Fieldwork is done

 I was worried about my knee. It wasn't too bad. I walked a total of about 2 miles doing the sampling and I was a little sore after; we'll see how I feel tomorrow. 

I had sort of mentally planned my sampling locations from my memories of the site, so on each side I walked to the furthest sampling point first (figuring: I do the longest walking when I'm freshest)

One of the sites was in a grassy area still without sericea lespedeza; that was sample 1 and was the furthest walk from my car. I recorded a description and UTM coordinates because I forgot to bring the flags (more about why later)

it's kind of near a "food plot" (an area planted with foods that attract deer - wheat and partridge pea and sometimes they include something cabbagey but I didn't see any of that)

The second site was over where a former colleague and I had done an herbivory study on post oaks (most of these notes are for my own memory and won't mean anything to you). It's actually east of that area and on the far side of an area that was mowed to be a food plot. It's more shaded than the first site.

The third site is familiar; it's the area featured in several studies I've done that I started calling "big meadow" back in 2000 when I first sampled it. It's the area almost totally overtaken by sericea lespedeza. The sampling location here is just a short distance off the path and is between a honey-locust and some persimmons

Those three samples were collected on the west side of the main trail in (it's one that leads down to the lake and people often take it for fishing access, and the Corps of Engineers - who manage the site - use it as a way to take their trucks in to work.

The last three samples were on the east side of the trail. Again, I walked to the furthest one - just to the east side of a stand of mostly post oaks (which we had dubbed "Ravine Area" back in 2000 because it has a low dry inlet that does fill up with water in years when the lake is high). It's been cut and burned and there's a standing-dead and burned tree at about 10:00 from where I sampled for sample 4:

The fifth sample was on the west side of the ravine area (so: walking back towards my car) and was at the edge of a stand of post oak, and there was a fair amount of sericea lespedeza (it is hard to avoid)

And then finally, a sample taken in a stand of mostly winged elm, though I took it near a mulberry with an odd buttressed trunk - it was just inside the band of poison ivy that is at the edges of this forested area

It was difficult, and I was hurting a lot at the end, and I was worried about ticks and mosquitoes (I wore the "real" bug repellent even though I dislike it, too many bug borne diseases here now)

And as I said, I forgot to grab the surveyor's flags despite them being in my car, because I had a surprise interruption.

 

Some......PERSON.....(I will simply say that and leave off the rude modifiers I might use) had dumped a litter of maybe 8 week old kittens out there, and when I arrived, two of them came out and cried at me. (Later on, a third came out, and I saw a glimpse of a fourth, and may have heard a fifth). 

When I came out to go home, I saw this:

 Those were the two bravest ones, but even at that they ran when I approached. 

I felt really bad about it. They shouldn't be out there! They need care and the right kind of food! (I didn't have anything. I did leave a little bowl of water in case that helped). 

I can't take them. I have NO experience with untrained kittens, I'm not set up with a catproofed house (especially for half wild cats), and my allergies prevent me from being very close to cats for long. 

I tried calling around to places but either they were full up or weren't even open. When I got back to campus I asked the departmental secretary and called my church secretary in case they knew anyone who did kitten rescue, or failing that, would take on a few barn cats - they'd probably manage okay with some food and eventually they'd be able to do what barn cats do. 

I had no way to capture them - they ran off if I approached (I had leather gloves so I could have grabbed them, if they didn't run away, but I had NOTHING in my car appropriate for containing kittens and it wouldn't be safe to drive with freaked out kittens loose in the car)

I left them. I feel terrible about it - the church secretary did say she'd ask around and see if she could find someone needing kittens, and I suppose we could go out with a live trap (I think my department has a couple big enough) but without a place to take them, I didn't want to try trapping them.

I feel particularly bad because I saw.....evidence....that there was a sixth cat that a predator got. (There are coyotes out there)

And I'm ANGRY about it. Some person has now made it MY responsibility and made ME feel bad because I couldn't fix the problem. And I'm angry that I couldn't fix the problem despite calling multiple places. (People here do NOT spay or neuter "outdoor" cats and we get an overload of kittens in the spring, and the small underfunded shelters can't take any more).

A friend of mine on Bluesky offered to pay gas for me if I could find somewhere some distance away and drive them AND THEN it lead to one of the scam accounts effectively spoofing my account and asking for money (TWO DIFFERENT SPOOFS) and while those got taken down fast (there's someone on there who makes it their job to report spoof accounts asking for money) I was upset and shaken and ALMOST nuked my account on the grounds that if I'm not there, I can't be spoofed. People talked me down from that but I'm TIRED of all the garbage human behavior out there. (And it doesn't help it was an election week here and we had some absolutely AWFUL campaign ads in the lead up)

But I do grow extremely weary, as someone who was raised to CARE, that there are so many people willing to push their responsibilities off onto me, and that I feel BAD when I can't fix things. 

And it does seem that more and more, life - or at least life in the US - is just people trying to pull a series of scams on you. No one's honest any more! Those of us raised to be honest lose out, and we have to be extra careful not to be scammed.

And also people are happy to push their responsibilities on to you, and people like me feel bad when we fail to make things better when we try. 

(I also regularly have dreams, when I'm overburded and can't get everything done, that I have cats I'm supposed to care for that I'm neglecting, so this is like one of my unpleasant dreams come to life). 

I should feel glad for persevering and getting all the samples collected on a still-hurting knee, but I don't because of all the other baggage that came with it. I even got the samples set up to extract over at school! (And that means Thursday or so I can start examining them)

One other thing, as a palate cleanser: I ordered this shirt a little while back from a "Nostalgia Shirts" company. Periodically I will think of the old Red Owl grocery-chain logo - this was a small chain in the Great Lakes region (Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, maybe North Dakota? I don't remember any from Ohio....)

There was a Red Owl in my grandma's town, right downtown. It was a small, old store, and I wonder if it had even been built before the self-serve era of groceries (I think Piggly Wiggly was the first chain where you picked stuff off the shelves yourself, rather than giving a list to a clerk who got them for you). It had VERY narrow aisles, as I remember, and the cashier's area had a doorway out to the aisles. 

One of my aunts worked there for years (after she was widowed). It was walking distance from both her house and from my grandma's house. They were one of the two groceries in town (the other was the IGA). They both had a little bit of penny candy and I admit the IGA had a better penny candy selection, but I always felt a kinship to Red Owl because Aunt Chickie worked there.

I think it's mostly a vanished logo but when I posted the shirt on Bluesky someone commented that the logo briefly showed up in Fargo (the tv show version I think). But my association with it is summer visits to my grandma in the late 1970s. (I think Red Owl was bought out by SuperValu in the 1980s, and the owl logo dropped)