On Sunday of last week, Budd's boss called and told him not to come to work the next day. She had been given conflicting information about putting him to work on the 30-day emergency hire basis after his seasonal position ended. She chose the information that allowed her to put him back to work, but it turned out that the other information--that he would need a new background check--was correct instead. In fact, the background check the park service did for his seasonal hire last June was only valid for six months. On Sunday, we didn't know that though, so she thought he would be off for a day or two while she straightened things out. By Monday, she learned that he would have to wait for the background check, there was no help for it, and that it would probably take until the end of the month.
Meanwhile, she also found out that my time was NOT extendable. She told me on Monday that I would be done on the 24th, but, not to be denied the last word, HR counts it 60 days on the 23rd. So I'm done Wednesday. For the first time in a year, we will both be unemployed. (Well, I was self-employed last year, and more or less still am, but not counting that.)
The kicker is that Timpanogos Cave can't put Budd back on as a seasonal until that background check is done, so we'll be hanging out here waiting, not having anywhere else in particular to go. We should find out sometime this next week where we will go first (Timpanogos Cave, Canyon de Chelly and Denver are all possibilities) when things are straightened out again. At this point all we can do is laugh.
On a more fun note, I've been invited to participate in the saguaro harvest next Friday, and if it isn't 110 degrees out I think I'll do it. I've been noticing some red at the top of the saguaros, and couldn't figure out what it was because I'm half blind. It's the fruit, which bursts but stays attached to the cactus when it's ripe. How's that for handy for the birds?
Speaking of birds, we heard some absolutely hilarious stories about birds at a going-away party for one of the park guides who is transferring. She started the fun with a story about her last day here during a previous season, a Sunday. It seems that a tourist had seen a turkey vulture on the road and stopped to see if it was hurt or what. It seemed to be dead, or nearly so, so for some unknown reason he decided the thing to do was bring it to the Visitor Center. To do this, he had his wife get out of the front passenger seat and sit in back, and he strapped this large bird into her seat with the seat belt. A turkey vulture, in case you don't know what they look like, is one of the ugliest birds you would ever want to see. I'd guess they stand close to two feet tall, and they have probably a 4-foot wing span. They have black feathers with light undersides on the wings and tails, but the creepiest feature is their heads, which are bright red, seemingly featherless, with a cruelly-hooked beak. Meanwhile, back at the Visitor Center, the gentleman comes in and tells Kristi he has this dead or severely injured bird in the car, and what should he do about it. After explaining that in a wilderness park they always let nature take its course, Kristi nevertheless decides that they have to help this guy with the bird. But, since it's Sunday, there are no resource management people on duty, only law enforcement rangers. So she goes back to their offices and says, "Who wants to dispose of a dead turkey vulture?" This of course requires an explanation. Finally, one of the rangers says he'll do it, and he makes arrangements by calling the housing area and telling them that he may have to shoot a severely injured bird, they may hear gunshots, etc. Then he goes out to the car. That's when he discovers that the bird is seat-belted in. As he hits the release for the seat belt, the bird, who has been playing possum for a while, does what every turkey vulture does when it feels threatened (Kristi's description) and regurgitates its last meal. Of course, turkey vultures are carrion eaters, so this is not a pleasant occurence. At this point, the wife (who was not happy about being relegated to the back seat anyway) declares she is going to fly home to Oregon and divorce our unfortunate tourist. The ranger scrambles back out of the way of the angry bird, and runs back into his office to call for help from the nearby wildlife refuge that adjoins the park. They tell him to put the bird in a box and send the tourist back to Ajo with it. When he comes back out of the office, Kristi loses it and laughs at him, because he's wearing something over his nose so he can get near the mess it has left in the car. After a little struggle to find a box and wrestle an angry wild bird into it, they send the tourist on his way, presumably with wife...Kristi didn't say. The ranger mutters at her never to ask him for anything again and stalks back into his office, to the merriment of his co-workers, who have also been laughing at him the whole time.
We had barely caught our breath from laughing at this story (of course, this kind of story is always better in the first person, with gestures and voice inflection) when the next person chimed in with her story. It involved a British sports car with the top down, a bird on the highway and a truck driver. Apparently the bird (I forget what kind) lifted off a little too late as Betty approached it and lost lift when the car drove under it, because it hit the top of the windshield frame and flopped over into her lap. Fortunately, there was a red light and an opportunity to stop right away, and the bird immediately tried to fly out of Betty's lap. Unfortunately, it got its foot caught in the spokes of the steering wheel, which Betty described as resembling a bicycle wheel. So there it was, flapping like crazy right in her face, when the light turned green. She turned to look at the driver of the truck behind her, only to find that he was doubled over laughing at her predicament. She turned back just as the bird freed itself and flew away. This story was MUCH better to hear in person, as Betty was acting out not only her part but the bird's, with much flapping of arms. By this time, we were holding our sides and gasping.
That's when Sue told the last one, about a time when she was an interpretive guide at a park that I gathered was somewhere in the Pacific northwest. I didn't get the name of the park, probably because I was still barking with laughter from Betty's story. Sue's involved a juvenile bald eagle on a suspension bridge with four lanes of heavy traffic. Somehow she spotted it on the pedestrian walkway while driving across the bridge and had to drive back around to get to it, but as she approached it decided to walk across four lanes of heavy traffic right in front of an eighteen-wheeler. Sue described the look of panic on the truck driver's face as he looked first at the eagle, then at her, while applying his brakes for an emergency stop. Somehow he managed to keep the truck upright and in its own lane, but the eagle had decided Sue was the lesser of two evils and had turned around and made a beeline for the walkway, right between her feet. She picked him up and got back in her car with the baby eagle on her lap holding on to one finger with its talons, and after clearing the bridge she called one of her co-workers to meet her outside with a box. Later she learned that it wasn't too young to fly as she had thought, and that if she had helped it outside the wires of the suspension bridge and tossed it into the air it would have been able to wing it. But on the bridge and confused by the wires, it couldn't get enough lift from where it was to make its escape. So she probably did save its life.
I've been going in to work just a little earlier in the morning since Budd has been off. Found a ride with one of the other temps, as that drive is right on the edge of my distance limits after a long day and as hot as it is. The first day I drove it by myself, I fell asleep for a second just as I passed the town square and scared myself half to death. I was so grateful a pedestrian didn't step into my path right at that moment, and that I had made arrangements for a ride for the following day. Driving out earlier in the morning has given me the chance to see a little wildlife, first a coyote with a hurt foot right at the edge of town, and yesterday two little does. I thought they were babies, because they are much smaller than the mule deer I'm used to seeing in Utah, but my co-worker said they were full-grown. I love seeing deer--they are such pretty and graceful animals. These waited by the side of the road until we were right beside them, Ken slowing way down to avoid hitting them if they decided to run in front of us. Then they turned and ran away into the desert. I've heard there are big mountain lions around, but haven't seen one, and still have yet to spot a javelina, but I'm always on the lookout.
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