Homeless and NOT unemployed

i'm Marci- and...dreaming?

this summer has been... interesting to say the least. yes, i am homeless. i live out of my car. my trunk is full of my clothes and my backseat is full of the other miscellaneous stuff one needs. i have gone to six different wards in the past two months. i sleep on various couches or even sometimes in my car (my mother had a fit when she heard about that). i haven't slept in a real bed since... mid-April? and yes my back feels AWESOME. As result of any discomfort suffered from being homeless i have saved a lot of money! This, my friends, was the plan.

don't get the wrong idea; i'm not homeless ALL summer. i'm only homeless when i am not working. work provides me with a trailer home down in the Mojave desert and boy is it LOVELY. i share this little trailer with two other girls, Jenna and Quincey. this trailer is connected to some generators and when those are going we can get electricity and air conditioning but unfortunately we are only allowed to run those about two hours a day. normally our trailer is lacking in electricity, running water and any other convenience that requires outside connections. that's okay though because we all really like to camp and this is just like sleeping in a tent but just with harder walls.

in the Mojave, for anyone who is not knowledgeable about this particular part of Utah, it is not unheard of for the temperature to surpass 120 degrees during the hottest part of summer. unfortunately i haven't had the pleasure of experiencing that heat yet.

our little camper

our trailer is in Lytle Ranch which is owned by BYU. this ranch is right next to a game ranch and so sometimes we see hunters and cowboys around. Lytle is located in a large wash and because of the tiny river running through it we are able to have a small orchard and some green grass. the orchard has pomegranates, pears and peaches along with other trees i haven't identified.this has been heavenly because it reminds of my home-town paradise.

the view while walking towards the orchards.

it is hard to walk through the ranch and not see tons of little critters scampering about. i'm sure that will change as it continually gets hotter but for now i see lots of cottontails, jack rabbits, lizards, deer, birds and sometimes coyotes and kit fox. there are also chickens and some dogs on the ranch! the rooster likes to perch right outside our trailer and call "happy birthday!" luckily i don't wake up to much besides my alarm so i don't get bothered by him.

Shadow is a big ball of energy and never fails to entertain!

Oso is literally the model dog for Doug off of the movie "Up"... big, fat and always happy to see you.

during the work week we don't get to spend a ton of time in this little Mojave oasis. we usually wake up early for work. sometimes when we are feeling super ambitious Quincey and i will wake up earlier to go running. this usually depends on what time we have to leave the ranch for work which varies depending on the job we are doing that day.

i came into this summer thinking i would be doing telemetry all the time. (telemetry is tracking animals wearing radio transmitters using a receiver.) i was wrong. the first week at Lytle we built the traps to catch the quail. because water is not very common in the Mojave, quail visit man-made water entrapments called guzzlers quite often. we build our traps around these. we make the entrances little funnels into the fence and the quail can't figure out how to get out once they get in.

Jenna, Quincey and i building our quail trap!

once we had some traps built we could start trapping and processing quail. to do this we scare the quail into a smaller cage connected to the larger one. we then close off that smaller cage and take it to the truck where we weigh them, put a radio collar on them, put little bands on their ankles and take a blood sample. then we release the little buggers! sometimes when i'm frustrated with a quail because it is trying to get away while i'm processing it i just randomly start laughing. honestly, who really ever has the chance to get upset about something like that??

we got the birds into the smaller trap and i'm bringing it to the truck!

Quincey is putting on the collar!

One of the first birds we processed.

usually when we are checking traps we ride in our giant truck (i feel like it's giant when i'm driving; it's a GMC 2500) but when we do other jobs we usually ride on the four wheeler and the rhino. this part, seemed a dream come true. who gets to drive these all summer long? ME!

Quincey is behind us on the four wheeler.

one day we got to do a special job because they needed help doing a burn on experimental plots. we needed to start the fire early to avoid the heat and wind so we woke up at 4:30 am. by 4:40 am i was running around with the dogs and singing and laughing as the others stared with glazed eyes. we finally got up to the plots and the others were awake. the professors and our ranch manager were very nervous, the fire fighters were very relaxed and we were very excited. the fire fighters were so relaxed about it that one of them was talking on the phone to his wife while setting bushes on fire. it was all pretty relaxed until the fire reached a joshua tree and would cause a couple of floating embers. though it wasn't nearly as intense as it sounds i was still very excited to be a fire fighter because i remember being little and dressing up in my Dad's fire suit dreaming about being a fire fighter.

this is us in our fire get-up right before we started!

we were the "flappers" and controlled the fire if it got outside the exclosures

a joshua tree catching on fire

the week after that we started telemetry. to do this we got all dressed up in our desert garb including the snake gaitors and fanny packs. (now i might mention that seeing me like this was my own little nightmare. a fanny pack... really??) we scoot on over there on our four wheelers and rhinos and start up our receivers and go through the frequencies to find the birds. once we find some frequencies we just start walking... and walking and walking and walking.

hard at work

we often have to climb mountains to get signals for the quail.

every couple of months we get to spend three days trapping small mammals. when i say small mammals, i mean rodents. we catch wood rats (eew), kangaroo rats and some varieties of pocket mice. to catch these we set out traps with bird seed in them the night before. so we don't bake them we have to wake up at five to start processing the rodents. to do this we weigh them, ear tag them, check their gender and whether or not they're pregnant (if applicable). then we let them go.

i learned a very important lesson on the first trap i checked; never try to catch a rodent by the tip of it's tail. this, my friends, is the moment after learning that lesson.

this is a kangaroo rat being weighed

if you don't check the traps quick enough they roast in the little ovens.

bummer dude.

another job we do for a couple of hours a week is repair/finish the experimental plot fences. this requires riveting, patching fence and pounding in poles. don't. be. jealous.

on occasion we get a little distracted. but that is only on very very rare occasions. this time Quincey had the brilliant idea of adorning her face with indian war paint made from the soot of the burnt area.

because the Mojave desert gets so hot during mid-day we have a siesta from about 1-4. during the free time around the ranch we usually read, write in journals, lay in the river or sleep if at all possible. on occasion we even wander the ranch. this has proven to be very entertaining. on walks i have found deer trails, abandoned shacks and a couple of really cool old vehicles. there are so many pretty and interesting things to be seen!

this truck really couldn't get any cooler. old, green and rusty, it sits right by a corral waiting to be photographed and appreciated by all who encounter.

this looked like some sort of fire truck. there was a big tank and a hose in back!

this bus looks like it crashed and was just left there. now it is built into the fence so obviously they're okay with it being there.

on countless occasions i laugh at what i am doing. while most college-age girls spend their summers serving people in restaurants i am tromping around in a desert. when i return to Provo after a long adventure in the desert i feel like i just woke up from a long dream. i mean, really, would i really NOT be freaking out if i was holding a rat by the scruff of it's neck? i honestly can't be cool with being pooped on repeatedly by birds. yeah- must've been a dream.

i'm Marci and i'm dreaming.