Mary Jane and other Highs and Lows - August 4, 2007

So, Emily and I were driving around earlier in the week, I believe it was Thursday, and Emily mentioned something about all the marijuana at the refuge. I looked at her and said "Wha....??" And she told me to look along the fence lines and sure enough - covered with wild marijuana plants.

And the real kicker is that the state of Oklahoma planted them up here on purpose. Apparently, they are really good at stabilizing the soil. The only problem is that this non native plant took to OK soil really well. And now they can't get rid of it. The result is wild marijuana along most of the fence posts up here. It's even in Enid, right around the corner from a school!

I've been told it's not very good to smoke, because it's not "cultivated" and that it won't make a person high. I'm still highly amused though. I'm itching to go take some pictures and put it in the plant book. After all, it is a plant, and it is found on the refuge!

EDIT: So, after a recent convo with my refuge police officer neighbor, the state of OK is kinda cool with keeping it around because quail and dove love the seeds. And Oklahomans love hunting quail and dove. He also hasn't encountered many problems with it. Some people will pick it to water down their stuff to make it sell further, or they will try to plant their cultivated stuff amongst the "ditch weed" to keep it hidden. Then you have the okies who think they've hit the land of milk and honey. But those are few and far between.

On the "experiencing new things" front, this week I had three roommates. Hah. It was only Wednesday through Friday, but it sure felt like a full week. They were all pretty pleasant to chat with. It was an OSU grad student and two technicians, one who was my age, and one who was older. All very fun to sit around the table and chat with. However, they don't make very good roommates. Or maybe they do, and I've just been so spoiled that no roommate is a good roommate (you have to understand, I haven't had to deal with a roommate in over 3 years). Let's see. On my grievance list, they shoved all my food to the back of the fridge to make room for theirs, they left their dirty dishes in the sink, they didn't clean out the coffee pot, the grad student smoked, and left his cig. butts in beer bottles out on the front porch and didn't throw those away, the grad student took off with my pink lighter, they broke a couple of my packing boxes, and they tracked dirt and stickers all through the house.

So. By Friday afternoon I was pretty tense. However, they cleaned up, for the most part, before they left. The woman swept and did the dishes, and the beer bottles and 1 of the broken boxes were thrown away. They hid the other one under my other boxes. My lighter is still gone, and the coffee pot still needed to be cleaned out. The stickers are slowly leaving the house. I'm using a very technical method of finding them. That is, I step on them, yell and cuss, and then throw them away. Anyhoot, not too shabby for roommates, I guess. They're coming back too. In a couple of weeks. It is then when I will get my pink lighter back from Smoky McSmokerson. :)

Because of the roommates and a slight disenchantment with the least tern guy that I'm working with, this week was not as good as last week. But on the plus side, we finally saw 2 horned lizards on our census yesterday, along with a Great Plains toad, numerous Woodhouse toads, numerous Prairie-lined lizards (which is shown in the picture), a black widow, two newborn mice (who were being made a meal of by ants. We saved them so they could be a snack for a pet snake), and Night Hawks, and a Night Hawk chick. Pretty cool day, and Night Hawks are quickly going up there on my list o' favorite birds. The chicks will hang out on a road, and be extremely well camouflaged. This makes them the world's most daring when it comes to playing Chicken. With a car coming down the road, they will wait til the very last second before abandoning their hiding spot. This sometimes means fatalities, but more often it means a very startled reaction from the driver, who thought that she was actually paying attention to the road very well.










Next week the number of my tasks increases. I'll be continuing with the Horned Lizard survey, maybe a little more Tern work, and the Plant book and data entry, as always. But I will also be starting my very own (publishable?) research on the Ord's Kangaroo rat, and I will start spraying the Salt Cedar that is threatening to take over the refuge. Then I think we're starting the deer censusing next week, and I need to start boning up on the environmental education programs. I got a crash course yesterday that was pretty overwhelming. Emily ended up giving me some enormous books on the subject. That should help pass the time while I'm up here at the office today.

Parents are also coming today, hopefully they'll get here about 3:00. Very excited to see them! Mom and I are going to do lots of cooking this visit so I have some casseroles and stuff to eat over the week.

Since I've been here I've been noticing a different way of speaking. It's almost like going abroad. :) "success" and "successful" becomes "sussess" and "sussessful". "Suffice" becomes "Surffice". "Woodward" becomes "Woodard" (and you kind of swallow that first "d" so it almost sounds like "Wooard").

And, when my mail got sent to the wrong address, the person at the address wrote "Do not live here" - Reading it was almost like hearing it, which equates with something like hearing nails on a chalkboard or hearing Styrofoam rubbing and squeaking together.

I also am bombarded with orange. Lots and lots of it. And as football season gets closer, the more I get teased because of my boomer sooner love. Therefore, anyone with a good OSU joke - please feel free to tell me. I need to start retorting. Apparently, every intern gets their very own nickname. The last one was called "dude" because he acted like a "dude" - the kind that belongs on the movie "dude where's my car". So far, it appears my nickname is "Boomer sooner". Haha, I kinda like it.

Alright. I could probably continue to ramble on, but this is probably enough for now. :)