The Officially Awesome Day

            Yesterday was undeniably, indisputably, unshakably awesome. It was our 5^th day of sampling the second section of the Green River (which means that we were sampling the first half of the second section...there are a lot of sections and halves and other nonsense) and the winning began at our first site. Not only did we have otter scat, but we also had the ideal conditions for teaching Blue how to swim. At the first site, there is a “pond” behind the willows. I put quotation marks around the word pond because it’s not exactly big enough to be considered a pond. It’s 30 or 40 feet long by 8 or 9 feet wide and probably 4 feet deep. Can’t really tell yet (I’m planning on getting in once the weather warms up). Anywho, Brady waded in with Blue in hand and brought him to a level where Blue couldn’t stand. Instead of swimming in a circle and coming straight back, Blue swam across to the other side of the water! Brady was so proud and then realized that we had to get Blue back on our side of the “pond.” I was cracking up because Blue had swum across in a hurried/controlled panic and Brady said “No, this is no time to be laughing because we have to get him back over here,” which made me laugh more. Using chicken jerkey dog treats as bait, we were eventually able to lure Blue back over to our side (after much running up and down the banks, pathetic looks, and then one crazy swim by Blue himself).

            About 3 sites later along the river, I was rowing along and Brady was scouting the banks when he said “OH MAN!” and grabbed the binoculars. I looked to my right and right on the bank coming down from an island was AN OTTER. Now, otters are elusive little buggers and the fact that we saw the otter come down and slide into the water was AWESOME. Brady didn’t see an otter last summer until the last few weeks of sampling. We hurried and beached the boat, hoping we could catch a glimpse of it, but the otter was gone. In it’s place, however, there was a fresh scat. The freshest we’ve collected thus far. Thanks to that otter, we found its scat, an additional scat, and a new site to sample. 

            A little ways down the river is where the awesome (and danger) got ratcheted up even higher. We floated into one of our sites, a bank with lots of hawthorn bushes (at least we think they’re hawthorns because they have big, annoying, painful thorns all over) and sage further back, and split up down the banks to look for signs and check snares. Earlier when we first checked out the site, I was looking for scat and looked up to see a moose checking me out over the sage about 30 feet away. I don’t know if anyone realizes this, but MOOSE ARE SNEAKY AND QUIET FOR THEIR SIZE. I saw the moose, grabbed Blue by the collar, and walked back to the raft, checking to see that the moose wasn’t charging at me (it was actually running away into the sagebrush). We thought, “Oh, it’s one moose, we probably won’t see one again.” WRONG. Today, I went down the same way to look for scat near the hawthorns and heard a low grunt (I call it a hum-grunt because that’s kind of what it sounds like). I looked up and saw a moose calf 10 feet in front of me (at most) and the mother moose’s leg poking out of the hawthorn on my left. I immediately turned tail and ran back towards the raft (I can run pretty quickly in waders, evidently), hollering “BRADY, GET BLUE!” I thought Blue was with Brady, who thought the dog was with me. Blue was actually checking out a pile of fresh guts behind a nearby bush, so we grabbed him, leashed him to the raft so he wouldn’t chase them and get into trouble, and went to check out the moose (me with camera in hand). On the way back towards the moose, we were walking really slowly and saying in loud, calm voices, “Hey MOOSE!” so we wouldn’t surprise them. Well, we found them. It was a mother and 2 tiny little calves, probably only a few weeks old.  They were coming out of the hawthorns as we were walking up, and Mom was rounding up both her calves by hum-grunting at them and a keeping sharp eye on us. I snapped a few pictures and we went back to the raft, talking loudly to let the moose know where we were and glancing back to make sure she wasn’t coming at us. Closest I’ve ever been and ever WANT to be to a wild moose. I was actually pretty lucky in that situation. I have a habit of talking out loud (a pet peeve of my sister), and that most likely alerted the mother moose to my presence when I was walking down to look for scat, so I didn’t startle her. When you startle a moose or get between a mother and her calf, it’s bad news for you. So my talking out loud is definitely good here (HAHA TAKE THAT, SIS). In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have high-tailed it out of there, That could have scared the moose into charging. I should have walked back slowly, keeping an eye on the moose and talking calmly to let her know I was leaving. Now I know.

            The awesome-ness did NOT end there. We continued floating downriver until we saw some splashing on the left side of the river. We thought it was an otter catching a fish or otters playing, so we booked it over there. Turns out, it was a bunch of GINORMOUS carp spawning in a small inlet (or at least we think they were spawning). These fish are ridiculously big. Earlier in the week, we had found a fish skull at one of our sites that was monstrous and had no idea what species it was…Guess we know now. We watched the fish for a while (Brady wanted to catch one bare-handed but no luck) and then continued on our way. Our last site was the end of the awesome day. There are beaver lodges spotted all along the river, and our last site has one and a beaver-made pond. Well, Brady stepped over the top of the lodge (most beaver lodges here are on land and not in the water) and heard something come out of it. We stood by the water and waited silently for a few minutes and then a big beaver popped up! It was rather large. It slipped back underwater and we waited again for it to come up. The second time it surfaced, Brady moved and the beaver smacked its tail on the water and went under. That was the last time we saw it, but it was still totally awesome. Hopefully we will see some more beavers and otters (otters LOVE beaver ponds and lodges) at that site.

            And that was my awesome day. It would’ve been better if I had run that morning at 6:30am like I’ve been doing, but I laid in bed and fell back asleep after my alarm went off. Getting into the habit and finding the sheer willpower to pull myself out of bed to run 5 miles at 6:30am is NOT an easy task. I made it up today though.....not too shabby.