Spring Break?

Well it is Spring Break for the University and Campus and Huntsville ARE DEAD!!!!

All in all it is a nice change to relax and take your mind off things. After all I am basically getting paid to type this up so in a way I am having my own spring break. I think that will be the thing I miss the most about getting a real full time, big money paying job: the Holidays and recesses that you get off because the kids have off. Because technically here the ISDs in the area are either off this week or the upcoming week so it is slow here. Next week we have a few standard tours of the just the houses and museum intro for some senior groups where we don't even really have to dress up.

Of course the most common phrase that follows Spring Break, after beach, boobs and booze is Spring Cleaning. We already took care of that here yesterday. Went out to the Kitchen, cleaned out the ashes from the fireplace, gave them to Peter to add to his compost. Peair (our Juvenile correction center worker from Gulf Coast) stacked up some more firewood. Cleared out the benches in the kitchen for the people to sit down on while we talk and swept out the dirt floor. Yes, we sweep out the dirt floor. The kids end up kicking the dirt or digging into the clay floor and dusting the dust and dirt up into the air.

Then Helen went to clean the leaves and turn the soil in the Herb Garden next to the Kitchen. I then went to the grotto and did that stuff there. Basically the grotto is a natural spring that feeds into the Duck Pond that Huntsvillians have so named even though Sam Houston calls it Lake Oolooteka after his adopted Cherokee father. It has been there easily 200+ years. I make sure there is no trash in the little pool it creates before is trickles down stream to the pond. (Of which it does look like a pond more than a lake because of the size and the ducks and geese are ALL around it and crap in it and exercise in it and the kids all throw bread and crackers in it along with trash from the teenagers and hooligans- getting back on track.) I clear the leaves/ twigs/ foliage from the path the stream takes picking up the trash that gathers along the way. I mainly do that so the stream runs clear and the decaying smell is gone and flows to the pond/lake nicely. Then go to the other side where it falls into the creek and make sure it flows nicely there. There is another part of the creek that has no water in it that runs only the top of the pond. I usually go climbing down in there in my $15 rubber boots from Walmart to pick up trash and glass. Now it is more glass that I am picking up. Mainly so I don't step on it later or cut myself on it.

See I was given grotto duty by Peter the Grounds Keeper at the Museum. Mainly because I am motivated and there are days when I do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING and I feel like at least that way I am helping out with something.

After I did grotto duty, I went hunting for Eggs. No, its not Easter pre-hunting but for duck eggs. There are TONS of ducks at the pond and we need to have a way to control their population because they don't run on the natural schedule and mate when they are supposed to. They do it whenever the heck they want, not caring if a school group is nearby and they cause us to tell the kids they are wrestling or fighting over a piece of bread. Sandy (Collections Registrar- part time here and part time at the Texas Prison Museum) has given me duck duty as well. Well to help her when I can or do it when I can't but basically it is permission to do. We go around to the nesting hot spots and pick up the eggs that then go to the incubation farm after we call our person to come get them. Some days you are lucky and others you aren't, some you have to crawl for, some you have to watch out because you almost stepped on it on the path.

Recently about 2 weeks ago now, I was supposed to go hunting for them... couldn't find any at all. I wasn't looking in the right spot. In ONE NEST we found 30 eggs. We figure they do the thing where it takes a whole tribe to raise a child and they have community nests and take turns sitting on them or some lay that can and others sit that want to. Anyways moving on. Obviously it was a nest we hadn't found yet but wow!!! Sandy found 15 in other place and I found 12 on Friday in a known nest but couldn't get the hen off of it. The eggs look the same as regular eggs but slightly larger and the shell is a bit tougher.

I will help Sandy with that again tomorrow. It is rather fun and if anything it helps keep your mind active looking for new places and still coming back to the old ones because you know some either didn't read the memo or was never given it. It sadly is a hunt that exhilarates you and keeps dragging you back to it even though you just did it the other day.