Friday presentation and Saturday bird tour...

Yesterday we did another presentation at an RV park in Donna, TX. We had to leave here by 7:00 in order to get there in time to set up and present at 9:00. All went well and we were asked to return again in February. Of course, both Diana and myself will be gone by then, so we'll pass it on to one of the next sets of volunteers.

Janie and Bob moved on to their next assignment yesterday and by today, we had two new couples join us on the refuge. It's sad to see good people move on, but we know we'll probably see them again sometime down the road. We have had a really good group of volunteers here this fall and early winter. Everyone got along well and made the time very enjoyable. That doesn't always happen.

Anyway, after the presentation, we decided to visit Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge since it was in the vicinity. I had visited there last year, but Diana had not. We walked one of the trails and scoped out the visitor's center. Santa Ana gets a lot more visitors than Laguna, mainly due to their mid valley location (in my opinion). Laguna has more birds and mammals and is 50 times the size, but is more remote and difficult to get to. We also took a look at the volunteer RV sites for future reference.

Leaving there, we stopped at Willie's BBQ for lunch in Alamo. Not sure I'd ever return there since my chicken taco had bones in it. Yuck!! We also stopped in Harlingen on the way back to try to set up an appointment to get the Blue Ox base plate installed and have the braking system switched from the old car to the new car. I wasn't entirely successful with that venture and will have to call them again on Monday.

Once back to the refuge, we put the van away and after giving Emma some exercise, I made a homemade personal size pizza for dinner. The rest of the evening was spent watching TV and catching up on some blogs that I follow.

We had a bird tour this morning, but weren't able to use the back roads because of the torrential downpour that we had on New Year's Eve. It takes at least a week for the back roads to become usable after a good rain. We had a very pleasant couple from Indiana on the tour and spent an enjoyable four hours on the paved roads in the refuge.

This afternoon, I went to the visitor's center to turn in my December work hours and spent some time helping out Andy and Brenda since it was a day that was very busy for them. Then we got a phone call from someone reporting a dead ocelot. Since there were no "brown shirts" working today, Brenda had to call dispatch which is located at Santa Ana refuge. After a little hassle from them, I ended up going to the house of the refuge biologist that works with the ocelots to let her know about the report. All reports of dead ocelots are immediately investigated to get the body and determine cause of death and whether or not it is one of the refuge ocelots. I'll have to find out next week what became of the investigation.

I'm thinking we should have another potluck this week before the last archery hunt begins on Thursday. I'd better get an announcement and list up in the Outpost tonight so folks have a chance to sign up.

Thanks for stopping by....talk to you later, Judy