It appears that up until now all these entries have been about hiking, fishing, and seeing animals… but I do actually work too. See this picture of Jamie and Dave driving our boat across the scenic lake on the beautiful sunny day? This is work.
The only not fun part of these boating days is waking up at 4:30 am. The lake gets rough in the afternoon, so we have to force ourselves out of bed to be on the water by dawn. Although the lake is quite lovely in the morning – all glassy with the islands and the Absaroka Mountains showing through the mist and plumes of steam rising from the geyser basins. I drove the boat over to our first otter latrine, on Columbine Creek, and we set to work. We set hair snares (modified trapping snares – they’re fastened with a paperclip instead of a lock so they let the otter go after some hair has been snagged). To find good snare sites, we follow trails of packed down earth and scat left by the otters, and construct little log barricades so the otter has to go through our snare.
We also collect plenty of scat for to get DNA. Otter scat has a lovely musky fishy smell – sometimes you smell the latrines before you see them.
Down in the southeast arm, we have to drive really really slow to protect nesting birds or something. Time to nap, eat lunch, or fish. I have one of the silly kids life jackets with the hood, which makes quite a nice pillow. Here’s Ken with a big cutthroat trout (these are the fish the otters like to eat).
At a latrine on Promentory Point, we find otter hair in our snares. The hair gets plucked off with tweezers and put into little envelopes that eventually end up in our freezer with our food.
On the way back, the lake is freakishly calm – no wind or waves, and its even sunny. Alas, such luck can’t last. The motor dies only a mile from the marina, and we are forced to call the fisheries boat for help (It’s fun talking on the radio, using our call sign and other radio talk). We take the cover off the motor and poke things until it works again, so the fisheries crew doesn’t have to tow us back after all.
2 comments:
4:30 am.... psssshhhhh. I've been getting up before then since I started. 20 minutes after sunrise at my first point.
Haha, jk. Glad you finally saw an otter!
You know Jan, your Grandpa is insulted. Just Sunnies? The fish log book says that you caught the largest bass among all of your cousings...17" in 1988. Even bigger than Jordan's 16.5" bass three nights ago.
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