the order becomes guide, companion bus, car, car, our bus, and pickup truck (who wouldnt go before us for some reason - he wanted to stop part way up that road to look at some hawk he had seen earlier).We drive a bit, and then pull over randomly on the side of the road - apparently theres a great horned owl on the nest in the area. But instead of doing a guide like thing and finding this nest before taking 2 buses of kids there, he figures he can just find it on the spot. Not. So another lengthy drive to nowhere to look at nothing. Yay. On to our next stop, the snowgoose field. We make this left hand turn and proceed very slightly when our bus driver says "I dont think we should be on this road, it seems more like a road allowance", at which point in time companion bus up the road a bit starts fishtailing and sending waves of mud around, literally is BARELY saved (by some miraculous act of their driver) from flipping over. We are about .5 kms behind. We can see SUV has made a turn onto another dirt road that dead ended on the one that is basically a mud lane that almost flipped the other bus. In any case, as you might be able to imagine, though he kept it on the road, the other bus is completely stuck in mud, and cant move. This basically ruins our afternoon, and it takes over an hour for (THANK YOU FOR HUDDERITES) the nearby hudderite colony to send over some young men with heavy equipment that managed to un stick the bus and turn it around - saving the ENC hundreds and hundreds of dollars in towing fees. Blah.
So of course now, people have to go to the bathroom again etc., but our ENC volunteer informs me that we have no bathroom break until we are back to Edmonton. I convince her and our bus driver to stop back at the Nature Centre in the main town because we dont want accidents on the hour long bus ride home. But of course, we get a message that there are Snowgeese about 15 minutes further east of where we were, so we head over there for about half an hour. So, did get to see a flock of ~1000 snowgeese, but they were just off the road so we couldnt unload the bus. Blah. One of the moms informs me that her son cannot wait, he is in pain, and must go #2 now. So his aunt takes him off the bus to find a bush or something, but when they do theres an animla looking at him so he cant go. Needless to say, he went sometime between there and the nature centre - I feel bad for his mom, but really, I blame ENC for not scheduling in bathroom stops when dealing with a busload of 6-9 year olds. In any case, we head home after that, get everyone home to the right places, and that was the end.
But I really wanted to get more out of it, and ultimately it was mostly a day on the bus for all the kids except for lunch at the community hall. They didnt have much fun, and that is sad.
First off, the ENC turned me off a bit at our volunteer meeting last week - its in a somewhat obscure place. I meet up with another girl in the parking lot, and we walk all around the building looking for an open entrance. We find one, and a security guard buzzes us into the building. We ask where we are going for the ENC Snowgoose Chase Volunteer Meeting, and he has no idea, but knows there are 2 groups in rooms for meetings from 6:30-10:30, and we should check those. Now our meeting was to start at 7pm, not 6:30, and had no business going until 10:30, but fine - we'll check anyways. The first room has 2 people in it and they have some big blueprint thing on the table and clearly is not the right place. Up the hall a bit, is a room that looks like it could be the place - people sitting around a table, various boxes of stuff around. So we walk in, and I ask "Is this the Volunteer meeting for the Snowgoose chase?" to which we get blankstared for at least 30 seconds when a dubious looking man says "No, were planning for the jazz festival, youre in the wrong spot." The girl Im with offers an apology and asks if they know where we need to go, and they dont, so we wander back out into the hallways. 5-10 minutes later, a lady arrives, and she has some ENC crap with her, so we figure she knows what shes doing and ask her if she knows where were supposed to be. She says she thinks the room up the hall is it - we explain how we already checked there and its not the right room. She makes a phone call, and then informs us that it is the right room, and they must have been playing a joke on us. WTF - this is not a funny joke. Neither of us had ever met anyone from ENC, NO ONE responded at all or snickered or seemed at all welcoming - perhaps giving us a hint that they werent serious, there was NOTHING in or near the room indicating who the group was or where volunteers were supposed to go, and no one came to "get" us when we left, convinced of their ruse. So basically, therye a bunch of clique-based exclusionary assholes who resented the fact that they needed to recruit additional volunteers to help them out. Whatever, I didnt start writing this to rant about the crap at the volunteer meeting (and oh, there was more, including how most of ENC does not have cell phones, so theres no way for anyone to communicate with eachother except through the cell phones of us nice volunteers. Yeah. Great.
In any case, come Saturday morning, it is freezing. It is -8, windy, rainy, and the daytime high of 8 isnt supposed to arrive until 4pm, when we should be getting back to Edmonton. We load up with kids and head out - finding out that we are NOT allowed to give the kids snacks/drinks on the bus due to choking hazards, even though we were specifically told by ENC to "make the time on the bus pass" with snacks etc. We make it to our first stop - the Ministik Bird Sanctuary, which is really a large parcel of treed land that AB has protected from being farmed. There is no real entrance, there is no signage, there are no washroom facilities, no trails (a muddy path like thing that was clearly last used by a quad), and most importantly, no birds. Needless to say, within 15 minutes of our walk at Ministik, the first kid started crying with coldness. Luckily, her mom was with her so picked her up, shared her sweater etc. Thing is, within 5 minutes, next to everyone is complaining, cold, wanting to go back to the bus. Which is fine, except we cant leave for an hour - the schedules are all planned so we dont end up with an excess of kids all at one spot. So everyone goes back to the bus, and we discuss warming up and then taking another walk along this water body there that had a beaver lodge and a couple of dams etc. By the time weve warmed up and are ready to go out again, about 1/3 of the kids need to pee. Desperately. Remember I told you it was cold, rainy, and theres no bathroom, so that went well. Good thing I said to myself in the morning "Self, you should bring PT, TP, and kneenex" - and good thing I thought this cuz ENC certainly had not planned along these lines. Blah. Bottom line, about 8 of us go on the beaver walk and are lucky enough to find various piles of scat but thats it. Yeah, Ministik was a joy, and I left out the part about how our ENC volunteer misdirected the buses on the way as shes a map turner who forgets that she turned the map when she says she thinks we should turn left. But thats besides the point.
On the way to our next stop, where we were told by ENC that there would be porta potties, as the on-site toilet had been severely vandalized, our ENC navigator again misinstructed the bus on where to go, so our bus driver started to give "looks" in her direction. These covert stink eyes gave me pleasure throughout the rest of the day as I am certain the driver was 100% sure no one was on to him. We get there, and 3/4 of the kids need to use the washroom, but there are no porta potties, and no TP in the indeed severely vandalized toilet. Theres no door. And theres no "stall", and theres no sink or PT. We make a wall with our backs facing over the doorway etc, and one by one, everyone gets to go. PT and TP supplies starting to dwindle at this point in time, but luckily someone on our companion bus had thought similarly, and there was more to go around. Anyhow, it takes less than 15 minutes in the windy drizzle for people to want to get back on the bus again. Even though there was a sweet barred owl you could stroke. Very soft and warm. So, more bus time for our group, who are starting to get bored of our bus scavenger hunts and "I spy" games. Not that there was anything to see at this "lookout" except empty fields. At this time, we were scheduled to head into town for our packed lunch and exploration time for the exhibits in the community hall.
This is getting frustrating to type in detail as Im reliving the experience. Ok fine. Packed lunch consists of: Balonga and cheese sandwich with butter on both sides and mustard on one. Handy Snack cheese crackers, 2 fruits, and a granola bar. Not bad really. Except that some of the fruit was rotten or moldy. I took 2 separate plums away from a girl that were literally BLACK inside, finally convincing her that a banana was a better choice. But I wonder how many of those kids didnt have someone see them eating a rotten fruit and later had diarrhea or vomiting*. The exhibits in the community hall were a mixed bag. The creepy, gruff, taxidermist for example, did not go over to well with the kids. In contrast, some bug guy from the U of A had a kiddy pool of various shrimp/bug larve and spoons and magnifying glasses, so kids could catch and examine things. Sweet. The RAM brough some spiders and scorpions, the Valley zoo had 3 owls and a red tailed hawk for occasional demonstration - both of which were big hits. But then, there was a large exhibit of bird carvers. Where no one could touch anything, no one was really willing to show things to the kids, and they were trying to sell expensive carved birds (remember that this is a program for inner city children for the most part). Blah. I did buy a raffle ticket for a nice carved bird Ill give my dad for Fathers day if I win. The community hall was still the best part of the day though, as it was inside, and there was actual wildlife to see. After lunch, we had a local nature expert guide, who "knew where to go" to see Snowgeese. So, our convoy is: Him, our bus, companion bus, 2 cars, and a pickup truck.
We leave the community hall and follow him further east, when he suddently slams on his brakes and makes a right hand turn. Much to the chagrin of our poor bus driver, he didnt signal this turn until he was almost stopped and could make it, so our bus did not have time to slow down enough to make the turn (which is highway to gravel road style). The second bus makes it as he saw us try to and give up, so they all have to wait for us to turn around and come back. So the order becomes guide, companion bus, car, car, our bus, and pickup truck (who wouldnt go before us for some reason - he wanted to stop part way up that road to look at some hawk he had seen earlier).We drive a bit, and then pull over randomly on the side of the road - apparently theres a great horned owl on the nest in the area. But instead of doing a guide like thing and finding this nest before taking 2 buses of kids there, he figures he can just find it on the spot. Not. So another lengthy drive to nowhere to look at nothing. Yay. On to our next stop, the snowgoose field. We make this left hand turn and proceed very slightly when our bus driver says "I dont think we should be on this road, it seems more like a road allowance", at which point in time companion bus up the road a bit starts fishtailing and sending waves of mud around, literally is BARELY saved (by some miraculous act of their driver) from flipping over. We are about .5 kms behind. We can see SUV has made a turn onto another dirt road that dead ended on the one that is basically a mud lane that almost flipped the other bus. In any case, as you might be able to imagine, though he kept it on the road, the other bus is completely stuck in mud, and cant move. This basically ruins our afternoon, and it takes over an hour for (THANK YOU FOR HUDDERITES) the nearby hudderite colony to send over some young men with heavy equipment that managed to un stick the bus and turn it around - saving the ENC hundreds and hundreds of dollars in towing fees. Blah.
So of course now, people have to go to the bathroom again etc., but our ENC volunteer informs me that we have no bathroom break until we are back to Edmonton. I convince her and our bus driver to stop back at the Nature Centre in the main town because we dont want accidents on the hour long bus ride home. But of course, we get a message that there are Snowgeese about 15 minutes further east of where we were, so we head over there for about half an hour. So, did get to see a flock of ~1000 snowgeese, but they were just off the road so we couldnt unload the bus. Blah. One of the moms informs me that her son cannot wait, he is in pain, and must go #2 now. So his aunt takes him off the bus to find a bush or something, but when they do theres an animla looking at him so he cant go. Needless to say, he went sometime between there and the nature centre - I feel bad for his mom, but really, I blame ENC for not scheduling in bathroom stops when dealing with a busload of 6-9 year olds. In any case, we head home after that, get everyone home to the right places, and that was the end.
But I really wanted to get more out of it, and ultimately it was mostly a day on the bus for all the kids except for lunch at the community hall. They didnt have much fun, and that is sad.