Dem bones, dem bones, gonna walk aroun'

I haven't talked about it too much, but I've been taking a Master Naturalist class since the end of January, along with Danger and her husband / my cousin, MacGyver. We attended a three-hour class on Monday nights, and once we've completed 30 hours of volunteer service, we'll get certified as Master Naturalists by the state. Pretty awesome. Our class ended this week, and even though I'm sad that it's over, I'm also really happy that I learned so many kickass things to share with kids.

We had an optional field trip on Sunday, and I got to take the day off work and go. Even though I was expecting it to rain, I woke up that morning to the most perfect Spring day EVER. It was absolutely perfect outside--blue sky, sunny, warm but not hot, cool breezes all day. Heaven. I wore sunblock for the first time this year since I'm whiter than white and also don't tan, and I felt very outdoorsy. The trip started at this local wetland that's been reconstructed from decades of being used and abused as a dump and is now maintained as a park / nature area. I'd only been there once, to lead a hike for a group of first graders (on that hike, a little girl asked me if there were any anacondas in the water, and then we saw the remains of a rabbit and the kids shrieked, "Maybe a monster did it!" so I had to explain about how carnivores can't go to the grocery store or McDonald's, so they eat other animals instead), and it was super rad.

We stopped at one point on the trail and I was looking around when I saw something in the grass that looked like a skull. I spent a few minutes trying to decide if it actually was a skull, or just a skull-resembling piece of litter, then went over to investigate. Turns out it was bones, but not a skull. I thought it was a fish skull at the time, because this is what it looks like:

Danger came over that night, and when she saw it, she realized it was some kind of odd hipbone structure. A very brief Google search later, and we knew it was a bird's synsacrum.




After the wetland, we visited the nature preserve where I did a year of AmeriCorps service in 2005. It's an old-growth bottomland hardwood forest, so it's got a lot of standing water in the Spring. It was green and full of life, with wildflowers coming up and all the trees looking leafy and putting out their buds and flowers.

trillium and jack-in-the-pulpit



On Monday night, we had our final exam for the class. We only have to get 70% of the questions right to pass, and it was a really easy test. Danger, MacGyver, and I were finished after an hour, so Danger and I headed back to the wetland to hunt for more bones. We ended up finding about two dozen more pieces, mostly tiny ribs and vertebrae. While we were there, the sun went down and we could see Orion, Canis Major, Auriga, the Big Dipper, Cassiopeia, Saturn, and Venus. It was freaking sweet. Danger wanted to make an attempt at articulating the bones we'd found, so we went back to my apartment and spread all the pieces out on the table and spent a good hour bouncing around and frantically clicking through Google searches and stringing things together with thread and bread ties. Weird? Maybe. But weird works for us.

Going off of this diagram, Danger managed to articulate almost an entire wing. It's amazing how good she is at doing this, truly:

Velocibadgergirl: I like to think that the bird would be
happy that we're taking such an interest in his mortal remains.

Danger: He'd probably say, "You're doing what with my what?!"



After we'd stowed the bones in an box and put them out of the cat's reach, we went out for ice cream. It was like Christmas, only with bones and stars instead of presents. Or something.



Tonight was pretty great, too. I had a meeting on the campus of my sister's college (my old college), so I just waited around after it was over to meet up with her. A gnarly thunderstorm was moving through, so I spent about an hour sitting in my car reading and watching the clouds roll in. It was pretty badass, especially when it started hailing. Spring weather in the Midwest:  voted most likely to make you say "WTF?" Once Little Sis got out of class, we went to dinner and then we ended up hanging out in her apartment until almost 9:00, making a couple of mix CDs. Since I lived on campus in an identical apartment, it was sort of surreal and endearing all at once to be in what basically looked just like my old room, but surrounded by her stuff. (If you could send her some good writing vibes, by the way, that would be fantastic. She's getting ready to write an essay that may get her accepted to an archaeology field school that only takes 10 students each summer.)


Wednesday, you're on notice:  it's up to you to keep the run of kickassery going. Don't be the day that ruins the streak.




P.S. With the assistance of the ever-helpful basscomm, I think I finally figured out how to properly install a Bloglines button in the sidebar. Please let me know if it or my feeds get fubared again. xoxo!