Random shots of weird things inside the Ant Cave

November 7, 2019 Johnston Update

Just a little over a month until our ride arrives! I could write some stuff about time flying and blah blah blah but I don't like dwelling on that kind of sentiment more that I already do inside my own head. Somehow putting that out into the universe feels like it compromises my karma. So I'll stick to the facts! 

Our replacement crew has been confirmed to have reached Oahu and I can just imagine them running around like chickens with their heads cut off, shopping and quarantining and packing just like we did when we got to Oahu. I hope they get to do at least HALF of the cool things we got to do as a group for team building and overall adventure. One of the kids is from Lopez Island! Pacific North Westerners/Island kids unite!

I've started a countdown whiteboard so that the arrival of the IMUA doesn't take us by surprise. We have a lot we want to get done before they get here and we'll have to devote all our time to training the new crew and unpacking and storing the huge amount of supplies they'll have to bring. The Johnston CAST program has had a little change in operations, the crew after this next one will be arriving via plane! That means the next time Steven gets deployed he and his crew will only be able to bring one travel trunk each and possibly a small pallet of supplies. So Margeaux, the other crew leader, the one who is coming to replace us in a month, has to bring enough supplies for two crews! 

We also have a funky survey schedule that will make the changeover even more busy. As I've said before, we survey the Mean Incubation Count (counts of all birds from egg stage to fledgling stage, a good way to measure the breeding population & success) of Frigates, Tropic Birds and Red Footed Boobies for each species. Because we can't survey multiple species in a day and each species has a different Mean Incubation Period (how long it takes a bird to go from egg to fledgling) the surveys sometimes overlap but we have to shuffle the schedule around by a couple of days in one direction or another to make it work. An example is the Red Footed Boobies, we SHOULD survey them every 46 days and we allot 3 days to check all the nests on the island but we can skootch the survey up or back a day if absolutely necessary. This JUST happened to us, we had 3 solid weeks of MIC surveys and it kicked our butts. Luckily we won't have to worry about the next Frigate MIC, it's far enough in the future that it won't be impacted by the changeover week. The Booby MIC is fine as well because it can be shifted a day or two and will end up being the first survey the next CAST crew will do completely on their own. The Tropic Bird MIC, however, presents more of a problem. Even if we shifted it a day or two it still falls smack in the middle of the changeover! So the administration had to decide if it would be something the my crew does on our own while other people handle the changeover tasks, or it would be something the next crew has to do on their own (keeping in mind they wouldn't have had ANY training on the search patterns, how to locate a nest or how to determine a chicks age), or if we use both crews to complete the survey AND the training AND the unpacking of supplies. They opted for the third option so now we just wait for the IMUA and to see how it all shakes out.

I also have two crazy bird "attacks" to report, they both happened last month but the update I tried to send out previously mysteriously disappeared and I blame the shoddy Johnston internet. The first encounter was while I was on an evening run. I typically don't end my runs on the East part of Refuge Road that goes along the asbestos dump because the trees make it quite dark after sunset but the one time I finished that way I got what I thought was a cute accompaniment by a pair of Short Eared Owls. I thought they were just innocently interested in a human traveling through their area at a strange time of night but then I felt a not so benign yank on my ponytail. I spent what was supposed to be my cool down racing back to camp looking over my shoulder and yelling at the owls as they swooped at my head over and over again! It took my quite a while to calm down from the adrenaline rush they caused me!

Jake and I shared a less than ideal encounter with a Frigate mother during the last MIC. Jake was attempting to determine the age of a fairly large chick when the mother unexpectedly swooped in and reached for his head, knocking off his hat. I realized it wasn't going to let him get close so I attempted to survey the chick from a different angle while Jake kept the mother busy. It did not work. The mother came after me and forced me to turn and run. Because it hadn't actually touched me as I ran away, I was laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation and not keeping track of where the bird was. Big mistake! It was almost as if she attacked me BECAUSE I was laughing. I can still recall her beak scraping along my scalp. She ended up yanking a decent amount of my braid out and came away with more than a few of my hairs in her beak. I wasn't laughing then! I sprinted away and it took, Sarah, Jake AND Ryan to finally survey the chick, fortunately no one else felt the mother’s wrath, although I'm pretty sure Ryan was disappointed he didn't also get attacked! 

In the evenings I have been observing the night sky for the last couple of weeks and am pretty happy with the number of constellations and stars I can identify now! I of course knew Ursa Minor but it is in such a strange location compared to back home. Here it is just above the horizon and on even a partly cloudy night it's impossible to see. I've consistently found Cassiopeia the Queen, Cygnus the Swan with the big star Deneb, Lyra with the big star Vega, parts of Draco and Hercules and the majority of Sagittarius. I have also been finding Antares of Scorpius just above the horizon. It is sometimes the only star that is visible in Scorpius and it is so bright red I originally thought it was a plane. Just yesterday I found the Lagoon Nebula right next to Sagittarius. Sometimes in the morning I can easily find Orion and the Pleiades. I've always been able to identify Orion but now I know the name of some of his stars, his shoulders, Bellatrix and Betelgeuse and his foot, Rigel!

I have attached some pictures of the human-built whimsical gems you can find in random places around Johnston. 

First, our "Wall of Dead Things". The doors to our Ant Cave have perfect shelves for all the weird thing like skeletons and washed up flotsam that crew members have collected over the year. I've added a number of skulls and dried fish as well as the lyrics from Mr. Ray's song from finding Nemo.