Yesterday afternoon at about 4 pm I was completing the initial fieldwork on a survey of the remaining 10 acres of what once was a 100 acre dairy farm. The other 90 acres had been sold off to a neighboring megafarm about twenty years ago, leaving 10 and the house, barns and various outbuildings - 7 structures all told. The remainder parcel had been occupied by the widow of the last of 4 generations who had worked the farm, less and less as time passed, until his death in the early nineties. As the widow had become unable to take care of herself, the family was moving her into an elder-warehouse and selling the remainder to finance the move and her care.
The place has fallen into serious disrepair over the years, little being done to care for the house and nothing to maintain the farm buildings. All were seriously overgrown with vegetation - sumac & Virginia creeper & poison ivy & bull thistle & multiflora rose & burdock, etc. Every building had its share of swallow families, and wasps & hornets in abundance. It was necessary to cut line alongside several of the buildings just to string out the rag tape to measure them up. None of the inhabitants were particularly pleased at the disturbance, and the swallows had a swell time diving and swooping at me.
After an hour and a half of work I had a 99.5% completed sketch of the whole shebang and was measuring the last side of the last barn when out of the open door swooped an irate swallow and dropped a nice big blop of runny swallow poop right in the middle of my sketch. Take THAT, interloper.
Eeeeewwww, very nasty. Fortunately, a couple of paper towels removed the bulk of the unpleasantness and the sketch is still legible, albeit not as pristine as I might like. I decided that it WAS an omen and packed it in for the week.
SS
Swallow..................poop.........................two words that should never be used together.....................
Sergeant Schultz, post: 379019, member: 315 wrote: I decided that it WAS an omen and packed it in for the week.
[sarcasm]Well, was it pointed in a Northerly direction ?[/sarcasm]
Try doing topo on a nesting colony of sea gull some time. It was on one of my first seasons surveyeing in Alaska and I got the envious job of running the rod while being incessantly dive bombed by PO'd seagulls who would swoop in and drop ungodly quantities of guano on my head while moving from shot to shot. The gunner and PC wet themselves laughing at my plight and my green grunden rain gear was nearly white with all the runny nauseating gull poo. To this day I wonder if the whole thing was just a joke to 'welcome' me into the fold. (I looked for a puking smiley face to insert here, but found none... Wendell?).
Smart move there SS.
What? No suit coat and tie? How unprofessional?
Williwaw, post: 379066, member: 7066 wrote: my green grunden rain gear was nearly white with all the runny nauseating gull poo.
That's why I like working in the rain...:stakeout::skull::sun:
[sarcasm]Not sure about swallows, but I've heard of an Omen Pigeon.[/sarcasm]
Sergeant Schultz, post: 379019, member: 315 wrote: It was necessary to cut line alongside several of the buildings just to string out the rag tape to measure them up.
What is this rag tape and measure up that you speak of?...I am realizing that with the advent of reflectorless and distos, I havent done that for years.
