A new talent to add to my resume

Along with doing wildlife surveys, leading tours, working with kids, giving interpretive programs, and mowing, I can now add very experienced post painter!  I bet no many of you can say that!

Some of you may be familiar with these kinds of signs seen on National Wildlife Refuges.  Often they’ll have the Blue Goose printed on them, and can be found on the boundaries of a refuge.  Well, all of them are attached to some kind of post and at Tamarac, those posts are wooden.  Over time, the stain wears off and must be renewed.

Before                                                            After

This is a very tall sign, and I was only able to paint most of the right hand post.  Tomorrow I’ll bring a step ladder along with me to finish it.

I have been given several gallon jugs of the stain, which is more like paint, and it is put on with a brush.  Anyone want to guess how many of these wood posts can be found on a refuge that has 40,000 acres?  Signs similar to the top one can be found on each side of the road every quarter mile.  Some of them aren’t exactly easy to get to either while carrying an open one gallon can and wet brush. 

Did I also mention deer flies?  Oh well, I look at it as job security.  In six hours today, I only got 17 posts painted.  That is literally a drop in the bucket!  I’m kind of thinking it’s going to take me most of my work hours until I leave near the end of September to finish this job.

One of the perks of this assignment is that I spend the whole day outside.  As I was working on one of the posts this afternoon, something caught my attention out of the corner of my eye.  It was a cicada emerging from the ground, and wouldn’t you know it decided to climb up my freshly painted post.

It eventually slid off of the post back onto the ground, but not before it got some of the paint on it’s head and legs.  Dumb bug!  I’m glad it went elsewhere to find a tree to climb up. 

I was finally able to pick up my car from the collision repair place this afternoon, but not everything is finished.  Fixing the door handle didn’t turn out to be as easy as they thought.  Apparently this is a common problem with this model of Focus, so Ford developed a better system.  That means it will be several more days before those parts come in, so I opted to get my wheels back while I wait for them to come in.  Hopefully by the end of the week I’ll be able to stop the Chinese fire drill stuff of trying to get into the car.  Some people misunderstood my last post and thought I’d had trouble with the door for three years.  It’s only been broken for a little over a month.  It was just the last straw that made me get everything fixed.

Thanks for stopping by… talk to you later,  Judy