Start building the ark

Thanks to Victor for the pictures of the rain.  

I know, I've been pretty bad at keeping the blog updated this week. Just so much has been happening. Well actually not that much but the fact I started watching Criminal Minds on Netflix after finishing my 4th book here. I'll do a recap of the past week though to bring you all up to speed. Actually part of the reason why I'm lagging is because I haven't had the pictures to keep ya'll entertained while reading my blog.

Last Thursday (if I can remember right), Courtney and I woke up for patrol at 1 am and it was pouring outside. Since the rain was falling so hard we rethought the idea of patrolling. Thelast time we went out in such heavy rain we had to out run a thunderstorm and could hardly see anything. Courtney also had to go get Victor out of the hammock. Vic has been sleeping in the hammock due to a dog problem. He will usually spend the night in the hatchery and then go on early patrol (about 3 or 4 am). So since Courtney and I weren't going to patrol in the middle of the night we thought we might as well get up in the morning and do the 4:30 patrol to make sure the whole beach was covered, a group going north and one going south.

We didn't end up patrolling until closer to 5:30. It was still raining so hard and the tide was still up; we would not have been able to see anything. Between our wake up at 4:30 and our waiting around until 5:30, the power managed to go out (later we found out a transformer went out). Once we started the patrol and despite the rain, while Court and I walked the south end of the beach we found a turtle! She looked really pale so we were not quite sure if she was awake or not until we saw her blink. She fell asleep while digging her nest. We went behind her to see where she was in the process, it looked like she was burying her nest. The sand was so wet and we were so far away from the tide line at this point, it was like trying to dig a hole in the wet sand. We managed to find 12 eggs, but were unable to find an actual nest. Gathering the 12 eggs we marked the nest and continued on the beach. The next day we went out looked again for more eggs, we thought once the sand was a little drier we would be able to find some sort of nest but we think that she only laid the 12 eggs and aborted.

I thought it rained a lot in Rohnert Park, and while I still think it does rain way to much in Northern California it rains way more here. Between 11 PM ish (when it started raining) and 5:30 AM when we went on patrol a whole 5 gallon bucket that we have outside the hatchery had filled, and it wasn't slowing down yet. Our power was still out by the time we got back from patrol so we had to limit our time in and out of the refrigerator. Also, we are on a well system so toilet use was limited too, Victor was told he could go out side if he had to go to the bathroom. But we also run only on electricity at our house, our stove and oven are electric. That really bummed Courtney and I out when we realized we could not make hot chocolate when we got home from patrol. Along with the power being out the internet wasn't working, so it wasn't going to be a rainy Netflix day, however Courtney, our volunteers and I all had books to read (I was only stressed that my iPad battery might die). But no worries we all survived and so did our yard, kind of. It was very flooded and sadly we learned that our hatchery doesn't drain too well either, 4 of our nests drowned.

We've had rainy days since, luckily the power has only gone off one more day since, and our backyard has drained out. Oh and my bug bite is looking much better! Our two American volunteers have since left for home and now we have 2 German girls for the next three weeks. As long as we don't scare them off that is... But Courtney, Victor, I have gotten way to used to it being the three of us so we aren't that exciting to the girls.