UP Trip!

    Towards the end of July, I took a trip to the upper peninsula of Michigan to visit my friend Sidney who goes to Michigan Tech. The car ride drove me a bit crazy, I think I got a bit of cabin fever and I ran out of Audiobooks on the way back down. Also, I have Sprint lack-of-cell-service so I pretty much had no GPS, but that's okay because it's one of the signs that an adventure is about to start.
    On the way up I stopped at Canyon falls in the UP and it was really cool. I love rivers and waterfalls, I don't know, maybe it's a Michigan thing because we have a shit ton of them here.
     I got to Houghton and completely had no clue where her apartment was, I had no cell service, but what do ya know I pulled into the parking lot of the library. When in doubt, find the library as you can always steal the WiFi to message people with. This principle has never lead me astray.
     The next day we drove around the Keweenaw Peninsula (Island cough cough), and we also visited the Jam Pot to buy some jelly from some very cheerful monks. They lived in a monastery up the hill and they made a peaceful living by making and selling every kind of jelly, jam, marmalade, and fruit butter you could think of. They were even wearing dark mid evil robes.
     I was however saddened to learn a couple weeks later that there were some family friends having a camp out about two miles from the monks who were alumni of Michigan Tech had a huge pyrotechnics camp out. The main event was creating a giant volcano out of the earth, building a little village on the side and filling it with thermite. These are the guys I'm told who is responsible for several M-Tech school rules such as "no launching rockets off of the school roof." They also used to have a large bonfire with magnesium infused logs on the shore of Lake Superior. A cop came by and told them that they had to put it out and so they grabbed a log, threw it into the lake, and it kept burning. They said Sidney and I should join them next year.
     We had pasties for lunch and spent the weekend climbing on rocks on the lake shore, walking along beaches, playing on sandy playgrounds, and getting bitten up by bugs. Sidney also gave me a cool tour of the campus and I was astounded that they had 3-D printers in the library just for anyone to use! The tour gave me an idea though as I found out that two hours south was Northern Michigan University, one of the three colleges in Michigan that offer Zoology as a concentration for a biology major. On my trip back down, I stopped to poke around the campus in Marquette and really liked it. I stopped by the biology department and got flyers on the classes I need to take before heading back down.
       After the stress of two internships, (granted I quit the river survey one after June), It was a wonderful weekend of exploring with a friend I haven't seen in a while. I left feeling full of love and excitement for the potentials of the future.

Intakes

     People can be crazy sometimes. Honestly, I don't think it really matters what profession you're in; if you deal with people, you deal with crazy. Often growing up we hear the phrase, "If you have nothing nice to say, don't say it." At the clinic this phrase can be adapted to, "If you are shocked into silence by what the hell someone just said, remaining silent with a pained smile is still okay." Most importantly because you must remember that everyone comes into the clinic with good intentions. For example, there was one woman who, bringing in a baby opossum, told me that last night to feed it before bringing it to us she fed it human breast milk. Then she showed me a video of the opossum lapping it from a syringe. I smiled weakly and had her fill out the intake form. Later when the assistant came in and looked at the paperwork she asked me, "I'm sorry does this for say she fed it human breast milk?" I stared at her with all seriousness, replying yes and she walked away muttering under her breath.

     Another notable intake was a juvenile opossum from a very elderly couple who had found it orphaned and had raised it like a pet. The man came in with it on his arm and told us the story of how his wife and he had become attached to the now very tame and friendly opossum. They felt bad taking him for the wild and were debating turning her in when 'a sign from the universe came.' This sign happened when the three of them (man, wife, opossum) were chilling on their porch and the opossum bolted across, caught a frog, ripped off its head and ate it. Fun fact: opossums are omnivores with thumbs just like us. They can also swim. We then told them that the opossum would be fine with us and if she was too friendly to release back into the wild that she would join our educational program opossums in the zoo. The man then wanted to go take his pet opossum on his arm on a tour of the zoo and we told him that would be a bad idea.

      

      Apparently, over the phone, a lot of people make huge species identification mistakes. For example, one person called in saying they found a bald eagle chick when it was really a tuxedo colored pidgin. A few times a year we get people calling saying they found injured golden eagles when in fact they have been either a red-tailed hawk or a chicken. So when I was there for the next golden eagle call, my supervisor rolled his eyes and said, "Just make sure it's not a duck."

      Overall, Most people come in caring very deeply for these animals that they have found and leave it in our care. I don't mean to seem condescending in this post, usually, it really is a great pick me up to know just how much some people are concerned for something so small.