Fish fry!

Both of my roommates are out fishing in the bay right now so I've been promised a fish dinner. My belly is ready, the fish better be biting today...

Our bowling night last week turned into bowling, go-karting and salsa dancing at a bar with live music. Needless to say we had an incredible time and it was so great to catch up with our friends and meet new people. Quite a few of the herpetology employees from the zoo and employees from the Mexico turtle camp came so we managed to more or less take over.

Work has been really great lately, even though we were a bit short staffed this weekend. So many of the interns requested this weekend off so there were only four employees working at STI to manage all the morning chores as well as all the tours and the traffic through the gift shop. On Saturday morning we had a downpour so we opened a little early to get all of our visitors out of the rain. Fortunately we have a new roof that works so much better in the rain than the cover we had last year. But unfortunately they haven't finished putting on the rubber cover so with the strong wind and the continued intense rain everything was soaking wet anyway. Including us, which made for a very cold morning.

On Sunday morning I had a family that came back to visit me at STI. The week before they had been on my tour and during every tour I mention the importance of picking up our trash on our beach and encourage visitors to pick up additional trash as well (on South Padre Island there is a campaign for this, it's called the Unlitter Campaign). So this family, Kim, Jordan and Summer, had been out on the beach and were helping by picking up trash when Summer found a can in the water with a fish inside. They cut open the can to free the scorpion fish which had grow so large in this protective shell that it could no longer fit out of the opening. The family of course took pictures and then put the fish back in the water. So they wanted to share their story with me and brought me some of the pictures of the fish and the can. It was a bizarre feeling for me to see that something I had taught someone did make a difference and it was a very encouraging lesson for me.

Later that afternoon we played a little musical turtle and moved around some of the hawksbills to clear out one of tanks so it could be cleaned and repainted. I always love helping move turtles and this time is was particularly fun because we were finally able to put Whittle and Buddy into the big new tank. It was great to see two little turtles swimming around such a big tank and they seemed to have so much fun exploring and stretching their flippers.

The construction continues and today at STI they should be finish up the roof and installing lights over some of the tanks. Now that we are done with the latest tank we will start preparing for the next tank, which will mean even more swimming room for some of our turtles.

It's going to be a great and very busy 4th of July week. A lot of the interns are having friends come visit so when we all get together for our own barbecue it should be quite the party.

I promise more pictures of our turtles will be coming soon, but since I only have a few of my own I'm becoming dependent on the photographic skills of others.

Act like a little kid, listen to music that inspires you (today for me it's MaCaCo).