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Merritt Island: Heart and Soul

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Part of my soul lives in the mountains. The steepness, the rough and smooth edges, peaks sharp or rounded, a barren summit or a wooded grove on the hillsides, the view, and the breath of fresh air that carries a special taste of true nature. I feel free of the weights I wrap around myself, the ones I didn’t realize were there.

“Mountains inspire awe in any human person who has a soul. They remind us of our frailty, our unimportance, of the briefness of our span upon this earth. They touch the heavens, and sail serenely at an altitude beyond even the imaginings of a mere mortal… They are cruel, dangerous, and possessed of a beauty one can never grow weary of.”
~ Elizabeth Ason, from The Exploits and Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy

Part of my soul lives in the desert, in the barren rock. When I look out into the wide-open space and gaze at a rock tower rising up into the sky, I just am. Everything is quiet, and I’m just there. The starkness absorbs all the internal moaning and rattling, and all that’s left is the rock, the dirt, the sun, the endless sky.

Gopher Tortoise, Merritt Island NWR 2012

These places speak to me, resonate with me deep inside, and I feel a special sense of completeness when I am there. They feel right, like walking around your childhood home in the middle of the night. You know the exact number of steps without counting, the placement of each table and chair, so that even in the dark you can find your way without tripping. My soul can live in the mountains without tripping all over itself in confusion. Sometimes I feel that I am laying on the floor in the dark, waiting for someone to turn the light on and notice me, quietly moaning. I tend to feel that way most often when I’m stuck in boring, flat places, probably because I find it easier to have adventures when I’m in the desert or the mountains.

When I was heading down to Florida and Merritt Island, I was not particularly looking forward to my time there. Florida is flat, hot, buggy, boring. Coming from a cross-county road trip, camping in Utah and Wyoming and rock climbing in Colorado, Florida was not where I wanted to be heading. And, well, I found that Florida is flat, hot, buggy, and boring. But, to my surprise, I loved it anyway.

Roseate Spoonbill and Snowy Egret
Heading into the sunrise to look for Scrub Jays

I leave bits of my heart everywhere, tucked in with the people and places I go. Quite a bit of my heart is in Ohio, but there are pieces in other states and countries too, in places I have and have not been, in places only seen by those I love.

White Pelicans
Black-necked Stilt
Playalinda Beach, Canaveral National Seashore

And part of my heart is at Merritt Island. There are some places you stay and you know you are home, even if it’s just for a short while. This is one of them. No matter where I travel, I will always remember that place, that time, those people. Especially those people 🙂

Me, Betty, and Connie (refuge volunteers) after kayaking with dolphins and manatees at Merritt Island NWR
Meghan and Angie kayaking at Blue Springs State Park
Patrick. Blue Springs State Park
Patrick and I are expert kayakers, can’t you tell? Blue Springs State Park

I got a NASA badge!

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 Last week I finally got my NASA badge, which means I can go into the restricted areas on the refuge and over by all the NASA buildings! 
So, on the way back from the badging station, Candice (the acting refuge manager) and I went on a little drive around the Kennedy Space Center and took some pictures. She’s been on the KSC tour so many times she could tell me all about everything, my own personal tour guide.
The Vehicle Assembly Building. Each stripe on the flag is wide enough for a tour bus to drive on without touching another stripe.
The Vehicle Assembly Building, with the display shuttle in front.
Not an actual shuttle. This is the model that was inside. It has been moved outside because they’re putting one of the actual shuttles on display.
Closeup of the shuttle replica.
NASA News!
The countdown clock.
Note the large rectangular door on the side, one way to tell this isn’t a real shuttle.
The long gravel path is how the shuttles are moved from the VAB to the launching site. They are transported on a vehicle called a Crawler, and it takes something like 8 hours to move the shuttle.
Where the shuttles are launched.
The Beach House, where the astronauts spend the night with their families before they are blasted up into space.
View from the Beach House.
View from the Beach House.
View from the Beach House.
The Crawler– how the shuttle is transported from the VAB to the launching platform.
Not sure what the purpose of this structure is.
So we had to get out and walk underneath it.
This is 1 side 2. Whatever that means.

What is a Public Use Intern?

animalia7 Florida Tags: , , , , 2 Comments

I suppose some of you may be wondering what it is exactly that I’m doing here in Florida. Well, here are a few pictures:

Sometimes I get to help out at festivals, which are quite fun. We set up a booth and people come by and we tell them about the refuge and some of the awesome animals we have here. The kids get to make a stamp bookmark, and I usually have them touch the bobcat and otter pelts and compare them.

Here I am with Connie and Joann, two of the volunteers, also known as the Festival Extraordinaire Ladies.  They’ve got the festival gig down pat. They have also adopted me as a grandchild, though I told them that no one can measure up to the wonderful Grandma I have who sends me cookies in the mail (Thank you Grandma Cindea! I love you bunches!!)

Yes, those are giant ants on the table. No, they are not real, no, we don’t have ants that big on the refuge, and no, they’re not for sale. Everyone comments on the ants, that’s what really brings people over to our table.

Sometimes I help with school programs and we get to hang out with Florida Scrub Jays. They are very curious, and will come land on your head or hand if you hold it out, looking for peanuts. The biologists have trained them to enter traps in order to band them for monitoring purposes. The traps are baited with peanuts, so the jays get a treat for their hassle.

Sometimes I’m allowed to go out with the biologists and do fun biology things, like help restore scrub habitat. As Mike, the head biologist, was explaining to me when he kidnapped me and forced me to help him fill a spray tank, no one has been really successful at restoring scrub, which is a problem for wildlife managers trying to help the scrub jays and other species that depend on scrub habitat. The area we were working in used to be a grapefruit grove, but they are trying to make it

For us, this meant planting seeds in the hot sun in a quarter-acre plot. It was actually quite fun, and there were scrub jays hanging out nearby watching us, and lots of fun birds flew overhead. Also, a man on a motorcycle rode by blaring “Uptown Girls,” which I then got stuck in everyone’s heads (going on a week now).

The field we planted with scrub plant seeds.

Here we all are hard at work. This is what most of the morning looked like, hanging out in a barren field and contemplating the scrub.

Sometimes I hobnob with famous birdy people. Here I am at the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival with two other Merritt Island NWR volunteers and Richard Crossley (in the black shirt). He was the keynote speaker at the festival this year, and because I was helping to sell his books I had the chance to hear him speak and got him to autograph my copies of his books, The Shorebird Guide and The Crossley ID Guide (came out just last year). We chatted for a bit, he’s a fun guy. Also takes fantastic pictures of birds.

Same birding festival, different day, with Kevin Karlson. He is a co-author of The Shorebird Guide, and also autographed my copy. Another fantastic photographer and birder, and also fun to talk with.

Sometimes I hobnob with snakes (this happens a lot, actually). This is Buddy, our education snake. We hang out together a lot, he’s my bud. The other day I had him out at the Visitor Center, showing him to some of the visitor. Buddy decided he wanted to crawl into my shirt, and did so, going up my right sleeve. He was across the front of my chest before I noticed, so I tried to pull him out via the front of my shirt. He was having none of that, and kept aiming for my other sleeve, like he was going to crawl all the way through. This doesn’t really bother me, but I’m aware that quite a few other people are not fond of snakes and the idea that I would even hold him is disturbing, so I tried to excuse myself from the people I was talking to so I wouldn’t bother them too much. I also wasn’t entirely sure I would be able to get him out of my shirt without taking it off, so I figured I probably should do that in the privacy of the back office, or the restroom. The people I was talking with didn’t seem to mind, in fact the woman starting taking pictures of me with a snake up one sleeve and part of his mid-section out the front of my shirt, his head moving back and forth under my shirt on my other shoulder.

I should have asked her to send me a copy, I’m sure it looked pretty funny.

This is a yellow rat snake we fished out of the trashcan so it wouldn’t bother the visitors. After the photo op, we released it back into the palmettos.

Rat snakes are generally very docile creatures, and all of the ones I’ve handled have been quite friendly. They generally like climbing around my person and going through my hair and belt-loops, which can be interesting, having a live snake-skin belt. This is one of Buddy’s favorite activities when I’m not paying attention. He also likes to go through my braid or pony-tail, so I have to undo my hair to get him out.

If you didn’t have enough of the creepy-crawly, here are some toad pictures! This is a spadefoot toad that one of the biologists brought to show us. He found it in the fire garage, and  thought that might not be the best place for a toad to live.

Only a few more weeks left here in Florida, so I’ll try to get more pictures up soon!

Defecating River Otter “Made My Day.”

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Defecating River Otter “Made My Day” Says Young Woman
Merritt Island NWR, FL—Friday, February 10, 2012: a day that will live in infamy. Well, at least to one young woman. It was on that day that Lauren A. Smith, age 24, saw her first river otter (Lontra canadensis) in the wild, along Black Point Wildlife Drive in Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. “I was so excited, I’d only seen them in zoos before!” she gushed.
Resting for the big event
The river otter in question spent a few minutes poking around the edge of the impoundment before it lifted its tail and defecated. It then scampered off into the bushes, but not before Smith managed to snap off a few pictures. “This is why I always carry my camera with me, you never know when you’re going to see a pooping otter,” she said.
Lifting the tail
Smith is a Public Use intern at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, located near Titusville, Florida. Smith, a zoology and English major who graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University, has always loved animals. “I’ve known since 5th grade that I wanted to be a zoologist and work with animals,” she said. “The other kids were going around saying, ‘I want to be an astronaut’ or ‘I want to be a ballerina.’ No one even knew what a zoologist was.”

A birder and ornithologist, she jumped at the chance to internship at Merritt Island. “People come from across the country to see the birds here,” she said. “There are fantastic opportunities to see some fantastic birds.” She admits there was an additional consideration in her internship choice— “Spending the winter in Florida was also pretty appealing.”

Taken from the backseat, before Sam opened the truck door to let me out. That is Sam’s hair and beard in the rear-view mirror, not mine.
Merritt Island NWR is a pretty appealing place to a number of animals, including river otters. River otters are found in many of the wetlands areas of Florida. Ranging over large expanses, up to 50 miles, river otters unfortunately often end up as road kill. They can be active both during the day and at night, and are often found hunting for food along water edges.
Playful hunters, river otters will catch and eat a variety of critters found in the marshes including minnows, catfish, crayfish, mollusks and frogs. Because they have very high metabolisms, an adaption to help them keep warm in the water, they must consume at least 15% of their body weight every day.
Otters can range in weight from 10 to 31lbs, males typically weighing more than females. They have webbed feet and short, thick, brown fur to help keep them warm while in the water. While swimming, they close both their ears and nostrils.
Time to head back to the bushes
“I absolutely love working at the refuge,” says Smith. “Any place where you have the chance to see painted buntings, roseate spoonbills, scrub jays, gopher tortoise, bobcat, and alligators every day can’t be all that bad, right?” she adds with a smile.

Greetings from Sunny Florida!

animalia7 Florida Tags: , , , , 2 Comments
Currently, I am residing in Florida, on the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. I live in the bunkhouse on the refuge, sharing space with four other people. It is a great building, only a few years old, and very comfortable. As far as free housing goes, this is just about as good as it gets. My only gripe is the toilet paper dispenser. I fail to understand why putting the dispenser below the level of the toilet seat is handy. I have to bend over completely, chest touching my legs, and then reach down, hitting my hand (and the tp) on the floor, in order to get some toilet paper. As I’ve been here a month now I’ve perfected my tp grabbing skills and can usually manage to avoid it hitting the floor.
Stupid toilet-paper holder.
 I should probably now also mention that any views expressed here on my blog are my own, and in no way reflect the views of the Student Conservation Association (who placed me in this internship), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (who my internship is with), or NASA. I shall now refrain from making a comment regarding the government and the toilet paper holder placement.
The Vehicle Assembly Building. It’s so tall that when they first built it clouds formed at the ceiling, they had to install fans. I think they used to assemble space shuttles and rockets in there.
Some weird golf-ball thingie, there might be some kind of radar or satellite in there, I’m not sure.
 
Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge is a unique place, and one that I am finding myself to enjoy more than I thought I would (I mean, it’s Florida and flat, no mountains, but the awesome birds here make up for it). Originally the 140,000 acres of the refuge were bought up by NASA for the Kennedy Space Center, the majority of the land as a buffer zone around the NASA buildings and launch pads. Eventually U.S. Fish and Wildlife and the National Park Service got involved and turned the rest of the land into Merritt Island NWR and Canaveral National Seashore, which encompasses seven different habitat types: coastal dunes, saltwater marshes and estuaries (that’s two), freshwater impoundments, scrub, pine flatwoods, and hardwood hammocks, all of which contain copious mosquitoes (to which I can personally attest). Canaveral National Seashore is part of the longest stretch of undeveloped beach in Florida, stretching 24 miles down the eastern coast. These areas are home for over 1,500 species of plants and animals, including 15 Threatened or Endangered species. “With an excellent long-term working relationship among NASA, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service, this unique area is a shining example of how nature and technology can peacefully co-exist.” (from the Merritt Island NWR website, which I recommend for further details on the history of MINWR).
And they mean it too. The guard at the pass booth has a gun, I hear. I wouldn’t know, I’m not authorized to go on NASA property yet.
Sunset from one of the impoundment roads
 
I am a Public Use Intern, which means I work at the Visitor Center, sometimes helping with school groups, sometimes manning the front desk and showing people where to go to see roseate spoonbills, and sometimes doing fun intern stuff like organizing filing cabinets. Whenever I get too over-stimulated by the filing I go play with Buddy, my supervisor’s pet red rat snake. I’m currently working on a presentation about red rat snakes, so I’m sure pictures and more information will be coming soon. I also get to help with the Eagle Watch, where we set up spotting scopes on a bald eagle nest and show visitors the eaglets jumping around. Pictures of that are also forthcoming.
Two great egrets
One of the roughly 5,000 gators on the refuge. This guy (or gal) is probably about 10ft long.
A northern mockingbird reading one of the signs along Black Point Wildlife Drive. The birds here are smart!
 
Merritt Island is a wonderful place, especially for birds. The birding is fantastic—I’ve been here a month now and still haven’t seen everything I’d like to or gotten bored. Just today at the feeders behind the Visitor Center we had painted buntings and a white-winged dove. You know you work somewhere cool when you can casually glance out the window and see painted buntings all day.
Painted buntings, male (on left) and female (on right). There are three pairs that frequent our feeders.
I am very much looking forward to my next two months here, getting to experience and know this amazing place!