PVC and Rattlesnakes

Today, Mark decided to come play in the field. He has been on vacation since Christmas, so he hadn't seen the progress on the new road at Santa Rosa, and he wanted to check up on the birdies too. With saws and a mule in tow, we headed to the park around 9am.

Hurricane Ivan pretty much flattened Santa Rosa in 2004. Arlene and Dennis completed the job in 2005. Since then, no one has made an effort to clean the beach. Asphalt is scattered everywhere, miles and miles of PVC pipe litter the landscape and random hurricane debris intermixes with destroyed park structures. Mark has made it our mission this winter to remove all of the PVC on the island, which is not as easy as it sounds. This is one of two loads we removed today:



After struggling all day to get that small amount removed, Mark has decided to invest in an battery operated power saw -- it will make the job go faster, but it still won't be simple. Most of the pipe is buried in sand dunes, twisted at crazy angles and FULL of sand. Even ten foot long pieces weighed more than I do until we emptied them of their quartz cargo. This is going to be just the gym workout I need, and I get paid for it while making the environment much more beautiful. All we need to do now is find a way to recycle the tons of PVC we'll be removing. Any ideas?

Once we returned to Naval Live Oaks, we found a park visitor with this small, cold rattle snake in a cardboard box, searching for a new home. Sorry for the bad pic -- it's from my phone, but it does show the snake finding winter refuge in a gopher tortoise burrow, which is exactly where he belongs. Thanks, random visitor! Wish more people did that instead of just killing the poor snakes!