This is my personal journal. If you don't like it, to heck with ya! Nobody asked you to read it! :P
Whoever has pics from this trip please post them!
<b>Orillia Field Herping Trip at Jeff Hathaway and Jenny Pierce's, June 14/15, 2003</b>
June 14, 2003--11:16am. We arrived at Jeff and Jenny's a short while ago and setup our tents. They felled a tree into the creek and we are going to be removing it as our first project, making it into a bridge.
Present: Beejay, Dale, Sean, Degong, Jeff, Betty, Glen, Florence, Jennifer, Jonathan, Stewart, Jessica, Crystal and Jamie. I haven't seen Jenny yet. It is a gorgeous, sunny day so it is time to apply sunblock.
12:46pm. The felled tree has been propped up onto opposite banks alongside a second one and after it became completely obvious, Sean said "Oh! We are making a bridge?!"
Jessica collected snails and a worm and we all enjoyed the cold creek. Jamie saw a trout.
Hot-diggity-dog!!! Sean just brought me a caterpillar. haha Yeah, Sean got a good chuckle last night when I traded sunglasses with my grandmother. Now she looks cool and I SO don't!!!
<img src="http://www.saltinemonkey.com/beejay/pics/grannyglasses.jpg">
1:53pm. Christina, Jayson, Derek and Stephanie just arrived. We have been moving dirt into the vegetable garden after Jeff uses the back hoe to scare the crap out of us while we hold the wheelbarrows. Christina poured water all over Sean and then threw dirt on him!!! haha and later she couldn't watch him hesitate at the pool anymore and pushed him in before he'd taken off his shirt!
For lunch we ate tuna sandwiches and road kill stew and brownies for dessert. Jeff was driving behind someone who ran into a deer with their car and he offered to take the carcass home. He brought it home and after midnight on that night, he knocked on Betty's door and asked her to help him gut it since it was a special talent she had. They were up until 2am preparing the deer and today's lunch was venison stew.
The back hoe just stalled and it's very hot out so maybe we will get to work on the bridge some more instead, where the refreshing water can soothe our burning flesh. Am I the ONLY one who remembered to bring sunblock?
4:20pm. Dale is cutting wooden planks (NOT WOODEN PLANTS aka TREES danh) for the bridge and I brough Derek for a ride in the trailer of the tractor. Whee!!! I put the wood in the trailer and everyone seems to be taking a break, so I will go get some water to drink.
I turned soil in the garden and weeded out the grass and trees with Degong, Christina, Sean and Derek.
Others dug a hole for a turtle pond and found al iner for it. Glen is still working on the bridge across the stream and the kids are busy checking out the herp collection and cuddling the two chickens and feeding them clovers.
The pool room is hot and there is a thermal cover over the water--that's going to be nice later.
Jeff has been kind enough to reward us for our hard work with free food, fun in the pool and he's even provided us with Jenny's reading material for the bathroom.
Oh, yeah, earlier we removed some new trees and placed them in the shade to be transplanted later.
7:11pm. Dale is back to working on the bridge with Jonathan, Jennifer and Florence; Jessica and Stephanie are playing with a small net nearby.
Jenny and Katharine got back from doing shows and we all finished up working. We had Jenny's road kill chile and rolls, chips and black forest cake for dessert. I ate my supper alone outside in the grass. Now Jessica and Stephanie are playing a game around the tents. I think it's similar to hide-and-seek but can't really tell, the rules are a little hazy.
Earlier today, I lay on my stomach in the grass to write in my journal and a moth flew down the front of my top and was flapping around like an insane pinball. Getting it out was a little embarrasing with people watching.
Dan's here!!!
Sunday, June 15, 2003--7:39am. It appears I was the first one out of the sack this morning. I've already washed uup and now others are beginning to stir. Now, if I knew what the breakfast plan was I'd be all set.
Last night we went for a swim. The group was a little too rowdy for me so I used poi along with music and hten had a short swim. We all went into the livingroom for drinks and watched a video of Jenny on television for a program called "Stylin' Gypsies". She got a surprise makeover and tickets to Mama Mia with Jeff. It's on the Woman's network on Monday, June 16, 2003 at 9pm Eastern time. The pool scene just about killed me--I think a couple of people were getting ready to perform CPR on me.
After that we watched the Crocodile Hunter movie. Hot-diggity-dog!!! And Dale messed with my head by goofing with my beer bottle--switching it from full to empty, and th en back again. I had only had one beer but was tired, and boy...I ended up admitting I was a bit "slow" because I was really confused. I just lay back on the bean bag chair and watched the movie. It didn't even dawn on me that someone was messing with me :} *blush* I slept well anyhow.
1:18pm. Field survey:
Sean: 1 garter (well fed!)
Crystal: same garter as Sean
Dan: American toad, green frog
Jennifer and Florence: American toad
It would be so cool to see a hognose on the property.
We transplanted trees, built the bridge... [<b>danh</b> Looked for bears with which to mate.] Dan, you wrote in my journal!! hahaha I said "meet" not "mate".
4:20pm. As I was saying, we finished the bridge, transported rubble and sement blocks, created the beginning of a hibernaculum, sinished the preparation of the garden area for planting, cleared trees from the pathways and right now there is a lot of chiselling going on but I missed that work detail because I took a break to go on the computer for five minutes and said "hello" to Jordan in ssnakess.com chat.
Sean fell asleep under Bertha (who is actually a large van).
I met the guy that rents an apartment in one of the aeroplane hangars; his name is Rick and no lie, he could be Ozzy's twin. Except that you can actually understand him and really, he's not grubby like Ozzy appears to be.
Sean made his way through some big ferns...the biggest he's ever seen...and whoopsie he was wearing shorts and whoopsie that was stinging nettle dear! LOL He spent 20 minutes relieving the painful welts on his legs in the stream after that. Dale went down to the stream and saw a muskrat, and also a mallard duck and a bunch of ducklings following it...they passed right beneath him. The muskrat did too.
While Jamie, Crystal, Dan, Derek and I were on an impromptu hike eariler I saw blue butterflies mating (which Dan chased in jest with his collar open to try and recreate my moth-in-shirt moment of earier on. Crystal misheard me when I asked "What if we meet with a bear?" and she started laughing..."Mate with a bear? I hadn't realized we were supposed to do THAT this weekend!!" And then of course I was teased for the rest of the day about how to deal with meeting a bear in the woods...just have Beejay mate with it while everyone else ran for safety :O
I crawled into a "bear cage" with Dan and was down on the ground, trying to figure out whether there was an animal in a large burrow in the bank of the "cliff" when Jamie came barrelling over the top at me, making awful animal noises and I just about hit my head on the roof as I jumped up using less than lady-like words at a high volume. Jamie made me cry
lol
We were a little weary of a German Sheppard in an open yard, staring at us without a leash. Jenny later told me that there is an invisible electric boundary and he won't cross it. Hot-diggity-dog!!! (annoying yet, Sean? hahaha)
[<b>danh</b> While Bev was sleeping we (Crystal, Jamie, Jenny, Kat, Sean and I, Dan) had a good swim in the pool. It started as a nice, quiet game of "keep the beach ball in the air." Jenny's dad joined us for a little of that, but he left as soon as the trouble started. In an interesting analogy of how society works, our nice, quiet game of "keep the beach ball in the air" turned into a rather nasty, vengeful game of "hit the last person who hit you in the head really hard."
It was actually pretty liberating. Sean was the easiest to hit, and so got hit a lot. Jamie was the hardest to get and so was also hit a lot. Kat was fun to hit because she just sat quietly in the corner--easy target, and Jenny was fun because, well, she's Jenny.
Fortunately, Jeff couldn't participate because he stabbed himself in the eye with a blade of grass. I say fortunately because I had heard horror stories from other veteran "hit the last person who hit you in the head really hard" players that he hits the ball so hard it leaves bruises!]
hehe thanks danh for that entry. I think more people should write their perspectives in my journal on these trips! I'm bored of only having my own point of view to recount for everyone!
8:38pm. Wow, I guess I was tired. I was planning to go for a swim with everyone but I made the mistake of resting my eyes, lying on the sofa, and when I woke up Dan was sitting here writing in my journal. So I used him as a pillow until it was time to eat and he was nice enough to bring me some lasagna and garlic bread with cheese while I wiped the cobwebs from my head...after some food I perked up again
Most people left after lunch, and now Crystal, Jame and Dan have left also. Eventually we left too and now I'm about done this extremely LONG story about our weekend.
Thank you to Jeff and Jenny, her parents and Katharine for hosting a great weekend event. We didn't see a lot of wild herps but it was a joy to be able to play with your private collection and to contribute our sweat to the conservation centre.
ORILLIA FIELD HERPING TRIP (long)
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