Clarice and I get to work together in the woods, doing property surveys. I
run the "instrument" (total station) she runs the "rod" (prism pole). We do
it all across the state, usually in the mountains and foothills, usually
alone, and have managed to keep it up to the point that we are about to
toast our 25th anniversary to it all.

One of our best clients owns a 2500 acre tree farm in the very wet, rainy,
convergence zone area near Jim Creek on the western foothills of the
Cascades just east of Arlington. Interesting area-- Church of Amageddon,
Indian Ridge state reformatory, the big Jim Creek military communications
array, and its pretty wild. Started working out there in 1990. First
question: anybody know how long a Northwestern toad lives? In 1991 Clarice
stumbled upon a seething mass of less than one inch toads (Bufo boreas)
gathered in the clumped up dirt left by a grader that had passed along a
logging road. She gathered up a large handful and we took them home in our
lunch bag. We still have one; he-- or she-- is named Darth and lives in our
greenhouse eating pillbugs and slurping up the leftovers our two eclectus
parrots throw out on the floor. Darth is a serious big toad now, and goes
in to hiding for long enough periods that I forget about him (her) until one
day he (she) steps out and surprises me. Eight years or more-- is that a
bunch for one of these?

Just last week we went back, to run out a line through the woods to help the
partnership do a dissolution thing and figure out how to split up. Kind of
sad, watching our friends break up. Those of you who have spent any time on
a timber tract in the moist parts of Western Wash. know how wild and thick a
foothills forest can get, especially this year. It was wet, wet, wet. Thick
and grey; salmonberries and elderberrries coating you as you work with moss
and wet earth. The little teensy green tree frogs were coming out of the
piles of bear dung.

Birds: we have dealt a lot with Swainson's thrushes, (remember the Cornell
lab forest bird thing of a year or so ago where they sent you the C.D's to
drive them bananas)-- but never like this. Last week there was one or two
every 30 feet. Once, while doing MAPS banding I heard a Swainson's going
"whit" in a bush near a net; I stood on the other side and whistled my own
imitation and bagged the bird in 10 seconds. Here, while waiting for
Clarice's voice to crackle from the radio, I felt like the little ghosts
were stalking me. Also lots of "fitz-bew" sounds from above.

Yesterday, we chopped a survey line up a creek bed so that we were traveling
up a tunnel of decaying hemlock and cedar. Clarice was ahead, working around
a particularly big hemlock, and I was peering back at the survey backsight
when a pair of tufted ears appeared on the far side of a rotten stump. We
see bobcats often enough, but they are hard to pick out in the dim green
stuff. This fellow just appeared in our tunnel, stopped, looked around,
looked at me, and got this "duh" expression. Only when I quietly called
Clarice on the radio did it vanish. Back tracking, we found this two foot
high subway through the leaves and branches; we had cut across it with our
line. I imagine he was dining quiet well on the thrushes. A little further
down we helped the fellow that cruised the place clean out one of the
stations for his welfare bears (tree farmers feed black bears this time of
year to keep them from stripping the trees) and the noise from bumping the
metal feeder brought the bears out to sniff and dance around us with great
interest.

Finally, we finished and it wasn't raining and was still daylight. So we
gathered up the cruiser and drove our good ol' boy pickups to a dirt bank
and proceeded with some pre fourth of July target practice. This tree farm,
like just about all of them, is crossed with easements that run to State DNR
land. That means that logging trucks will belch and roar around a curve
while you are trying to take notes and will slow down, slink by, the driver
will wave, and an empty aluminum soda can will fly out and land in the ditch
nearby for you to pick up and shoot at before your take it home to recycle.
We had a fair collection of cans that needed holes punched and some bleach
and detergent bottles that needed detonation and a dirt bank and no one else
was around. So, out came the .44 magnum, the 357 Smith, the 9 mm. Beretta,
the Kahr, and a nice lever action rifle to compete with the Swainsons'
calling for sex.

Now, Clarice is not one for indiscriminate blasting, but (admit it) she is
just like the rest of us when it comes to destroying slugs. Especially the
wrinkley brown slimey ones. She will spend the morning minutes before
breakfast patrolling our garden with ammonia in spray bottles to watch them
scream. The cruiser had a plywood target setup by the dirt bank, and due to
the atmospheric conditions it had a plethora of slugs munching on the paper
targets left over from his last week's celebrations. We took out a survey
tape, and measured out a course to see how close we had to get to be able to
hit a slug (Arion ater) with a slug (9 mm. plumbeous). It is hard to hit a
slug with a handgun. But our scientific discovery of the day was that if you
do hit one it explodes. Quite a satisfying explosion. Not the usual neat
little hole in the paper target-- instead you get a hydraulic blast that
rips the paper to shreds. It left us all with a silly giggle-- and none of
us are hunters.

And, once the echoes stop and the smoke clears, the Swainsons are still next
next door fluting their rollicking
songs. They don't fly away; they don't mind rednecks for neighbors. I wonder
what they think when the chainsaw drops a hemlock on their nest.

Jerry Broadus
Geometrix Surveying, Inc.
P.O. Box 249
Puyallup, WA. 98371