Welcome to . . . nowhere
Trip Start
Jun 03, 2006
1
Trip End
Sep 10, 2006
Malta,
Montana,
United States
Wednesday, June 7, 2006
Ferret Camp is a few trailers, a Porta-Potty (no, that's a lie. USGS would never spring for a genuine Porta-Potty. It's an awful knock-off Porta Potty), and a stray cat. It's located at the intersection of two anonymous dirt roads, surrounded by ranches and BLM tracts that no one ever cared about enough to give a name to.
The first trailer is our office, with a TV, a phone, and a working refrigerator. Then there's my mini-trailer, with a bed, a kichen, and a table all within two steps of each other. Next to me are the radio-tracking guys. Phillip is a graduate/PhD (?) student, and our very own Mike Tyson. He's a 250-odd pound black man with the voice of a fairy. Luckily, the closest he's ever come to biting a man's ear off is ear-tagging a prairie dog. I haven't really met his intern yet, but I believe his name is Andy.
The next trailer over is Mary's. She's from Delaware and just got a degree in Biology and Anthropology. This is her second year on the study. She likes company, so we listen to Buena Vista Social Club and draw together. After her are the two Plover guys, who I don't really know and are only here until July anyway.
The last trailer, with an enviable location next to the outhouse and "WARNING: NON-POTABLE WATER" tank, we have Sam and Dave. No, not the "Soul Man" Sam and Dave. They're our team leaders. They both go to school somewhere in Indiana, but they met volunteering in Miami. Their hobbies inlude making home videos of themselves catching all sorts of snakes. They have their own study, sort of connected to our big one, to see whether prairie dogs groom for social purposes or to remove parasites. Dave has also seen badgers prey on prairie dogs above ground twice, which apparently has never been documented before.
The only inconvenient thing about our camp, besides the non-running undrinkable water, is that there are really no trails or areas with lots of animals. (It's sort of ironic that of all the places I've lived, I spent the most time walking around looking for frogs in the environmentally evil retirement community in Florida.) And it gets so windy that it's often not worth taking a walk at all. But we still do have pronghorn antelope, jackrabbits, mule deer, snakes and some birds in the area. And of course, ferrets and prairie dogs.
