I always know where my towel is.

The internet is finally working again!! :-D As promised, I have TONS to talk about - hopefully I can remember everything I wanted to say!

About 2 weeks ago, the night before Laura, one of the other interns, left for home, she and Jana and I decided to eat in town. (Who wants to cook the night before they leave? We wanted to celebrate!) We could have ridden bikes into town, but then we'd have been all gross and sweaty when we got there, which just wouldn't do. Instead, we participated in the "San Juan Rideshare" program, more commonly known as hitchhiking. There are Rideshare stops along most of the major roads around the island where you can wait for someone going the appropriate direction. The stops have signs posted with tips for using the program (including "Dress for success" - ie, don't look sketch - and only tell the driver your destination after they tell you theirs - so you can turn them down if you think they're too sketch). We waited for about 20 minutes before someone headed into town stopped for us, a nice older woman who lives on the island. (Apparently locals tend to be the ones who actually pick up people. Visiting tourists don't seem as keen on participating.) After dinner, we had an incredibly easy time getting a ride back out of town, the opposite of what normally happens! The second car to drive by the stop at the edge of town picked us up, a girl just a few years older than us, also a resident on the island. It was a pretty cool experience overall!

Since I last wrote about seals, we've gotten five more. Palila (named by Laura), a female, came in right at the beginning of July, followed quickly by Stilt (named by a staff member), a male.

Palila (taken 3 days ago), a brat if there ever was one!

Stilt (taken just after he came in), the sweetest pup so far. The green mark on his head was placed there by the Marine Mammal Stranding Network when they first checked on him. When he was still beached (and much skinnier!) 5 days later, they picked him up and brought him to us.

The last three seals came in over just two days, this past Friday and Saturday. Shrike, named by Alec, arrived on Friday, and she is the most gorgeous seal I've ever seen. On Saturday, another female arrived, which I dubbed Nukupu'u (the coolest name ever!). She was followed swiftly by a male, named Eskimo (short for Eskimo curlew) by Jana. Saturday was very hectic, with the arrival of two new seals!

Shrike. Isn't she gorgeous? One of the staff members told me dark seals are rarer, which is really too bad! We're joking that she should be set up with O'o so they can make beautiful dark-furred Harbor Seal babies! ;-)

Nukupu'u!! Supposedly, she's a real pill, but the one time I got to tube her she was perfectly fine! That may have had something to do with the fact that she'd been napping just before I fed her, but I'll take what I can get. ;-) Of course, she may turn out like Palila, acting like a brat for everyone but the person who named her (*knock on wood!*).

Eskimo. He seems like a pretty good seal, so far. He hasn't given people too much trouble with feedings yet, but that could always change! (Plus, he's being compared to Nuku, who makes Shrike and Eskimo look like angels.)

We actually got some garter snakes in this past week!! I was really excited. I think all my time with the reptiles and amphibians at the museum last year turned me into a herp person... or just brought out the herp lover lurking inside me all along! Both of them had been rescued from cats, so they got antibiotics for a couple days, along with some crickets. They recovered pretty quickly, and we got to release both of them! :-)

We've also got a baby gull, and it's absolutely adorable. Adult gulls? Kind of ugly. This kid? Cute as all get out. He's fuzzy and kind of awkward, and he reminds me of pictures of the Dodo, with a very round body, small stubby wings, and a stout beak. I really hope he gets better - I think he got hit by something (a car?), and it caused him to bleed into his right eye. He seems to have some vision problems because of it; if he's lucky, they'll go away as his eye heals. One of the staff rehabbers pointed out that a one-eyed gull should be able to survive perfectly fine anyway - I know I've seen one-legged gulls that looked pretty healthy, so a missing eye shouldn't be too tough to deal with.

Two weeks ago, on one of my days off, I got to go on a whale-watching tour. I managed to get on a really great trip! There are three resident pods - J, K, and L - that generally remain in the San Juans, and all three pods were hanging out in the same area that day. I got to see tons of whales, including a couple calves!! They exhibited all the typical behaviors, from spyhopping to breaching. The calves especially seemed to like jumping completely out of the water. A few whales also swam up really near to our boat, which let me get some awesome pictures. I wanted to enjoy watching the whales, so I was mostly just aiming in a general direction, shooting, and hoping something came out, but when the whales actually swam about 15 yards from the boat, I managed to get some really great shots. I will admit, though, a lot of my pictures are nothing but sea or sky, depending on which way the boat was rocking! It was a really awesome experience (but incredibly cold!) and, if I'm lucky, I might get to go again. The company giving the tours lets Wolf Hollow interns go for free when they have open spaces, so it's a really great deal! If I can't think of anything to do next "weekend", I might try for some more great shots - this weekend I'm going to try and visit Canada!