Rain Brings Lazy Day

I was very tired again this morning, though I think I'm starting to adjust.  Last night while I was writing the blog, one of the head GADNR guys, Ed, showed up to introduce himself.  It was after 10PM.  Recalling the conversation now, I really don't know why he decided to stop by, especially so late.  So this morning I was functioning on about 4 hours of sleep.  But Kate made a real breakfast today, and after driving the half hour ride to the to the the south end, I was awake enough.  The morning ride is a real trip, we have to navigate about six miles of dirt road that varies in quality from a little bumpy, to downright ridiculous.  The Mule doesn't have high beams, and we need to wear our sunglasses or risk bugs in the eyes.  Kate is still healing from a corneal abrasion she received from a large bug a couple days ago.  My favorite part of the ride is Hell Hole Road (the first half).  There the road is pretty smooth, but has plenty of twists and turns that make driving it a lot of fun.  With the low light conditions, I often overshoot my headlights and only realize where the road is going at the last second.  It's a a lot like the video game Mario Kart.  Other places the road is no fun at all.  The hogs root up parts of it, or roots from trees cross over it making the ride extremely bumpy, often enough to bounce things out of the back, spill our morning tea, and provide a literal pain in the ass.  Still, everything considered, driving on Ossabaw sure beats a commute down some traffic jammed highway.

Once we got to the south beaches Kate took the kayak trip to South Middle and I drove the Mule on South Beach.  Both patrols were pretty uneventful save for the Bald Eagle sightings, and a few rescued horseshoe crabs.  It was low tide when we got on the beach, which made the trip to South Beach easy for me.  When the tide is low, I can drive the short route onto the beach, avoiding a really nasty road that should doesn't even deserve to be called a road.  This apposed to high tide, when a bone yard divides the South Beach, and the long twisty path through the woods must be used to get south of it.  So since it was low tide, I spent a few extra minutes at the south tip of the island collecting whelks that are sitting in fresh water and will soon become our second go at "conch" fritters.  I expect them to be better this time around, since the first was a learning experience..."first pancake" type of thing.

After the south beaches we take Mule Run road up to Bradley Road and onto North (Bradley) Beach.  I took the little kayak to North Middle and did the walk (5.2km).  I was beat at the end, the morning drive that woke me had worn off, and the lack of sleep finally caught back up.  We both had expected Kate to find a crawl on North Beach, but she didn't, and part of me was happy to be able to go back home so early.  I was back in bed by 10AM for a little nap.

When I woke up I found Kate had gone off to do laundry at the other house in our new, green, Georgia DNR pickup.  It's pretty nice to have a truck.  It has some fun stickers on it, a working radio, A/C that only works on high, and a VHF.  It also has one tire (right front) that is bigger than all the rest.  I'm wondering what that will do to the suspension over time, but hey, we're happy to have it.  It was starting to rain then, so I continued my laziness and watched some episodes of Survivor on the laptop.  Kate came back and joined me between a few more loads of laundry and a grilled cheese and tomato lunch.

Around 4:00 in the afternoon, we headed over to see the horses.  We've run out of feed for them, so we could only give them corn and apple biscuits.  They seemed happy to have that, and we'll hopefully have more feed for them soon.  Now don't think they underfed or anything.  These horses have thousands of acres of pasture to split between the three of them and eight donkeys.  They've only just begun to be fed horse food, I suppose to supplement their diets as they are all getting quite old.  Cela, the oldest, is 25 or more.

Then we went over to Andy's and fed his animals again.  His cats are sweet.  Panter, a skittish black one, and a long haired grey one that I can't remember the name of.  His dogs are also sweet, but a pain.  They get very excited, and one of them jumps, pees, and steps on feet.  The parakeets got a treat of millet that I found mixed in with their food and were quite excited to have it.

We ran into some people at the club house as we were headed home.  It turned out to be Brad and Tim, two of DNR's bird guys, with a crew working on a TV show about birds.  They invited us to stop over for dinner, and after returning home and getting cleaned up, we headed back over.  That building is amazing, it is one of the original prefabricated homes.  I believe it was sold as a build-it-yourself kit from Sears and Roebuck.   We hope to see more of it soon.  There are great pictures from the island on the walls, a bookcase stocked with wildlife and archeology books, along with information on the feral hog program and more.  We even ran into Ms. West as we arrived.  She was in her car, being driven by her great niece, with her niece riding in the back.  They had Toby the dog with them.  I'm glad Kate finally got to meet her, and we really hope to see her much more.  She must be a wealth of information and have so many stories to share.

After a pasta dinner we walked down to the dock to watch the guys start setting up some equipment they will use tomorrow to catch some birds and band them (to track their migration).  If we finish our patrol early, we'll be hooking up with them again to learn more and to watch, and hopefully share a few beers and stories.  It was getting late so we headed home.  At the clubhouse, and on the ride home, we realized the entire island's power was out.  It had been acting funny earlier in the day, but now it was just plain off.  We lit some candles at home and got ready for bed.  I was just about to give up on the blog for today and settle down when it came back on.  So here you have it, another day on Ossabaw on the books.