Jake-Morrison.com

Hello dear reader! The blog you are reading tonight is being typed and strung out for you by a Jake in a very odd state of mind. This week has been a bit of a rollercoaster experience. I experienced a shockingly wide breadth of emotions, ranging from loved, to anger, to hatred, to childlike glee. A lot of the reasons and motivations for my feelings, while important, are required to be secret by necessity. Suffice to say, if I am able to tell you, I’ve either already told you, or promised to tell you at a more appropriate time.

Begin your curious wondering about whether or not you’ve been told something.

I tend to worry. And I’m not a group person. I like periods of personal time with small pockets of people. But I’ve started to notice that people react to me strangely. Like I’m the one who is odd or something. As for me, I celebrate and embrace my oddity. And yet, even so… perhaps I should try out things that I have written off as a bad idea. After all, nominally, I am human, and therefore I am prone to being wrong. So I think I’ll try a few new things in the coming weeks. Who knows? It could be fun!

I would also like to take the time to rectify a huge mistake I made. This mistake was a glaring one, a chink in the armor of my perfection. I promised a certain lovely someone a pelican story. And I shall deliver. As a background to this story, you need to know that I volunteered at an animal wildlife refuge during my formative high school years. It was an exciting time, and I eventually was trusted to do animal pickups.

Relatively soon after gaining the enhanced responsibilities inherent in doing animal pickups, I found myself alone in the Refuge. At the time, this was still a novel experience. I wandered the building, feeding and cleaning the birds. There were always a lot of birds. They ranged from the graceful songbirds, to the mentally retarded doves. The pigeons and doves always outnumbered the pretty birds by a 10 to 1 ratio, at least. How I hated those doves and pigeons… but that is a story for another time. After tending to the avians, I checked the outer cages. We had a few larger avians… a crane, a few seagulls. But there was nothing too unusual. My duties completed, I decided to relax in the office with a magazine for a few hours. Oh trust me, it was a cushy job. Once the animals were taken care of, you usually had 2 or 3 hours to kick around. The only real responsibilities then were to man the phones, and take regular walkabouts to make sure the animals were still kicking.

I had only been reading for a short while when the phone rang. I sprang into action with the speed and grace of someone who knew that they were doing something they weren’t supposed to be doing. Yeah. You could sit and read. But you were supposed to do something; take inventory, clean empty cages, sieve out some mealworms… but that stuff didn’t always need to be done. But still, I clearly felt guilty about it. The phone call was from the police department. It seems some poor bastard clipped a pelican while going over the Mid Bay Bridge. The police were requesting that someone go pick up the pelican.

The policy at the Refuge was to never leave the place unattended. There was always supposed to be someone manning the phones, or to be there in case the Animal Control people needed to do a drop-off. I abused my newly granted powers of autonomy, and decided to go save the pelican!

Were this blog a movie, this is where the epic and inspiring score would start.

So I jumped in my car. That day, I was actually driving my mother’s Saturn LS. I sped down the road, making it to the scene of the environmental crime in record time. For the uninformed, the Mid Bay Bridge is a two-lane bridge between the mainland of Niceville and the barrier island of Destin. There just happens to be a distance exactly equal to the width of my mom’s car between the lane and the side of the bridge. I cautiously got out, and grabbed the tool of my trade. You want to know what you need to catch pretty much any wild animal? A towel.

The bird was flopping along the side of the bridge, coming dangerously close to traffic. Also coming dangerously close to traffic was myself, as I tried to sneak up on the pelican.
As I was about to make the pounce, some redneck jackass blew his horn as he sped by. I twisted to the side and jumped. Right into the barrier of the bridge. If I had been standing up when I moved, I likely would have flipped over the rail. Slightly daunted, I moved again to get the bird. I pounced, throwing the towel over it and wrapping it in what I thought was a smooth motion. In interest of full disclosure, I can admit that an outside observer may have found it amusing and/or awkward. Cradling the bird delicately in my arms, I made my way back to the car. The hard part was fast approaching; I had to open the car door, and get the bird into the cat carrier in my backseat. Yeah. I planned to put a pelican, which is a rather sizeable bird, into a cage designed to keep felines contained. It was a solid plan. So I tried to manhandle the bird into the cage.

I assure you, any animal wrapped in a towel does not immediately become calm and sedate. They tend to get furious and try to get out in a flurry of arms, legs, beaks, and other vicious natural weaponry. So when I say manhandle… I really mean manhandle. Anyone who has tried to get a cat into a bath knows what I mean. It was at this time that I heard the “Whoop whoop” of a police siren. Yeah. A cop stopped me. So there I am. Half in, half out of the car, holding the ass end of a pelican while trying to shove it into a container was shifting across the seat. And the cop tries to talk to me. Asks me who I am, and what I’m doing. Once I replied I was from the Refuge, he visibly calmed down. After asking a few more (not really) stupid questions like, “Is that really how to do that?” and “What kind of training did they put you through?;” the cop did the coolest thing I had, at that point, seen a cop do.

He stopped traffic. On a bridge. So I could have the time I needed to safely insert the bird into his temporary home. I got the pelican into the cage, shut the doors, thanked the officer, and he moved traffic so I could do a three point turn. I drove back to the Refuge, bird squawking in the back seat, immensely pleased with myself. At the Refuge, I did a cursory examination of the pelican. There were no obvious injuries. I ensconced it in one of the larger cages in the Refuge, and made a call to the contracted vet that it needed to be looked at. I gave the pelican a fish, and then went back to my rounds. No missed calls, no animals in distress… another day saved.
That is the end of this pelican story. As a quick wrap-up, the pelican turned out to have survived his traumatic impact with the car just fine. We kept him at the Refuge for four or five days, and released him back into the wild.

In other news, there was a party here on Saturday night. The lovely and talented Tanya was celebrating her birthday. A cadre of cool compadres and I hung out in my room, and during the wild, wooly, and wonderful discussion that happened, a few ground rules were established that we should all abide by. The list follows below.

1. If you have boobs, you are right.
2. If it is your birthday, you are right.
3. If you are wearing a bear hat, you are right.
4. If you are unkempt and scruffy, you are untrustworthy.
5. If you are purebred Asian, you know kung fu.

The interesting thing about this list; is that if you follow it strictly, I am both untrustworthy and right. Now it’s funny how that works out. I feel like that a lot.

And now, dear reader, it is time for this blog to end. I once again beg you for your comments and criticisms, for your digital love and hate. Remember to friend me on Facebook, and follow me on Twitter @Chiron7936. Comments are super important for me. It keeps my blog fresh, not stale like some other amateur blogs you may have read. So comment!

This entry was posted on Monday, March 23rd, 2009 at 4:38 am and is filed under Normal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.