Older and more mature...
Spoooooky!
Well, the night of the 30th was fun…we spent the evening watching Plump Fiction with Tim and Carol…a satirical movie based on….yoooouuu guessed it! Pulp Fiction…which I have yet to watch, but threw in lots of other movies as well. It would have been funnier, I think, if I had seen Pulp Fiction…but it was funny none-the-less! We then went to bed…Usko and Fancy had been in the camper staying dry since it NEVER ceases to rain in Montana…so we let them out to potty before bed. Meanwhile, we got our camper ready for bed and, while doing so, heard Usko growling like I’ve never heard him growl before. I went outside and found Usko standing next to the camper, looking across the field/yard with his hackles up and growling. Fancy was going a bit farther into the field, her hackles up as well, but would come back to me and circle again.
By now D had come out to see what was going on because I had grabbed the flashlight…we shined the light around the field and walked further out into the field. Usko had stopped growling and now both of the dogs were further in the field…going toward one of the far corners. We shined the flashlight into that corner and briefly saw Usko heading toward that corner…Fancy was behind us…D moved the flashlight to other parts of the field and then back to that corner. When the flashlight lit up two eyes, we figured it was Usko and started calling him back to us to go to bed…and he came back to us from a different corner…so, the eyes weren’t his! We looked and made sure that both dogs were with us, then looked back…and the eyes were gone!!!! Have no clue what it was…but it was about the size of Usko. Not a bear or Fancy would have been barking like mad…not a coyote because they can’t get into the yard…sooooo…what could it have been? My best guess is a mountain lion…that’s the only thing I can think of that would have gotten into the yard and would have been about the right size. We shall never know!!!!!
In the morning, I walked out to that corner with Fancy hopping along in the grass with me and, when we got to that corner, her nose just went crazy…she couldn’t stop sniffing the whole area…I looked for tracks or hair on the fence and didn’t find a thing…interesting…have no idea what it was.
The day went by slowly…cold, windy and rainy. We hung in the morning with Tim and Carol, then hooked up the family trap and took it to the landfill to clean out the dirty hay that had been in there with the grizzlies we released last week. We then took it to Glacier National Park where it is stored (the state shares it with the park). They have a pressure washer we usually use to clean it…but they had taken it down for the winter, so we just used a hose. After parking it, we went over to the DNA crew’s new office and dropped off some of the remote camera stuff we had borrowed from them.
We then went to the car wash and pressure washed D’s UnBearAble Bins that had been used this season, took the state truck in for an oil change, grabbed a bite to eat and returned home. We each took showers and everyone started getting ready for the evening. We visited with Tim and Carol while Carol put on her daughter’s makeup as well as her own. Her daughter was a “Rebel Rocker” and Carol was a “Gothic Preistess”, I think.
Tim and Carol...Gothic Priest and Priestess...that would be my boss on the left...
Carol took her daughter into town for some T&T while the rest of us started getting ready. We borrowed a costume from Tim and Carol for us, D was a pirate and I was his serving wench or some sort of thing. I put makeup on D to make him look beat up…he had stitches on his face and blood dripping from his mouth and ear and eye patch (of course he accidentally wiped the blood on his mouth, so that disappeared pretty early on. I put on this service wench outfit and inflated a couple of balloons and stuck ‘em in there so that they were grotesquely big…and put the ends of the balloons sticking out so that they looked like…well, you get the idea. Then I wrote, “Made Ya Look” on the balloons. I then put on a horrible splattering of makeup.
Our friend, Angela, borrowed Carol’s princess outfit that she hand-made and she truly looked like a renaissance princess! She had long sandy-blonde hair and totally looked the part! We were joined by our friends Jeff and Amy from the DNA crew and they came as wizards.
This is me with Angela:
We all piled into two cars and went into Whitefish for the premier of a movie called Roulette, done on a budget of $500 by a local resident of the wise old age of 26!! It was really, really well done! Dang spooky for no special effects!!!! We fully enjoyed it!!
After the movie, we met up with Kent, the wolf biologist, who wasn’t dressed up as anything. I first met Kent back in 1998 when I volunteered on the Idaho wolf project for a few weeks. He was a really cool guy and I enjoyed working with him…so when he showed up as the new wolf biologist for Montana FWP in Kalispell, I was so glad they chose him! Being new to the area he doesn’t have much in the way of a social life, so I thought this might be fun for him to come out with us…so he met the group of us and we went on to the main strip of Whitefish to the bars.
The Halloweens in Whitefish used to be quite the scene…Montana didn’t have an open-container law, so the parties always spilled out into the streets and it was such a blast…but as of October 1, there is an open-container law, so everyone stayed inside the bars…add rain to that equation and it wasn’t a hopping party atmosphere…totally. We went inside one bar that was pretty big and placed ourselves at the bar where we ran into a couple of other biologist types. And it was there…at that bar, that we proceeded to get smashed.
This is the group of us at the bar:
It was a ton of fun…watching all of the dressed up people come and go…and I was a big hit with my gargantuan boobs…so I had a lot of people coming up and feeling my boobies and taking pictures with me. It was a BLAST…poor Kent didn’t know what to do with us…but he had fun and it was nice to be able to introduce him to some new people…like the DNA crew.
This is me with some guy I don't know...dressed as Lt. Dangle from Reno 911...for those of you that may be fans of that show like D and I are:
By 11:30, I was close to dancing on the tables with a rum and coke and two margaritas in me…now, before you go calling me a lightweight, remember that we live in Utah…where alcohol is treated like a controlled substance…so, when you go to Montana where Margaritas are made up of tequila, triple sec and a small splash of juice…and do that on a pretty empty stomach…well…you get yourself a drunken Heather…actually. Thank god I had my pirate to keep an eye on me!
We decided at that point that we wanted to go to Doug Chadwick’s house and say hello. Doug’s crazy mother, Alice, and his brother, Gordon, were visiting from out of town and we were hoping they’d join us in Whitefish…so when they didn’t, we decided to take the party to them! So, we went over and they had their lights on and said they were almost ready to give up on us…we went in and took pictures and Carol brought over a chocolate cake that they served up with ice cream that we ate and I managed to knock over a full glass of white wine (thank goodness!!!) on their carpet, so I mopped that up as best I could, then sat down next to D…and promptly fell asleep while the rest of them talked.
This is me with Doug Chadwick...he can look, but not touch!!!!
Next thing I knew, D was waking me up and walking my drunken body out the door. I really, really shouldn’t have had that second margarita!!!!!! We got home (responsible Tim was driving), said goodnight and D escorted my stumbling body to the camper where I promptly sat down, realized a trip to the restroom was necessary and emptied my stomach into the toilet…which helped a ton, actually. While I was in there, my wonderful pirate husband readied my bed and I fell into it, managed to wriggle my way out of my costume and into my nightshirt and curled up in a fetal position and, as the camper twirled around me, I fell asleep.
November 1, 2005
I woke up not too worse for wear…a bit of a headache and a slightly squirmish tummy…but functional…poor D was in a bit worse of shape, saying he wished he had emptied his stomach, too…but, we rallied ourselves and headed out to Kalispell for an all-day meeting with other grizzly bear associated folks…
We’re back now, the meeting was interesting…lots of updates on projects that have been going on…and Tim, the great guy that he is, made a point of introducing me, D, and Angela to the group. Which was such a nice gesture…he didn’t have a presentation to give or anything…just wanted them to recognize the work the three of us have done for peanuts.
Saw a lot of folks, got to say good-byes to lots of folks that we have had a great time with this summer…and now are home. We’re doing much better…the weather has given us both sinus headaches…the rain is still pouring…but we leave the day after tomorrow…back home…back to a dry bed…and personal space…and baths…and cooking…and our television…back to CNN every morning over tea and coffee…rather than trying to read everything on the computer…back to a yard for the pups to come and go from as they please…and SUN…wonderful SUNSHINE!!!!