Day Four - Saturday - Proud

You like my "P" word day descriptors?

I forgot to put up a picture of me in the cave; I figured everyone might get a kick out of it, but it's a little dark, so forgive me. For your viewing pleasure:

Yup, I actually got my butt into a cave. I walked all the way in, luckily I had my nose to light the way (Marc, if you ever read this, that Ruldolph reference was for you), got in, said yup it's a cave, and tried not to run back out. Totally gave me the heebie jeebies.

On Saturday we spent the whole day at Ocean Fair at the Kilauea Point refuge. It's a multi-agency fair that they do every year to educate the public about wildlife and ocean issues. I was so proud of my kids that day. Everyone who worked at the refuge kept coming to tell me how lucky I was to have such a great group, and I really was. They jumped right in to the work, never complaining, never standing around trying to avoid helping. And, they really had fun.

I actually had fun as well, despite being assigned for several hours to the albatross bolus table. Look there I am, teaching some wild haired guy about albatross boluses (boli? I'm not sure...) Now, for those of you who don't know, an albatross bolus is much like an owl pellet. We were supposed to explain it as, "what a young albatross regurgitates before fledging for the first time." This is albatross puke people! Before the bird flies away for the first time it wants to feel all light and frisky, so it pukes up the stuff it can't digest! When the park ranger first informed me that I'd be hanging at this table I looked at her and said simply, "No." She assured me that it wasn't gross, but this was also the girl who said that the blind snake/worm was cute, so I wasn't buying.

Turns out it's not too gross. It's completely dry, and unfortunately, mostly a bunch of plastic. There is also some natural fibrous stuff and a bunch of squid beaks (indigestible jaw of a squid), but those are brittle and not disgusting. It smelled a little rancid, as dried puke is wont to do, but after a while I stopped being skeeved out and had fun with it. Plus, it was really an activity for little kids, so that was super fun! By the way, if a ten year old boy thinks it's nasty, it probably is.

Ocean Fair was a delight (with the yummiest shrimp wagon lunch ever - yay Savage Shrimp!) but was completely exhausting. Once we got back to the campsite I just wanted to veg, but the kids were dying for one last time at the beach. So, I bargained with them and since they got the van cleaned out, I took them back to Black Pots. This was my first real "mom" moment of the trip: One of the girls told me that she wasn't going to help because everyone else would get it done. I told her that if she didn't help, I'd leave her behind. She helped.

Poor kids. We get to the beach, the group leader goes bounding into the water, and I see some older man go running after her. He talks to her, she gets out, and I'm really confused. Apparently there had been a shark sighting and everyone was told to stay out of the water for a couple of hours. Oh well. They all hung out on the beach instead and I walked around and called my mom to tell her about the albatross puke and how happy I was to be going home the next day.

My second mom moment came when we were leaving the beach and one of the girls informed me that her friend would be "stopping by" later. The conversation went something like this: "I'm sorry, you can't have any friends come by, you'll have to call and tell him." "He's not my boyfriend!!" "I don't care if he's your boyfriend or not, we are guests at the refuge, it is a privilege to stay there, and you are not allowed to have people over!" "Well I'll just go meet him on the road then." (oh my god, you have got to be joking) "No, you won't. Please call him now and tell him because I don't want him showing up and me having to deal with it, or the people in the bunkhouse having to deal with it." Then there was just silent fuming and I knew she was cursing me in her head. Tough break kid. You're 21; you know better. The team leader backed me up and was so embarrassed by it. I had to reassure her that it was fine, and completely not her fault.

M had made a big fire for us at the campsite, so I made a pot of spaghetti and then the kids were just going to hang out by the fire all night. Around 11 I was surprised at how quiet they are, but figured they were just exhausted and had gone to bed. Turns out I was wrong. They were frog hunting, and needed stealth capability. Glad I was in my tent at that point!