Suicidal Wildlife

Tuesday, May 25th: Headed out with Cliff this morning to do a sex check on some RCW's. After properly identifying the adult birds present in the area, we took the "peeper" camera and looked inside the next to determine the sex of the chicks. Male RCW's have a white/red circle on the tops of their heads when their young and females just have a white stripe. Once we finished with the check, we left to go take care of banding chicks at other nests.
As Cliff and I drove off to the next area, something occurred to me. Whenever Cliff is behind the wheel of a vehicle (and I don't think it matters what kind of vehicle), animals seem to get a death wish and literally dart out in front of the truck. I never seem to have this problem but I witnessed it first hand as countless animals of all shapes and sizes attempted (and sometimes succeeded) in committing suicide under the truck. After a while, we passed a herd of cattle. I made the smart comment, "Careful, one of these cows might try and dart out". No sooner had the words gotten out of my mouth then a cow darted in front of us. Luckily, Cliff had been working on his brake and pray technique all morning and we stopped before hitting the suicidal beef.

Tomorrow I have the day off. I get to drive into Orlando and pick Chelsea up from the airport. We're going to go meet with some friends for lunch and dinner and shop around. I need to pick up a few things from BassPro while we're there. Chelsea is staying until Sunday so I'll get to spend time with her all weekend too.