Blog #3 Day 3

Yesterday was such a busy day that I didn’t even get a chance to sit down and blog! Here is a blog for yesterday, Sunday March 15.

Once again I woke up to the sound of Jonathon waking me up to hurry up and eat and go swimming with him. This morning Phil is going to St. Thomas, so Buzz and Katie are going to take him to the seaplane in Christiansted, which is a city about 30 minutes away. We all ate breakfast and might I say I am becoming quite the cook. I made bacon and scrambled eggs. At about 9:30 am Katie and Buzz took Phil to Christiansted while I stayed here with Jonathon. The entire time that I was here with Jonathon he just played with Charlie, the neighbor’s 5-year-old son. I asked Jonathon if he was all set so that I could go exploring for a while. Being the mature 6 year old Jonathon is, he told me that it was just fine and to have a good time.
The cottages have a couple of kayaks so of course I grabbed on and a paddle and headed into the ocean. I paddled down the left portion of the beach past the condos and floated around for a little bit taking in the beauty of this island. Then I turned around and paddled past the cottages and continued for about 10-15 minutes, until I realized I could not really see the cottages anymore. I just floated around enjoying the beautiful scenery and quickly realizing that I had not brought my camera with me. I have taken so many pictures of this beach and not one can fully display its beauty. One must come here to experience it for themselves.
I paddled back to the cottages, pulled the big kayak out of the water and decided to catch some more lizards. I caught a couple more, showed Charlie and Jonathon, and then put my headphones on and laid on the beach, soaking in some rays. At about 11:30 or so, Buzz and Katie returned. We had a nice lunch, mine consisting of a triple-decker cold cut combo that I conjured up myself, and we got ready to go check our traps with the mongoose.
It was so cool finding these mongooses that we trapped. They were screeching and making some of the most unbelievable noises that I have ever heard. We caught 8 mongooses today and it was a lot of fun. We have a lot of video footage and pictures to display so I will just let that do the explanation.
When we were done catching them, we brought them back to the cottages and began collecting our research. The first thing that Buzz did was place a white bag over the opening of the cage and opened the cage. He would blow at the mongoose and it would run into the bag. He would then weigh the bag with the mongoose in it to determine the weight of the mongoose. Then he grabbed the mongoose by the neck and used a machine to see if the mongoose had been given a chip or not. We then sedated the mongoose, waited for it to relax and then took it out of the bag.
The mongoose is so incredibly relaxed that it is unbelievable! We were holding them as if they were a tamed animal. It was such an amazing experience. Katie then took a fecal sample, a urine sample if available, and looked for any signs of ticks or fleas. She then tried so hard to get a blood sample, but unfortunately the veins are so tough and small that she was unable to get some blood samples. She tried many times but it was almost impossible to do. The teeth were also checked.
It was a lot of fun handling the mongoose. We have plenty of video footage and pictures of this. After we were all done with the mongoose we all took showers and then brought the mongoose back to the refuge to set them free.
Buzz, Jonathon, Katie and me all went to Christiansted to pick Phil up and go out to dinner at the Fort Christian Brew Pub. We ate some burgers and had a few Hammerhead Pale Ales, which were very tasty beers. Then we came back to the cottages and relaxed.
I went and looked for ghost crabs but I could not find any. I collected a lot ofg sea glass and went to bed around 11 pm.