He's doing an internship with the Nevada Department of Wildlife (NDOW). He's been doing all kinds of new things that actually make me jealous and I have a pretty cool job too! He uses the tractor and backhoe, excavator, and bull dozer to do various "odd jobs" on a daily basis. We have a tractor at work that I told my boss he should teach me to use for smoothing out the dirt roads.
Habitat restoration.
I was off work one day when Dave was working. I was headed for either Carson City or Virginia City and he called me to say they had trapped a beaver and if I wanted the pelt I had to do it myself. I wanted it, so I went back to the house at the wildlife area, expecting to spend an hour or so skinning a dead beaver. Four hours later we decided we were finally finished and skipped the head, arms and legs. Not an experience I EVER expected to have but like most things I do, not as bad as I thought it would be, but still kind of gross. And sad...it was a dead animal, and a cute one, so that was hard... but it was dead anyway and why shouldn't I use the pelt for programs at work?
Checking the beaver trap...
Anyway, another job NDOW does is burn the cattails from beaches for fishermen and fields for geese habitat. I thought it was a wildlife refuge at first, like Ouray (between Vernal and Roosevelt, UT) but it's actually a wildlife management area, where they manage for hunting and habitat. So at first, the idea of trapping beaver, burning fields and allowing hunting was a shock to me, but then I realized later what they actually do. I don't fully understand it but now I have more appreciation for it.
