I have to catch snakes?!

Despite working the entire time that I was on the island, I had so much fun! I got to enjoy sun majority of the time I was out there, and most importantly, I learned first hand what the Maine Coastal Islands NWR Complex staff does on at least one of the 60 some odd islands that they manage.

Throughout the summer there are two interns that stay out on the island and conduct research during the seabird nesting season. Each of them gets one vacation, so I got to fill in for each of them. If it weren't for the large number of terns that abandoned the island early in the season, than I would have experienced everything that the research interns of Metinic Island would normally do. Instead we did everything we could to keep the abandoned colony grounds attractive to the terns that occasionally passed by, heedfully inspecting the area. 

We were outside by 7 every morning to do the morning bird count. We would walk to the 4 locations that we would record the number of birds at with our binoculars and notebook. Because it is so easy to miscount all the little moving specks perched throughout the rocks and intertidal, we would both count each species at the same time, and then say how many we counted. I never wore my glasses, so most of the time I was way off. I did get pretty close to the number that Katie, the intern I was staying with, got though. Its more exciting when it happens trust me. There are so many to count that when you know you didn't miss a whole slew of them you feel this sense that maybe I can be a help out here.

Abandoned tern eggs

After the bird count we would go back in and make ourselves some breakfast for a bit before spending the rest of the day outside. Then it was off to pick up trash, search for guillemot burrows, catch snakes (which are invasive to the island), pull the most obnoxious and persistent thistles (also invasive) I have ever come across, and chase the sheep off of the abandoned tern colony in hopes that the terns would renest there.


Catching snakes is not my forte. I wanted to catch one so bad, but when all of your instinct is telling you to run in the opposite direction of them, there isn't much catching going on. Eventually I warmed up to them and would try to catch them, but they were just too damn fast. At least I made some progress though. I clearly didn't want to catch one badly enough though, because unless you immediately dive at anything you think is a snake, then it will slither away before your brain can even process what happened. The ones we, or Katie rather, did catch went into a bucket that I carried around, trying to calm them all down and keep them from trying to slither out. They would stay in there to give to the refuge staff when they came to pick me up. Usually the trade off would happen when the staff would come by to drop off groceries and water though if it weren't for my lucky opportunity.

At the end of the day, we would take our snake bucket and our notebook full of our collected information back to the house, wash up, and prepare dinner. I was lucky enough to go out there right after our only neighbor, a fisherman that built a little house on the island, gave Katie a bunch of extra crabs he had caught. It was the best tasting crab ever! Of course such good crab can't come without a catch. That being that we didn't have anything to break the shells with, which didn't stop us from eating them though; we used rocks. One to set the shell upon and another to smash it with. True island camping.

There is no running water out there. There isn't even a faucet on the sink! There isn't a bathroom either. There is an outhouse next to the house, but to be honest I'd rather find myself a bush; the outhouse really grossed me out. Our drinking water came in large jugs with me on the same trip from the mainland, which we had to lug up to the cabin. Its exhausting. They're sealed though, so its not as much of a pain as fetching the well water to do dishes is. That was a project, let me tell you.

First, you must fill the bucket reserved just for the well water as full as you can get it, then pull it up with the attached rope. It's more difficult than it appears. Without spilling, you must carry the heavy bucket back to the house through uneven, really tall grass and thistles. Remember, no spilling! Once you've got majority of the water back the house, it must be boiled and poured into two bins; one for washing and one for rinsing. Its not the cleanest way to do the dishes but it does the trick!

Bathing is a similar story. There are solar showers, which I would have taken advatage of if a had been spending more time pon the island. I just took a few quick dunks in the 50 degree ocean water instead. Refreshing!