"You Ought to be in Pictures..."
Through the years I've been asked questions about what I'm doing during a BBS, asked questions about directions to a certain location, quizzed for who knows the reason why, asked to show identification, shouted at, honked at, asked if I'm lost, asked if I need help (the most common reason for a conversation), but the Lockport, OH count provided a new experience. I was videotaped! While stopped almost in front of someone's residence, I was listening and looking in the opposite direction, and when I turned toward the house, there was a fellow standing on the stoop by the front door with a video recorder pointed in my direction. I'm sure he now has tape of my car, my license plate, and of me. I sure hope there are no break-ins in the neighborhood in the near future.
June 2, 2004
A brief comment...
While eating my 2 pancakes (high rating of 8.5 on scale of 1-10) and coffee at Abell's in Elkhorn following completion of Paris route (and on way to MN), overheard from a group of about 8 older but still working men at a coffee clutch type of setting.
"Yea, Bill runs up high cell phone bills, but then he changes cell phones more often than his underwear!"
June 8, 2004
A sad story...
As I passed Eli Lake following breakfast in Ortonville, I saw a creche
of
ducklings about 100' off-shore. I looked at them through my scope and
confirmed they were Wood Ducks, however they were unattended in rather
open water. I then spotted a roadkill about 100' ahead and saw that it
was a freshly-killed female woodie. I'm just assuming the 10-12
ducklings
(they were packed so closely I couldn't obtain an accurate count)
belonged
to the dead female. Since they were still quite small, I wonder what
their fate will be.
June 9, 2004
Half a fish story...
I've always been interested in road kills; you know DORs. I guess
that is why I really concentrated during the year when Bill Mueller
was collecting bird kill data for Wisconsin's highways. As I drove
north after Wednesday's breakfast, I noted something in the road
where it was close between 2 lakes. I hung a U turn, and the object
turned out to the front half of a 10" brown bullhead. There was no
room for a fisherman to be in this area, so where did it come from?
June 20, 2004
Another surveyor?
Today at one of the early stops on the Ispeming, MI route, I was standing next to the car listening and watching during the 3-minute stop when I spied a snowshoe hare hopping around in the road probably 200 yards behind me. As I watched it started in my direction. I stood quietly as it continued at a slow lope. It seemed to not care that a car was parked in the right lane of the small black-topped county road and there was a big, bearded man standing next to it. I continued to watch until I stopped using binoculars and continued to watch as it loped past me in the opposite lane - neither fast nor slow, but at a steady pace. When the 3-minute-stop was finished, I proceeded down the road and passed the hare as it continued to lope down the road another fifth of a mile from where it had passed me. Where was it going?
From Brian Borofka:
The snowshoe hare in Ishpeming was doing a BOS, or breeding ornithologist survey. I'm sure it had another route someplace further down the road the next day, or as as they say, hare today and gone tomorrow.
